New 7.1 Sites Module

houstonlively posted 23rd of July 2012 in Community Voice. 14 comments.

Here's what your site's visitors will see everytime they click a thumbnail generated by the free Shrinktheweb service.

Direct link to image: http://houstonlively.com/uploads/STW-Preview.png

Nice, isn't it?

 
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houstonlively
houstonlively•23rd of July 2012
 
Here's the part that gets me:

"The purpose of this page is to provide enough details for you to decide if you want to visit the web page shown below."

Who in hell put STW in charge of external link security on MY website. Let's not try to put any lipstick on this pig and call it what it is: Big, ugly, obtrusive, annoying marketing.
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prolaznik
prolaznik•23rd of July 2012
 
never used it, never will use it!...
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Andrew Boon
Andrew Boon•23rd of July 2012
 
Not so good, but the service is rather resource-intensive and it's not surprising that a free version promotes the provider. Paid version is relatively affordable, and you don't have to use it.

Also we're open to other suggestions.
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houstonlively
houstonlively•24th of July 2012•to Andrew Boon
 
My suggestion would be to either add some sort of watermark to the thumbnails, or an attribution link to pages that use the free version. This way just isn't going to fly. STW should indeed get some sort of attribution for a free service, but this is excessive.

Boonex does the same thing for free licenses. You have your name on flash apps. If every time a dolphin site user clicked on a video, and landed on a page on boonex.com that touted "you are about to view a video made possible by see more boonex software. Click here to proceed to video ", how well do you think that would go over?

Funny thing is, had stw came up with a less obtrusive attribution, I would likely have upgraded to a paid version. However, when someone tries to cram something down my throat, no way I'm rewarding them with my business.

Get stw to come up with something less invasive, and it will be better received. Alternatively, you can just do nothing, and deal with the backlash whenever you release 7.1. Sooner or later, you'll have to deal with it.
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prolaznik
prolaznik•24th of July 2012
 
better yet why doesn't boonex offer some kind of thumbnails service and charge a monthly fee for it i sure would sign up
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Profesize
Profesize•24th of July 2012
 
Could have been worse. They could have placed a column down each side of the page too.

But in all seriousness, their self-advertisement is kind of excessive.
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paansystems
paansystems•25th of July 2012
 
things will change soon ;)
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puravida
puravida•15th of August 2012
 
As @misterpopper eluded to, this will change by the final release. After listening to use feedback, we have decided not to "police" the use of our service (which was originally done in response to numerous malicious users misusing the service). The intentions were well placed (not just marketing), but the headache is too much.

Alex over at BoonEx also highlighted a few areas where the javascript method that is required was causing some conflicts and compatibility issues. Therefore, see more we have decided to rescind support for PVP and will be updating all "ShrinkTheWeb Certified" integrations as soon as possible. The final release of the SITES module update will use the direct method, which is the way everyone expects it to be, without any watermark or intermediate page.

Learn more here: http://www.shrinktheweb.com/content/pvp-update-changed-optional.html
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houstonlively
houstonlively•5th of September 2012•to puravida
 
Thank you. Much better. You have me curious though.... how did the malicious users you speak of, misuse the service? Send me a PM if you don't want to answer that publicly.
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puravida
puravida•6th of September 2012•to houstonlively
 
Quite simple, really. There were a large and growing number of users (mostly from Poland and Russia) who were showing valid domain screenshots but linking to malicious sites with malware, such as whtlskjdl--dlk2.ru, etc. So we thought this would curb that but it just angered a lot of people and made our lives more difficult. So we finally just scrapped it. Now it is optional and may one day go away. :)

We intended to at least make it a way to generate traffic and spread awareness by giving unlimited see more bandwidth and free inside pages, but a number of users figured out how to exploit that generosity to steal service through the main methods. So it's another case of the few ruining it for the many.
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houstonlively
houstonlively•8th of September 2012•to puravida
 
It would be really cool, if there was a way to have a bot discover the sreenshots that linked to malicious sites, and replace the screenshot with a malicious site warning image.
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puravida
puravida•8th of September 2012•to houstonlively
 
Hmm... Could be done. Not a bad idea. Will put on "the list" for future consideration. Thanks for the suggestion! :)
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fidelg3
fidelg3•4th of September 2012
 
not sure if this helps, but another solution (although just for 218 leading providers) is to use http://embed.ly/ to generate not only the thumbnails but other data as well, like titles, descriptions, etc.
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