Thanks to many many requests from lots of people: the picNiche contributor toolbar can now be configured with your own pollers.
You can configure a poller to load a page from any website, to parse two separate values (one for the button text, and another for the tooltip) and have the result displayed on a button on the main toolbar.
The button can then be used to visit a target page, effectively working as a ‘live shortcut’.
OMG! M0r3 8u770nZ
Most of the process of setting up a poll is easy, for the tricky bit you’ll need to be familiar with regular expressions.
Open the picNiche Options (Tools/picNiche Tools/Options) and select the “Custom Pollers” tab. You start with no entries in the list, but that can be resolved pretty quickly 
Hit “Get More” and import a poller from the list loaded from the picNiche api. I’ve added a few samples for the microstock agency sites I use.
If you’re brave, and know your regex, you can add your own by hitting “Add New”. I won’t go into exhaustive details here just yet, if you’re not sure what goes in each box, edit one of the samples, or mouseover the field for a description.
Get your P2P on and B Social
Because getting good pollers needs a little techie knowledge, it’s all worked into the picNiche api so they can be shared.
If you’re not into l33t sp33k and don’t know your tribbles from your Tie fighters, don’t worry: Ask your technically inclined buddies to make a poller and hit the “Share” button It will be stored in the picNiche system, be checked for any problems and will become available in the “Get More” list.
You can use them for anything too. I have a button I use to watch Red Hot Pawn (better known as Chess At Work) to tell me when I have a game waiting, and can see all kinds of useful places I go to check just a single stat/figure every day. So please, show us all something I’d never have thought to add, include your name and author link, and lets see if we can get some crazy link-love going on
What about security?
Custom pollers don’t have access to any of your stored information, and can’t send the information it reads anywhere.
If a page does not contain the information it should, the FailPage will open automatically so you can see if the site is up or not, or login. When you close that tab it will restart the poll to grab the values the button needs.
All shared pollers are subject to review before they’re available in the “Get More” list. This is useful to make sure smaller sites don’t get hammered by unnecessary traffic and that you’re not getting bugged by failed pollers all the time.
Where to get it?
As of writing this post, the new version is in the mozilla addon review queue, it should go out for auto update in about a week. I know a lot of people have been looking forward to this for a while so I figured I’d post the links here.
For those early adopters who want it from the sandbox, you can get the picNiche Contributor toolbar version 1.1 here.
If you also run the picNiche Image-Buyer Search toolbar you must update that to 1.1 too for both to work correctly.
I’ve kept this post short for now, as I honestly don’t know what questions people want to ask about this stuff. Please add your questions, suggestions, and requests below and I’ll answer as well as I can.
31 Comments
Hi,
I just shared a custom button for DP but forgot to add the author name and website
– if you can fix this on the server that would be great … Thanks!
RO
Updated and available in the Get More list now.
Thanks
The regexp code for balance is wrong … as far I remember I added such:
Balance: \$(\d+\.\d+)
And now we have:
Balance: \$(\d+|\d+\.\d+)
Which is wrong
Thanks for the fix. Also the author name can’t be like it’s now – “+” char issue? (TEST failed) …
Nice catch on the author field test cheers, I use a different UI to update existing ones lol
Fixed so should work on update.
Have also updated the regex to account for rounded figures (\d+ = 10, or 0 or 2776, \d+\.\d+ = 0.00, 746.1 or 12.12 for example)
Thanks!
One more thing, if that regexp matches left to right, than the better idea is to use that one: \d+\.\d+|\d+
Now my earnings figures are fetched as rounded, which are not on the website
Changed to Balance: \$(\d+|\d+\.\d+)\s+<
The end-marker means the . won't be ignored if it exists
I’m fully satisfied now
Thanks!
Hi Bob! Great day right?..
Congrats and wish you more and more success from your fan,
Luis
Thanks
You fixed the ASCII problem at the same time! Great update! I’ve already updated mine!
New suggestion: let me reorder the pollers. I hate that FT is first and not SS.
Good idea, will add in next version. Cheers
lol is that possible? gotta see that :p what will you put on first?
ah ok!
Hello!
I see vectorstock poller in free (another user maked this), but he did’nt work.
May you correct poller for Vectorstock?
Fixed, should show as an Update in the Get more list.
Hello,
I would like to remove the BigStockPhoto from the toolbar.
Is that possible?
Thanks.
Not yet, but in a future update
Hi,
Thx for great tool. But there is a problem (olny me?) with 123RF stats. It shows incorrect (negative “-”) result in earned royalties.
How to fix it? Could you do it?
regards.
This is fairly common on 123RF, the problem is on their site, the toolbar is showing the right value as far as it knows, just their site occasionally displays a totally wrong one. I think it’s something to do with when the regenerate daily stats. There’s a post on their forums about it.
Sorry, but nothing I can do
I just shared a custom button for Pond5.
But the Custom poller for CSP from Get more list not working in my FF, I had to add new one for CSP,
, Does anyone has same problem?
Thanks
Aye, some pollers won’t work for all people. This is down to many possible reasons, though the most likely is localisation (this is language and/or location) where many sites will display slightly different info on a page. I’d guess CSP do this though I don’t submit there so can’t confirm.
That’s why this custom button thing was needed, if a poller breaks, it can be edited to work again
When the custom pollers first came out the CSP one worked fine for me now it comes up with an error but as far as I am aware I have changed nothing in it. What can I do to make it work again?
If someone sends me an update to the poller (or creates a new one and uses the share button) an update will become available on the Get More list. As I don’t submit there I can’t fix it from here sorry.
Awesome detailed post on setting up your own custom pollers over at StockPhotoSoft
http://stockphotosoft.com/firefox-extensions/picniche-1-1-custom-pollers/
How about one for opera?
I’ve no plans at present to port to any other browser.
It might function on Chrome in a future version as they have plans to incorporate firefox-like extension stuff.
How do we get the new buttons to show up on the toolbar; I have them configured and tested in >tools>picniche tools>options>custom pollers but do not know how to get them to show on the toolbar?
Make sure the checkbox next to it in your custom poller list is enabled (ie. has a check, will not be enabled by default), then hit the refresh earnings button on the toolbar (far left, looks like a couple of arrows).
Thanks ,bob.
I wrote a Chinese brief introduction for adding or modify custom button in my blog, and hope it can help more to Chinese contributor using PicNiche Toolbar.
http://www.591foto.com/read.php/82.htm
Fantastic guide Rod
Thanks very much for taking the time to describe so well 
I read through google translate and it’s very thorough
http://bit.ly/acvD6T