Tutorial ·Apr 4, 2026 ·2 min read

How to Take a Website Screenshot with PHP

PHP is one of the most popular languages for web development, and capturing website screenshots is a common task for CMS plugins, monitoring tools, and link preview generators. This guide shows you how to take a screenshot of any website using PHP and the Site-Shot API.

Prerequisites

PHP 7.4+ with the cURL extension enabled
A Site-Shot API key (sign up here)

Basic Screenshot Capture

<?php

$params = http_build_query([
    'url'     => 'https://example.com',
    'userkey' => 'YOUR_API_KEY',
    'width'   => 1280,
    'height'  => 1024,
    'format'  => 'png',
]);

$ch = curl_init("https://api.site-shot.com/?{$params}");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 70);

$image = curl_exec($ch);
$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($ch);

if ($httpCode === 200 && $image) {
    file_put_contents('screenshot.png', $image);
    echo "Screenshot saved.\n";
} else {
    echo "Error: HTTP {$httpCode}\n";
}

The API returns the raw image bytes. Just save them to a file or serve them to the browser.

Full Page Screenshot

To capture the entire scrollable page:

$params = http_build_query([
    'url'        => 'https://example.com',
    'userkey'    => 'YOUR_API_KEY',
    'full_size'  => 1,
    'max_height' => 15000,
    'format'     => 'png',
]);

JSON Response with Base64

If you need the image as base64 along with HTTP metadata:

<?php

$params = http_build_query([
    'url'           => 'https://example.com',
    'userkey'       => 'YOUR_API_KEY',
    'width'         => 1280,
    'height'        => 1024,
    'format'        => 'png',
    'response_type' => 'json',
]);

$ch = curl_init("https://api.site-shot.com/?{$params}");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 70);

$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$data = json_decode($response, true);

if (!empty($data['error'])) {
    die("API error: " . $data['error']);
}

$base64 = $data['image'];
if (strpos($base64, ',') !== false) {
    $base64 = explode(',', $base64, 2)[1];
}

file_put_contents('screenshot.png', base64_decode($base64));
echo "Screenshot saved.\n";

Serving Screenshots in a Web Application

Generate and serve a thumbnail screenshot directly to the browser:

<?php

$targetUrl = $_GET['url'] ?? '';
if (empty($targetUrl)) {
    http_response_code(400);
    die('Missing url parameter');
}

$params = http_build_query([
    'url'          => $targetUrl,
    'userkey'      => 'YOUR_API_KEY',
    'width'        => 1280,
    'height'       => 800,
    'format'       => 'jpeg',
    'scaled_width' => 400,
]);

$ch = curl_init("https://api.site-shot.com/?{$params}");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 70);

$image = curl_exec($ch);
$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($ch);

if ($httpCode === 200 && $image) {
    header('Content-Type: image/jpeg');
    header('Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600');
    echo $image;
} else {
    http_response_code(502);
    die('Screenshot failed');
}

WordPress Integration

You can integrate the screenshot API into a WordPress plugin or theme. Here's a helper function:

function site_shot_capture($url, $options = []) {
    $defaults = [
        'url'     => $url,
        'userkey' => defined('SITE_SHOT_API_KEY') ? SITE_SHOT_API_KEY : '',
        'width'   => 1280,
        'height'  => 1024,
        'format'  => 'png',
    ];

    $params = http_build_query(array_merge($defaults, $options));

    $response = wp_remote_get(
        "https://api.site-shot.com/?{$params}",
        ['timeout' => 70]
    );

    if (is_wp_error($response)) {
        return false;
    }

    return wp_remote_retrieve_body($response);
}

// Usage:
$image = site_shot_capture('https://example.com', ['full_size' => 1]);
if ($image) {
    file_put_contents('/tmp/screenshot.png', $image);
}

Summary

Parameter	Description	Example
`url`	Target web page	`https://example.com`
`userkey`	Your API key	`abc123`
`width`	Viewport width (100–8000)	`1280`
`height`	Viewport height (100–20000)	`1024`
`full_size`	Capture full page	`1`
`format`	Output format	`png` or `jpeg`
`response_type`	Response format	`image` or `json`
`scaled_width`	Resize output	`400`

See the full API documentation for all available parameters.

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