Some answers to common questions about rethumb. This information is also available on the support site.

Are there any bandwidth or request limits?

The don't have any limits on bandwidth or requests for paid plans. Our free plan doesn't have hard limits but please don't abuse and keep usage in sane levels. You can create a lot of thumbnails and make millions of requests. Just don't create millions of thumbnails in a short time period.

If you want more details on this please contact us at [email protected]

I have a paid plan, what is a source?

After subscribing to a paid plan you have to add a source. Only images hosted on those sources are processed using the plan features.

Example:

I subscribed to a Pro plan that allows me to process images with 6 MB in size.

My images are online at http://my-site.com, so I register "my-site.com" in the dashboard to be able to process the images hosted at that domain.

In this way I can process a large image (E.G.: 5 MB, http://my-site.com/large_img.jpg) that the free plan won't allow.

By entering the domain "my-site.com" as a source to use paid features all subdomains are automatically accepted as well:

• my-site.com
• username.my-site.com
• subdomain.my-site.com
• backoffice.my-site.com
• my-site.com/images/
• username.my-site.com/images/
• etc.

I have a feature request!

Great! Please leave your idea here: http://rethumb.helprace.com/s1-general/ideas

What to do when the API returns an error?

First step is to check if the error code is listed here: http://rethumb.com/api. All errors have a error code: the number next to the "#" in the message.

If the message doesn't help you resolving the error contact us.

Are thumbnails online forever?

Each plan have different expiration dates for thumbnails. Thumbnails generated using a free plan expire after 6 months, but the ones generated using a Business plan are online for 1 year.

Check expiration dates here: http://rethumb.com/pricing.

What happens when a thumbnail expires?

When a thumbnail expires it will be removed from our system. But if the URL is requested again a new thumbnail will be generated and the expiration date will be reseted.

Example:

Today you create a thumbnail by sending this request using the free plan: http://api.rethumb.com/v1/width/100/http://images.rethumb.com/image_coimbra_600x600.jpg

After 6 months that thumbnail will be deleted. But if you access it again a new thumbnail will be generated (just like the first one). 

What happens when my plan ends?

When a plan subscription ends you won't be able to process new thumbnails using specific features of that plan and your account will move to a free plan.

All thumbnails created before are kept until their expiration date is reach.

How paid plans work?

Your account starts in a free plan, at any moment you can subscribe to a paid plan for one year. These plans allow you to use special features for one year, after that you can manually renew your subscription or it will be move to a free plan.

After subscribing to a paid plan you can register one or more sources, something like yoursite.com.

Then, you can start making requests to rethumb using images hosted on yoursite.com.

The paid plan features are only available for the images hosted on the sources that you register.

Check paid plan features here: http://rethumb.com/pricing.

How rethumb works?

rethumb is a image processing HTTP API, we accept image transformation or information requests, cached them and send the response as fast as possible.

Lets check an example to see how things work.

Start with an image that you want to process: http://images.rethumb.com/image_coimbra_600x600.jpg

By accessing our API you will be able to create thumbnails:

• http://api.rethumb.com/v1/width/100/http://images.rethumb.com/image_coimbra_600x600.jpg
• http://api.rethumb.com/v1/height/100/http://images.rethumb.com/image_coimbra_600x600.jpg
• http://api.rethumb.com/v1/square/100/http://images.rethumb.com/image_coimbra_600x600.jpg
• etc.

On the first time we will download the original image, process it and save the result. When someone access the API URL for the second time the response is already cached and ready to go. All our API works in this way and the kept the responses (thumbnails or json information) for a minimum of six months.

We also have paid plans that give you access to paid features: http://rethumb.com/pricing.

Out tutorials also explain how to use rethumb in different programming languages: http://rethumb.com/tutorials. 

How the integration with CloudFlare works?

CloudFlare stands between your user browser and our own servers. When a user requests an image for the first time CloudFlare passes the request to us. We then process the image and return the final image. CloudFlare will cache this image and subsequent requests won’t hit our servers (being served by CloudFlare alone). Virtually 100% of our requests are cache hits so this will bring a significative speed-up for our final users.

We are also better protected against DDoS attacks and even when our all servers are down we can operate on some level.

Note: clients using CNAME records won’t have access to this feature – they will have to enable CloudFlare CDN for their domain.

There is support for custom domain names?

rethumb supports the use of CNAME records for custom domain names.

You just add a CNAME record on your side with the value "domains.rethumb.com" and use our dashboard to register the desired domain name.

In this way you can use something like images.yoursite.com to access our api:

http://images.yoursite.com/v1/width/100/http://site.com/image.jpg will work just like http://api.rethumb.com/v1/width/100/http://site.com/image.jpg

Custom domains support HTTPS?

Yes, when you active a custom domain on our dashboard we create a free Let's Encrypt certificate with no additional cost.

These certificates are valid for 3 months but we handle all the necessary steps to keep it going while you keep your domain with us.

This can be useful if you want to refer your custom domain name directly from another HTTPS site and want to avoid browser notifications about insecure content.