If you have been using Alexa Thumbnails mod and notice that it has stopped working for your web directory now, it could be for multiple reasons – none of them related to your directory though. I mean, Alexa could have changed the algorithm to serve free thumbnails or it could have been promoted to – as a paid service and thus your IP blocked to fetch thumbnails from them. A large number of web directories no longer show thumbnails that depend on various service providers.
Fortunately it is very easy to fix these problems by utilizing services offered by Thumbshots.org – who provide you free thumbnail service (provided you give a link back to them on your pages where ever you install their configuration code for thumbnails – not a big deal isn’t it, after all you created a web directory to give links to useful sites for others!!!)
OK, so depending upon the template you have installed and changes that you may have made to your web directory – look for each page / template file that invokes code for thumbnail. As a standard practice you would find following three files that contain the code
- link.tpl
- main.tpl and
- detail.tpl
The complete code to show thumbnails may be something like the code below:
<img alt=”Thumbnail” src=”http://www.some thumbnail provider.com / image.php?url={$URL|escape|trim}” />
Now if you have registered a free account with Thumbshots.org – and you agree to their terms and conditions to provide a backlink to them for utilizing this free service as we have done on our SEO Human Edited Web Directory, than simply use the code as shown below:
<img alt=”Thumbnail by Thumshots.org” src=”http://open.thumbshots.org/image.aspx?url={$URL|escape|trim} ” />
Within seconds to few minutes – your site would start getting updated thumbnails from Thumbshots.org! Once again your site would have it’s images back and bring it back to life. A picture is worth a thousand words – and thumbnails add precisely that if not more 
What service do you use for your website? Any feedback or comments you would like to share about thumbnail providers – do post your views. We would love to hear from you.
To your success,
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Whether that is really true or not, I don’t know. But it’s definitely something to be cautious about.