Create a website screenshot/thumbnail server-side?

Question

I'm building a rails app that needs to grab and display a thumbnail screenshot from a URL. I'm having a difficult time even finding where to start. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Here's a cheap ($5/month) and very easy way to do it: http://webshotspro.com/

Or, if you don't want to spend any money, write a script that calls this or a similar web service: www.superscreenshot.com. Automatically grab the screenshot from the page.

EDIT --

Or another free way to do it is to call this service from your script and set the headers as a GIF file (or else it will show up garbled): http://thumbnailspro.com/thumbnailspro.php?url=http://google.com

Replace the "http://google.com" with any URL.

Answer 2

http://www.bitpixels.com

Free with no ads up to 500,000 images a month.

Answer 3

Use sitethumbshot.com to generate website thumbnails. It is fast and less expensive.