Couple of questions - thumbshots, affilate url's

[kyle]

Have strayed but decided to come back to the links directory and try it again so installed the latest v3 beta 2 version.

Question about the thumbshots and affiliate urls.

Most of the links we want to put into the link directory are to various affiliates which either give us a thumbshot that says image coming soon or just a blank image. Some of our affiliate links are like this - http://w2.pokertime.com/?btag=ad_238468 (coming soon image) and http://www.carbonpoker.com/landing/carbon1/ (blank image). Since we need it directed right so our affiliate info is recorded when a person goes to the site is there anyway to be able to upload and store our own image of the site?

If not is there a way to not have the link included with the thumbshot? We could go with adding a url to the actual site and not use our affiliate url, but then if someone clicks on the image they are going to the site but not through our affiliate link.

Hope this makes sense!!

[KW802]

The thumbnail is linked to whatever URL is entered; Thumbshots, though, parses the URL and provides a thumbnail to the parent URL and not a sub-folder. In other words, if ABC.com exists and ABC.com/BuyMe/index.php exists and you create a new Links entry to ABC.com/BuyMe/index.php?myid=123 then the thumbnail shown by ThumbShots will be ABC.com but when your visitor clicks on the thumbnail they will be taken to ABC.com/BuyMe/index.php?myid=123 since that is what you entered as the URL.

Speaking of affiliate links... check out option in the newest vBa Links to suppress the affiliate link from being displayed to the end user. ;) A lot of visitors don't like affiliate links so by turning the option on the link will be displayed like any other link to the user but when the click on it they will go to the actual affiliate link that you entered.

[R0B74]

I have the same concern Kyle has,. anyone with a large links site has most likely created it on the foundation of affiliate links. I have sponsors that run several different programs all from the same domain, meaning I see a lot of comming soon captions or the same capture repeatedly.

I think and I'm hoping that there should be a way to turn thumbshots off on a link per link basis, with the option to include a file path to a pre-made thumb of our own creation.

Is there a hack in the works to help with a link per link basis, thumb?

[Brian]

One simple way might be to use a new Text Input custom field where your members could enter their own URL for the thumbnail. Then you would need to alter the thumbnail code in your 'adv_links_linkbit' template to change it to something like this:
<a href="showlink.php?$session[sessionurl]do=goto&amp;l=$link[linkid]&amp;linkurl=$link[linkurl]" target="_blank"<if condition="$show['nofollow']"> rel="nofollow"</if>><img alt="$link[name_nohighlight]" src="<if condition="$links['fieldX']">$links[fieldX]<else />http://open.thumbshots.org/image.aspx?url=$link[linkurl]</if>" width="120" height="90" border="0" /></a>

Replace the 2 places you see 'fieldX' there with the ID from the custom field you create for the image URL and that should replace the thumbshots URL with the one entered if applicable.

[Stilgar]

Great code Brian. How could I make that spot ONLY use the provided image and never use the thumbshot image?

[Brian]

Just replace the thumbshots.org URL with the custom field variable instead of using the <if condition> in my previous post.
<a href="showlink.php?$session[sessionurl]do=goto&amp;l=$link[linkid]&amp;linkurl=$link[linkurl]" target="_blank"<if condition="$show['nofollow']"> rel="nofollow"</if>><img alt="$link[name_nohighlight]" src="$link[fieldX]" width="120" height="90" border="0" /></a>

You may need to remove the width/height tags too.

[atDev]

Can we modify that code to make thumbshots take a shot of the exact URL entered? not the main domain name?

[atDev]

Just FYI, we changed it to websnapr which works for subfolders in urls... Changed the area Brian mentioned to...
http://images.websnapr.com/?size=S&key={YOUR KEY}N&url=$link[linkurl]

Works fine.

[R0B74]

Hi Brian

I've tried the code you've provided in this post with my links3. I'm not able to get my custom thumb to appear using either of the two examples you provide.

I've created the custom text_input field, it's been shown as having the id of: field1

this is a direct cut from what I currently have in my adv_links_linkbit:

<a href="showlink.php?$session[sessionurl]do=goto&amp;l=$link[linkid]&amp;linkurl=$link[linkurl]" target="_blank"<if condition="$show['nofollow']"> rel="nofollow"</if>><img alt="$link[name_nohighlight]" src="<if condition="$links['field1']">$links[field1]<else />http://open.thumbshots.org/image.aspx?url=$link[linkurl]</if>" width="120" height="90" border="0" /></a>

The Thumbshots graphic will display properly but no custom thumb even though there is a correct path to graphic entered in the new custom field. I've tried both http://myseite.com/file.jpg and a file path /file.jpg with no success.

When I tried the code for custom thumb only without thumbshot (your second code example) on viewing the output of my page source. The img src= is completely blank.

For some reason the custom field data isn't making it into my pages. Is there a known reason, maybe something I've not yet turned on that is disabled by defualt that would allow the custom field to work?

I see the path to my custom thumb correctly on viewing the linkdetails page, so it's half working.

[Brian]

I guess it would help if I used the right variable in my example. :o

Try using $link instead of $links