In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to use make.com and ScreenshotAPI to take periodic screenshots of any website and save them to Google Drive.
Step 1
Go to Make.com and create a new scenario by clicking on the ‘Create a new scenario’ button.
Step 2
Click on the ‘+’ icon and search for the HTTP module.
Click on ‘Make a Request.’
We’ll use it to make a GET request to the ScreenshotAPI API endpoint.
Step 3
Open a new tab and go to screenshotapi.net. Create a free account.
Once you’re in, go to ‘Query Builder.’
Paste the URL of the website that you’d like to capture:
- Specify browser width and browser height.
- Feel free to tweak a plethora of advanced options (from blocking ads to using cookies or even injecting some HTML.)
You’ll see the text inside ‘Your API query’ changing as you make changes to the options.
Step 4
Paste the copied text into the URL text field in Make.com and click ‘OK.’
This step will trigger an HTTP call to ScreenshotAPI.
ScreenshotAPI will take a screenshot of the page and return the image.
Step 5
Time to add the Google Drive module!
Click on “Add another module” or the ‘+’ icon on the bottom right of the screen.
Search for ‘Google Drive’ and click on it.
Next, search for ‘Upload a file’ and click on it.
Step 6
Let’s connect the Google Drive now by allowing make.com to access your Google Drive.
Click on Add. Give the connection a name or leave it as is and hit Save.
Select the correct Google account and approve the required permissions.
Step 7
Select the folder you’d like to save the generated screenshots to.
Give a name to your file, or use UUID for it to assign a unique name to the file on every run.
Step 8
The workflow is complete!
We now need to test if everything went as expected.
Click on ‘Run Once’ to run this scenario.
If everything looks good and green, go to Google Drive and open the folder you selected in the previous step. Check if you’re able to find the desired screenshot.
Step 9
We now need to schedule this workflow as per our requirements.
Click on ‘Every 15 minutes’ in the bottom tray to open the schedule settings.
Configure the appropriate schedule by setting the desired values. Hit ‘OK.’
Taking Periodic Screenshots Is Simple!
And there you have it - you’ve just scheduled periodic screenshots with a bit of help from Make, ScreenshotAPI, and Google Drive.
Whether you plan to use them to monitor website compliance or competitor pricing like some of our customers or simply automate more of your IT tasks, you now have a simple formula that saves a lot of time!
Ready to get started? Try ScreenshotAPI for free!