Checking PR with a script

Is it true that you need to use your API to make PR checks? I heard (read) that you your server can be blocked or banded from Google if you do this incorrectly.

What scripts do you use to check PR?

Ask my server :)

Yes you can get banned very easilly for automatic queries. Even with the API, it is not sure as the API is not for commercial use.

Here is the script : http://www.webdigity.com/index.php/topic,1139.0.whats+wrong+with+this+snippet+of+code%3F.html

Thanks Nick, I have used your site on the individual information pages as the image. I would also like to show or lookup just the number to put in the detail popups.

Maybe the best would be to update your database from your local machine.

That will say, you get banned if the PR function is used for commercial use (like if you ask money for a PR button on your website).

what if I use this button on a website with thousands of page and 100 thousands visits?
http://pagerank.thetopsites.net/

Can you rephrase this? I don't understand what you say....

Just in case, I place your button on all of the pages from a website (say 1000 pages) and this website is visited very often.
This are maybe 500.000 dyn. image requests in one month...

That's not a problem. All images are cached so the server don't have any problem

where are the images cached ? are you saving the requests in the database?

I have a database where all the values are stored, and a text file (with the value) for each site that is using the image.

Its faster this way?

Yes because the files are not so many, so it is very easy to fetched, while the database has thousands of records and the query is not that fast.

OK I understand, I thought already what I have to do later if there are a lot of user using my button...

Nick,

how dow you upgrade all the files betweern the updates? CRON?

When an update is done, I erase all the files, and they get created one the next request automatically.

nice idea to do it that way