Today I have to introduce am additional credit charge which will help reduce SnapCasa misuse and make things more fair for our users.  Effective immediately SnapCasa will charge 3 credits for each webpage request which is being captured or requested for the first time.  This applies to both Basic and Premium requests.  I realize that this change will increase credit use by our users, especially those who cache our snapshots on their own servers.  To help our current users cope with this sudden change I will permanently increase the monthly credit allowance of Basic users to 500,000.  For all of our current Premium users I have tripled your premium credit balances.

There are two reasons why this change was necessary.  Firstly, it will make things more fair for users and enable me to maintain optimal performance of our processing servers.  We have had several users before who required several hundred thousand unique webpage captures.   Capturing these snapshots puts a much greater load on our servers than a user who requests a limited number of unique snapshots several hundred thousand times.   Charging the extra 3 credits per unique webpage will enable me to deploy additional processing servers with demand and maintain optimal performance. 

The second reason this change was necessary is because it will enable me to develop a few additional user requested features.  Without the extra charge the new features would not be developed because they had the potential for misuse.  The first of these features will be released next week.

If you have any feedback about this change you can contact me directly by using the Contact form on SnapCasa.com.

Today I am happy to introduce a Premium feature which will enable our users to make snapshot requests using Flash.  In the redesigned Register Domains Page users will find a new Client Side Requests section.  Enabling client side requests for your account will generate a Request Key which will be unique to your account.  This key should be included with every request that originates from a clients machine instead of a website domain or server IP like so:

http://snapcasa.com/get.aspx?code=1000&key=CERT82IE&size=s&url=ebay.com

It is important to know that this key value should never be visible to your visitors.  It is strictly made for use with Flash or similar technologies which allow you to conceal the images source from the end user.  If you feel that someone managed to get a hold of your request key value you can request a new one from within the Register Domains page.  The old key value will become invalid as soon as a new one is issued.

This feature does not cost any credits for Premium Users and is not available to Basic users at this time.  You can see a live implementation of this feature here.  The flash animation on that page makes requests to SnapCasa without registering your IP. 

Enjoy this new feature and make sure you check back here again soon as there are many major improvements and new features coming to SnapCasa!

The custom headers I wrote about earlier this month have quickly become a popular feature.  Both Basic and Premium users are easily able to read the status header value and handle the response accordingly.  Today I am happy to introduce a new parameter Premium users can take advantage of to detect the status of a snapshot.  By attaching the parameter ‘info’ to a SnapCasa request string a user can make as many snapshot status inquiries as they require without ever being charged any credits.

With the info parameter included no snapshot will ever be returned or submitted for processing.  It is simply a way to gather information about a snapshots status or existence instantly.  When the parameter info =  1  SnapCasa will respond with a custom header named ‘snapshot-info’.  It’s possible values are:

0 – Snapshot does not Exist in Requested Size
1 – Snapshot Exists in Requested Size
2 – Snapshot Processing
3 – Snapshot Queued
4 – Snapshot Queued for Second Attempt
5 – Snapshot Unavailable

Certain users may require to check whether a snapshot exists in a specific size before submitting a capture request.  The info parameter will enable them to accomplish this without being charged any credits.  A sample info request may look like so:

http://snapcasa.com/get.aspx?code=1000&width=300&height=300&info=1&url=yahoo.com

Either the size or width and height parameters are required with the info parameter.  This is so that we can check whether a snapshot exists in the size you require.  Additionally you can also include the page parameter to check whether a full page capture exists of a webpage.  The info parameter should be included prior to the url parameter in your request string.

Please contact me with any questions!

Thanks!

 

Specifying custom graphics allows Premium users to replace the default Processing, Queued, and Unavailable snapshot images with their own custom graphics.  Prior to this update users were limited to only specifying Processing and Unavailable images for all domains in their account.  Users can now alter the graphics on a per domain basis and can also specify a graphic for Queued snapshots. 

The user interface of the Custom Graphics Page has been significantly improved.  We also created three custom graphics for users to quickly replace the default SnapCasa images without having to create custom graphics themselves.  More graphics will be made available shortly.

I hope everyone enjoys the new admin page.  Feedback is always welcome!

Thanks,

Greg

Last month I introduced the new Snapshot Update API which allows for Premium users to update snapshots on demand.  This month I am happy to introduce a new admin page which allows both Basic and Premium users to update snapshots using a simple form.  The Update Snapshot page is fairly self explanatory.  Simply input a URL to update in the text box and it will be updated immediately.  I hope you enjoy and find this new page to be useful.  Feedback and comments are always greatly appreciated!

Many developers making requests to SnapCasa require a way to check the status of their request so that their application may respond accordingly.  SnapCasa provides a simple way to accomplish this.  For each snapshot request SnapCasa will respond with a custom header with a key of ‘snapshot-status’. This header contains the status of the request with four possible numeric values outlined below:

0 - Processing/Queued
1 - Available/Captured
2 - Unavailable
3 - Invalid Request

As always, if you have any questions about this feature please contact me directly using the Contact Page on SnapCasa.com.