theducky

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Scriptless Flickr Badge

NEWS!!!

08/27/06

The shared server crashed almost a month ago while I was out of town. In response my hosting provider disabled the script because the service was receiving as many as 400,000 hits a day, which was accounting for 5/6 of the traffic on the server.

I apologize for not getting the service back up sooner, and for not replying to your messages. I have been working late hours for my day job which meant I had very little time to fix the service, but it has also meant lots of overtime(=savings). So I bought a brand new dedicated server, $1700.

As of monday I am headed on a two week trip, but I expect everything to hold up since I scared away most people. On my return I will be working on some changes to improve the efficiency of the service, and to try to work out some way to at least make a little of the money back for the server. For any changes that effect the standard function of the service I will make every attempt to contact you individualy and I will give you at least a weeks notice.

If you are concerned that I may not be able to reach you please send a message to wrenoud@gmail.com with "Flickrbadge" in the subject line.

Thank you for you patience, I trully hope that the service is of great help to you.

Weston Renoud

If you want your own Scriptless Flickr Badge try the badge generator

Background:

When I went to put a Flickr badge on my Livejournal I quickly discovered that it was not possible because Livejournal does not allow scripts in journals. So I used my crazy coding skillz along with the wonderful Flickr API to set up static URLs that redirect to recent flickr posts to simulate a flickr badge.

Limits of the service:

At the most you can link to 10 most recent photos, any greater requests will return the error pic. Random is only from the first 300 most recent images for any given source. And I use caching now which speeds up the process making images load faster but makes images update in 15 minutes, with the exception of "everyone's" which updates in roughly a minute.

Terms of Service:

I make no guarantees or warranties about the availability and/or performance of this service. I will do everything within my capacity to keep the service running, but if it becomes too demanding on my hosting I will have to discontinue the service. If you want to localize the service to your own hosting so you don't have to rely on this site contact me and I'll help you out with that.

Also, by using this service, because it interacts with the Flickr.com website, you are agreeing to be bound by the "Flickr.com Terms of Use" which can be found at http://www.flickr.com/terms.gne

Privacy Policy:

What information is collected?

For optimization purposes information about the images being linked to is stored on the server. The server itself maintains access logs for security purposes and to track errors. Also information is collected about what users' images are being linked to, the site that they are being linked from, and the time it took to serve the response.
What is done with the information?

All information collected from the "flickrbadge.theducky.com" domain is strictly confidential and will not be shared with anyone, except to cooperate in criminal investigations (which I doubt will occur).

Information about images is stored only as long as needed, every few days any data over 24 hours old is permanently deleted.

Information collected by the server logs is stored indefinitely and is used to monitor daily usage.

Information about the sites that are linking to photos is also stored indefinitely and is used to track the websites and users utilizing the service, monitor how my script is performing based on the different usage patterns, and ultimately to try and optimize the service based on that information.