Thumbnails generation not working

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Hi

Firstly, many thanks for looking into the updates to the automatic thumbnail generation part of your links plugin. I’ve updated to the latest version to try it out. Currently, I’m experiencing an error message – I’m forcing https:// on my website to ensure that all parts are secure – I mention this because it might affect the error message and how to fix it.

The thumbnails are currently displaying a missing picture icon for me in WordPress when I switch to Pagepeeker thumbnails. I went in to the HTML to see what the raw link generated was, and copied that out and tried to post the link in a new browser window. When I did, the browser returned the following error:

Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for free.pagepeeker.com. The certificate is only valid for the following names: api.pagepeeker.com, https://www.api.pagepeeker.com

Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN

View Certificate

I turned off the force HTTPS plugin, and now it seems to be working well – so it looks like the plugin was causing the issue. I would love to be able to continue to use the force HTTPS plugin, beacuse it does ensure no warning on the https:// browser but I don’t know if it would be easy to make Link Library work with forcing https:// as I don’t understand why it is clashing? The generated link by your plugin seems to look OK with the https:// links nicely in place, so I can’t think what else would be causing it.

Hope this makes sense, and here’s hoping this is a very simple issue with a quick solution.

Many thanks again
Kind regards
Trevor.

@ukcw Hello. In this case, it is PagePeeker that needs to fix the issue; not Link Library.

The error indicates that their SSL certificate does not support their free domain. They will need to take action to support HTTPS for their free service.

Cheers!

@jackdewey Thank you, Yannick, for integrating the new thumbnail-services into your excellent plugin.

@puravida1976

i have registered a (free) account at STW and have entered my access key into the Option page… however, I only get the “generic” shrinktheweb thumbnails.
https://doktor-schubert.net/netzkultur/linksammlung/
what am I doing wrong?

@docmario Most issues stem from not adding the proper domain or IP to the “Allowed Referrers” (account security area). However, we have been working diligently on a massive roll-out of our new website, so there’s a small chance that we also broke something.

So, I’ll take a look at your account settings and involve my team to dig further, if that’s not the quick fix. I’ll get back to you shortly. ??

Hi @docmario… It looks like you correctly added your domains for “Embedded” use, which is great. This means that Yannick used the “Simple Method” to integrate, which is OK but requires a little more setup for the users and doesn’t provide quite as much security. However, it is an acceptable way to integrate. I’m just mentioning the difference.

In your case, I suspect that the issue is related to SSL/HTTPS, as that seems to be a growing reason that screenshot services stop working for many. That said, ShrinkTheWeb DOES support SSL/HTTPS requests. The key is to ensure that the link uses HTTPS requests on HTTPS secured end user sites.

@jackdewey Firstly, I greatly appreciate your consideration to integrate STW as an option for your users. I think they will also appreciate your efforts. When you integrated, did you account for end-user sites that use SSL? In those cases, our sample code will detect that and prefix “Simple Method” requests with HTTPS instead of HTTP. This generally overcomes any issues of that type.

From prior discussions between us, I believe that your plugin always uses the embedded style of using request links, and that is OK. However, I wanted to point out the added benefit of using our sample code for a more robust integration that caches images locally (reduces usage that avoids having users hitting limits). There is also an easy way to have those cached images PUSHED to the end-users server, securely, the instant that captures are completed.

I am available to answer any questions about this HTTPS issue or on making a tighter integration. I am happy to assist.

@docmario For now, I’m thinking that @jackdewey may need to make a slight modification to the integration to get it working on your site. IF I am wrong about that, we can dig deeper and figure it out with you! Cheers ??

@puravida1976 No, I did not account for the configuration of the end-user site. I only tried to access images via HTTP. Just released an update (6.5.3) that check if the site is running SSL and puts the right protocol in the requests. Please update your version and see if images can now be accessed.

I integrated the same way that I integrated all of the other providers for the moment. I do have a way for users to already request all images and store locally from all providers. It is their choice if they want to always ping the thumbnail generation site or use locally stored images. I do prefer having a single local storage method to having specific methods per provider.

@jackdewey Awesome! That will likely fix the issue for @docmario. If not, then I am happy to investigate further. ??

That will likely fix the issue for @docmario

Yep, that did it for me.
Thank you both for your swift reaction and great work.

Thanks for letting us know that this resolves the issue you were seeing. Please consider donating to support this plugin’s development.

@jackdewey

The error indicates that their SSL certificate does not support their free domain. They will need to take action to support HTTPS for their free service.

Shall I try contacting them?

Kind regards
Trevor.

Yes, you can definitely contact them about their certificate.

Hi

OK – so I was just about to send an email to pagepeeker when I thought I’d double-check the free plans for exactly what they offer. It looks like the free branded unlimited option doesn’t include the SSL URLs (am assuming this is the one you’ve built in to Link Library), but the free unbranded option does – the down side is that a link back is required and you get 100,000 API calls a month (I have no idea what level of traffic you would need to hit that 100,000!).

Here’s a link to the page I got the info from: https://pagepeeker.com/free-thumbnails/

I guess if the 100,000 limit on API calls will frequently be a problem for users of Link Library then there is no point in adding the feature. You could include two options for pageseeker – the one you have already implemented and then a second that uses the alternative free option which includes SSL URLs (if that is what is needed to stop the error when forcing https:// on a WordPress website – or any site I guess). I have no idea how much work that would be to set up, and it would need to be clear what the difference between the two is, I guess, too.

In the meantime, I have tried Robothumb again, and this looks like it might work for me at the moment because it seems to accept https://

I don’t seem to be able to use the dynamic loading of images – perhaps that is due to my hosting provider, so I am having to manually generate thumbnails for each link and storing them locally. I guess the advantage is that they load much quicker. However, I only seem to be able to grab the smallest or second smallest thumbnails otherwise I just get the Robothumbs holding image imported.

Anyway, sorry for the long reply, thank you for your help

Kind regards
Trevor.

The free unbranded option should work with Link Library, as they both use the same server (api.pagepeeker.com) and they both require an API key that gets passed the same way. So, you can definitely go ahead and sign up for a free unbranded account, enter your API key in the admin and give it a whirl. How quickly you will go through your API call limit will depend on how many links you have in your library and how many visits you get per month. Let me know if you have any issues with this.

The alternative that you mentioned of downloading images to your local server could save you headaches if you get close to exceeding the limit, but does require more work.

For Robothumb sizes, not sure why the larger sizes don’t work. That service is completely free and they still list all of these sizes as available on their site. You can always poke these guys to ask why larger image requests are not coming through.

Hi

I have now tried all the different thumbnail generation options. Page Seeker, Shrink the Web and Robothumbs seem to work. However, for all of these the load times seem a little slow, so I wanted to create generate thumbnails and store locally. However, when I try to do that with any of the options, about 90% only create and store the generic ‘generating thumbnail’ holding image.

I have no idea what could be causing this. I guess one option might be shared hosting not giving enough time for the script to run before the thumbnail can be created and added?

Any other ideas as to what could be causing this?

Many thanks for your help
Trevor.