"If you want an easy way to generate web page thumbnails right from your PHP applications now you have one", Joshua Eichorn writes. Over the weekend Hansin wrote a PHP Webthumb API wrapper and released it under open source. Webthumb seems to be handling the load well, its already generated 2600+ thumbnails, says Joshua.

Joshua discusses how you can incorporate WebThumb API in PHP to create a thumbnail of web pages from the PHP applications. Using WebThumb API, you can generate a thumbnail in three steps. First you have to place a request containing the URL. As soon as your request is successful, WebThumb stores your request in queue. Secondly, you have to check whether your thumbnail has been generated or if it is still in the queue. If you get a green signal, you can proceed to the third step where you have to request a download URL of your thumbnails, he concludes.