Photo Gallery Forums

Posted: **15 Jul 2018, 00:49**

Hi, I've seen a few issues with my site running the latest X3.24.3
Ive attached some screenshots so you can have a look at it. site https://amazingpics.net
a) Almost all my galleries are in Slideshow format (autoplay enabled), but it would take a long time ..like 15+ seconds to load (black space in the sliders place until then).
Does the loading time increase if there are many images? some of the albums have 700 or 800 pics.
Does the loading time increase if the images are order is set to "Shuffle" aka random. ? (currently i changed it back to order "by name")
Perhaps the solution like the one time we discussed long ago when dealing with X2 is to shuffle only the first 30 images, and then the next 30 and so on as it loads in the viewport?

b) After slider loads ( I have AutoPlay enabled) , it gets stuck on the first image and doesnt move until I click "play/pause" or sometimes just click something on the screen. During those times i see this error in the chrome console : "User didn't interact with the Document first"

c) Having AD Block extension in chrome caused even more errors (forgot taking screenshots at that time) but after goolgling about "blob" errors in console i disabled and uninstalled this extension , so it cut down the some of the errors and the slideshow loading time a bit (not fully)

Feature requests:
1. A rating system like others have requested . Perhaps a start rating or a thumbs up or +1 etc ?

2. Global search if possible ( I know you have talked about search related to pics loaded on screen in grid format). As you talked about a possible Json/database solution for this, u mean a code along the lines of this right? ( just a reference) https://codecanyon.net/item/jsearch-con ... ?s_rank=86

3. Perhaps more features/plugins so as not to limit X3 only to Photographers but to a wider industry.

Other casual information:
On a side note... I tried using the FotoMoto "ecard" feature, but as the whole Fotomoto popup loads scripts from their offical website, we cant edit anything in the popup and the sending "ecard" button isnt obvious. (i understand fotomoto is primarily for selling pics)

Looked at integrating this with X3, seemed pretty straightforward .. load a few js and css files and then use javascript on some button in X3 to open the editor but then the image editor itself didn't seem to have much functionality other than draw some lines which is easier to do it on MsPaint locally. ---- Many of these scripts which can be used to extend X3 or customize need javascript to be executed when a button is clicked etc, is it possible to include such a feature? Nevermind if it doesnt fit in with your plans but just saying.

I remember in the flash X2 when the pic was zoomed in to more than full screen, one could move the mouse cursor and the image would according to it revealing the corners. Something i noticed here when not using flash:

http://www.rs-photography.eu/gallery/

When you zoom into a pic in the gallery it acts exactly the same way X2 would in flash. Can this behaviour be replicated in X3 when the pic is opened in popup/fullscreen? Looking at the source code its unclear whether it is the open source Hero slider code or not.

-----------
Finally, I'm attaching the screenshots of the Chrome console errors showing up currently so you can have a look. Thanks

Posted: **15 Jul 2018, 00:51**

strange, i attached 6 pics but only one showed up. ill attach them again below

Posted: **15 Jul 2018, 00:53**

more pics

Posted: **15 Jul 2018, 00:54**

final pic

Posted: **15 Jul 2018, 02:38**

You have a few compound issues, some related to each other, others not. I will go through your comments.

eskimo121 wrote:a) Almost all my galleries are in Slideshow format (autoplay enabled), but it would take a long time ..like 15+ seconds to load (black space in the sliders place until then).

I see there are some strange issues with timing on start, but as long as I open the website, make sure it is in focus, and keep it open without navigating to other windows or tabs, the slideshow runs properly after first slide. Here are some issues that COULD be related though, and you should perhaps deal with:

1. I see you have added lots of Cloudflare stuff, perhaps without knowing what they do? For example, you are loading one script, seemingly used for some Cloudflare APPS:

<script src="/cdn-cgi/apps/head/0Y8e9jslBXywZjprufBTz8GNdXY.js"></script>

May I ask what cloudflare apps you are using? Google Analytics? That would be strange to add additional cloudflare javascripts for that since X3 already has a built-in tracking for Google analytics.

Furthermore, I see you also have Cloudflare "Rocket loader" enabled.

<script src="https://ajax.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/scripts/4f936b58/cloudflare-static/rocket-loader.min.js" data-cf-nonce="68ed9ce8dd529c9454fc690f-">

This is not a good idea, because it may shift the order of how scripts are executed. Disable it please.

Many of these Cloudflare features try to fix BADLY optimized websites. X3 is already optimized perfectly, so Cloudflare should only be used with default features, for caching data on the CDN. Normally, it is harmless to enable additional Cloudflare features, but in the case of X3, one must be careful because X3 is an AJAX HTML5 application, which loads pages dynamically ... It does not load full pages like most websites do, and therefore many javascripts cannot and should not be triggered on traditional "page load".

2. Some browsers may freeze all javascript timers if the window is not focused, or if you focus other tabs or other apps while it is running. Since you have both the TIMER interval AND the transition interval, this may cause some disruption of timing. For instance, if I load your website from scratch, make sure the website is focused (by clicking inside the window), I cannot reproduce any incorrect timing issues.

3. I would question your increase of transition interval. This is really not a satisfying feature for your visitors to have to wait a long time while the transition happens on screen. The user will not be able to FOCUS entirely, until AFTER the transition is complete, and in the mean time, it will often be uncomfortable motion. If you really need a SLOW transition like this, you should consider CROSSFADE, but even then, this transition is simply too long. There is a lot of science behind how long transitions should last for the human eyes. This should of course not affect your slideshow technically, but I would like to note it, because it may be related to "timing" functions as stated in #2.

4. Perhaps you should try disabling "slideshow #history" also? This feature really isn't much use for any visitors, and I am wondering if it could be complimenting to cause some bug.

eskimo121 wrote:Does the loading time increase if there are many images? some of the albums have 700 or 800 pics.

It will obviously increase overall, if the visitor remains on the same page viewing the entire slideshow. But NO, it should not affect slideshow viewing, as the slideshow loads images progressively. It will load a couple of images ahead of the current image.

eskimo121 wrote:Does the loading time increase if the images are order is set to "Shuffle" aka random. ? (currently i changed it back to order "by name")

Not specifically, no. You might see a difference in your browser because when shuffle is disabled, images may be cached in your browser or cloudflare, in which case it might seem faster.

Unless you have some random over-sized images in your gallery somewhere (eg 1MB+), then this should not be any concern.

eskimo121 wrote:Perhaps the solution like the one time we discussed long ago when dealing with X2 is to shuffle only the first 30 images, and then the next 30 and so on as it loads in the viewport?

I don't see why we need a solution to this. X3 does not load all images in a gallery when the slideshow displays (that would be kinda crazy). The only delay involved when using "shuffle", is some additional processing time before startup as Javascript executes the shuffle. This might be noticeable on mobile devices, but not on desktops, and it process occurs BEFORE the slideshow appears anyway.

eskimo121 wrote:b) After slider loads ( I have AutoPlay enabled) , it gets stuck on the first image and doesnt move until I click "play/pause" or sometimes just click something on the screen. During those times i see this error in the chrome console : "User didn't interact with the Document first"

That would be related to your AUDIO player, not the slideshow. Since version 66, Chrome (and probably soon most other browsers) simply don't allow auto play any more. I know many gallery owners want auto play for audio, but it needs to be made clear that in 2018, visitors don't want this. Browsers are helping to enforce this. Ref.:
https://developers.google.com/web/updat ... cy-changes
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/18/googl ... ccounter=1

eskimo121 wrote:c) Having AD Block extension in chrome caused even more errors (forgot taking screenshots at that time) but after goolgling about "blob" errors in console i disabled and uninstalled this extension , so it cut down the some of the errors and the slideshow loading time a bit (not fully)

I saw some errors on page load first time I checked the page. Some issues (for example "blob") should not be related to anything in X3, and I think you would find that error for any web page you visit, caused by some browser extension. I have this error in my own console currently, but haven't taken the time to check what extension is causing it and why.

I don't/didn't see any errors that are related to the slideshow. Most of the errors I saw were related to things I mentioned above, and/or external cloudflare javascripts being loaded ... but seem harmless.

Disabling adblock should not have any effect on X3 functionality. If it cuts down on some errors in console, that could be, but these errors should not be related to the X3 application at all.

---

eskimo121 wrote:1. A rating system like others have requested . Perhaps a start rating or a thumbs up or +1 etc ?

Open to this, but I remain skeptical of the functional benefits of such a plugin:

Most of your images will be unrated of course, as most visitors are not bothered rating images. Should all your images then display 0-star rating at first? Most of your images will remain at 0-star forever.
There will have to be a "4.5 stars from 45 votes" numeration. Surely amount of votes would need to display ... Else you might have an awesome image with 4.8 score and 2000 votes, and a 5 score image with a single vote. It's not balanced, in which case it would be illogical to the visitor.

Personally I don't like it, I don't see visitors having any benefit or joy from this.

eskimo121 wrote:2. Global search if possible ( I know you have talked about search related to pics loaded on screen in grid format). As you talked about a possible Json/database solution for this, u mean a code along the lines of this right? ( just a reference) https://codecanyon.net/item/jsearch-con ... ?s_rank=86

Yes, we have come to the conclusion that search should eventually find it's way into X3. There are two TYPES of search, both which we would like to implement:

1. Page "filtering". This is a way to search in real-time from images in the current gallery. Basically, a search would "filter" the results as you type. This would be combined with pre-defined search filters (as buttons), for example "flowers" or "landscape".

2. Global search. This would be able to search all images in the X3 website. It would require pre-indexing ALL images into a database (or possible a json file), because it would be to slow to expect your server to search "real-time" through all images (captions, exif, IPTC) on the server. All images and image data (captions, exif, iptc) would need to be pre-index into a database-like structure. It will require some "create images search index" button in the panel. Yes we would like to add this.

eskimo121 wrote:3. Perhaps more features/plugins so as not to limit X3 only to Photographers but to a wider industry.

X3 already has tons of content plugins and layout plugins, many non-photo related. I would say more than most average website CMS's or templates. We are definitely looking to improve X3 as a website cms/template though, so definitely would like to add more plugins. This can be counter-productive of course, because many users add plugins just because they exist, and it makes X3 more complicated for users who need basic features. In wordpress, users often like to add tons of plugins, all created by different developers (incompatible), while it is making the website more buggy, less secure and slower.

eskimo121 wrote:On a side note... I tried using the FotoMoto "ecard" feature, but as the whole Fotomoto popup loads scripts from their offical website, we cant edit anything in the popup and the sending "ecard" button isnt obvious. (i understand fotomoto is primarily for selling pics)

The point of Fotomoto is that the entire interface is maintained by Fotomoto. If you have suggestions about the popup interface, you would need to contact Fotomoto. We simply offer this as a plugin to X3.

eskimo121 wrote:Looked at integrating this with X3, seemed pretty straightforward .. load a few js and css files and then use javascript on some button in X3 to open the editor but then the image editor itself didn't seem to have much functionality other than draw some lines which is easier to do it on MsPaint locally. ---- Many of these scripts which can be used to extend X3 or customize need javascript to be executed when a button is clicked etc, is it possible to include such a feature? Nevermind if it doesnt fit in with your plans but just saying.

I am not quite sure what the question is here and why there is mention of "use javascript" or "draw some lines". Fotomoto, when enabled in X3, loads all scripts and CSS automatically, and you should NOT be trying to load your own javascripts. It is a PLUGIN in X3 https://d.pr/i/d9NRDp.

It seems from the above that you are trying to integrate it yourself.

eskimo121 wrote:I remember in the flash X2 when the pic was zoomed in to more than full screen, one could move the mouse cursor and the image would according to it revealing the corners. Something i noticed here when not using flash: http://www.rs-photography.eu/gallery/
When you zoom into a pic in the gallery it acts exactly the same way X2 would in flash. Can this behaviour be replicated in X3 when the pic is opened in popup/fullscreen? Looking at the source code its unclear whether it is the open source Hero slider code or not.

The link above does not work from here https://d.pr/i/I47dyL. Anyway, yes it would definitely be possible and I agree it might be cool. I am not convinced it's functionally beneficial to the user instead of allowing them to simply drag (as now). It's also a technical challenge, since we have mobile devices, animations, aspects and screen sizes. I will add it to my list.

Posted: **15 Jul 2018, 06:08**

"I see there are some strange issues with timing on start, but as long as I open the website, make sure it is in focus, and keep it open without navigating to other windows or tabs, the slideshow runs properly after first slide. "

yes, keeping it in focus and more often than not , single or double clicking on the first slide starts it. or else the first slide remains like that without moving until clicked.

I see you have added lots of Cloudflare stuff, perhaps without knowing what they do? For example, you are loading one script, seemingly used for some Cloudflare APPS

I did not have any cloudflare apps enabled except Rocketloader (which i diabled just now following your advice). I do have the page rules enabled (by following the 'extreme speed/caching optimization' post of yours). However , except these and one more in the "crypto" section of cloudflare : Redirect all HTTP visitors to HTTPS (which i did not enable in the "force load" part of X3 cpanel) , i do not have any other unusual options enabled. Maybe it was because of the "Railgun" settings enabled which i also disabled a few moments ago because my host isnt a cloudflare partner making railgun an expensive paid option.Anyway. If you still see something unusual loaded by cloudflare then please let me know.

May I ask what cloudflare apps you are using? Google Analytics?

I am only using Google Analytics in the X3 cpanel .

This is really not a satisfying feature for your visitors to have to wait a long time while the transition happens on screen. The user will not be able to FOCUS entirely, until AFTER the transition is complete, and in the mean time, it will often be uncomfortable motion. If you really need a SLOW transition like this, you should consider CROSSFADE

I tried using small intervals and it seemed too fast and after looking at some other sites in your showcase, I felt this slider transition timing was suited well (at least for the homepage index slider ) . Right now it's set at about 3000 MS which i can reduce it to 2? Not sure if that'll make a difference. I felt the Crossfade and Dissolve option left too much of a "white space/blank look" in the interval of transition. I tried them both. Only reducing the timing will reduce the blank/white screen effect. Let me experiment with it.

Perhaps you should try disabling "slideshow #history" also? This feature really isn't much use for any visitors, and I am wondering if it could be complimenting to cause some bug.

Done. Lets see if it makes a difference.

The only delay involved when using "shuffle", is some additional processing time before startup as Javascript executes the shuffle. This might be noticeable on mobile devices, but not on desktops, and it process occurs BEFORE the slideshow appears anyway.

Yes this was what I was talking about. I was wondering if its taking too long to shuffle through 800 pics when I visit the page and if its causing any delay in slider load.

Some issues (for example "blob") should not be related to anything in X3,

Yes, people say its a known issue in AD BLOCK extension which injects scripts and still hasnt been resolved.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/512 ... hrome-only
https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/6744

Should all your images then display 0-star rating at first? Most of your images will remain at 0-star forever.

The total /aggregate rating would be invisible at first (people can only rate , not see the rating) and would only display for images that have more than 10 ratings or so. Then it wouldn't matter to display the total number of votes besides each image.

Page "filtering". This is a way to search in real-time from images in the current gallery. Basically, a search would "filter" the results as you type. This would be combined with pre-defined search filters (as buttons), for example "flowers" or "landscape"

The searcher should know the name of the file or This would mean a visitor is on a page with images from all categories and would like to filter according category. However this would only be useful to people who have images from all categories in a folder displayed in a page. However if the search can use the keyword to sort through other meta tags in the image (perhaps the name of the person who shot the image would like to search his name and see if his pics show up?) it would be more useful? Not sure. Maybe useful in other scenarios. However a Global search of the same would be more used perhaps.

eskimo121 wrote:Looked at integrating this with X3, seemed pretty straightforward .. load a few js and css files and then use javascript on some button in X3 to open the editor but then the image editor itself didn't seem to have much functionality other than draw some lines which is easier to do it on MsPaint locally. ---- Many of these scripts which can be used to extend X3 or customize need javascript to be executed when a button is clicked etc, is it possible to include such a feature? Nevermind if it doesnt fit in with your plans but just saying.
I am not quite sure what the question is here and why there is mention of "use javascript" or "draw some lines". Fotomoto, when enabled in X3, loads all scripts and CSS automatically, and you should NOT be trying to load your own javascripts.

Haha, the parts of that message are missing which is why its hard to understand whats said there. Missed parts during copy/paste.
The "this" in my previous message "Looked at integrating this with X3, seemed ....." and the rest of it referred to this picture editor app :
https://codecanyon.net/item/pixie-image-editor/10721475
Now it should make sense. Sorry about that.
In Summary :
I disabled History Hash in Slideshow settings.
Disabled rocket loader.
Changed the slider interval to 1500 MS from 3000 and selected "Crossfade" just now.
Disabled the unnecessary option(for me) of Railgun in cloudflare.
The "Brotli" compression option in Cloudflare "SPEED" section is still turned on, would you like me to disable it?

Posted: **15 Jul 2018, 08:02**

By the way, seems that site was having server issues when you checked, its opening fine now. Just illustrates my "move when zoomed in" picture point for reference:

 http://www.rs-photography.eu/gallery/

Posted: **15 Jul 2018, 12:48**

This post has become a bit long, so I will narrow it down and focus on the REAL issues of your website. I have noted your suggestions about new features. As for "errors" in console, they are often unrelated to X3 and/or just something that comes from a plugin and/or other warnings like audio play() fail because it is not triggered by visitor interaction. I haven't really seen any errors in the console that seem related to any "real" issues on your website. For example, your screenshot with the "blank" page has a non-X3 "blob" error, and the "logs" is from the audio player events.

As for the "real" issues, from reading your post, I can only see TWO:

Start page slideshow
There does seem to be some "off" timing for some reason, but all images mostly seem to follow correctly, at least when window is in focus. Can you reproduce this in our demo slideshow? For the sake of elimination, could you try to re-enable the "play" button, arrow buttons and "click navigation" in your slideshow settings?

Page slowness
https://amazingpics.net/People/blondes/
As for your other issue regarding "blank" page, I cannot reproduce it as "blank" here. I can however see that it takes a few seconds to render. This is most likely because of the shuffle setting, combined with rendering of the slideshow with 800 images. I am not sure which of the two it is most related to, perhaps both, but shuffle certainly takes it's toll. Personally, I think it's a bit counter-productive with a "slideshow" with 800 images ... It would take ages for the visitor to get to "100" even. In next X3.25.0 release, there is a new setting "auto popup", which to me would seem more powerful if you want to lead the visitor into full-image viewing immediately. They could close the popup and access from grid if they like. The X3 popup is also better "built" than the slideshow plugin, more versatile for large image amount.

Apart from the "slowness", I cannot see any errors here, or that the page is not displaying. The slowness would be even more apparent if you have a less fast computer, or if you have background tasks running CPU already for some reason. It could take 10+ seconds in such a case.

--

Cloudflare comments
You still have a javascript loading from Cloudflare, but I doubt very much it does any harm. It's definitely from some "app" you have enabled in Cloudflare.
https://amazingpics.net/cdn-cgi/apps/he ... z8GNdXY.js

I see you have disabled "rocket loader" now, which was my main concern. The only thing to avoid with Cloudflare, is the few settings that add javascripts, like rocket loader and maybe some apps. All other Cloudflare settings (including ones you mention crypto, page rules, redirects, railgun) don't really relate directly to the X3 application since they don't inject javascript. Railgun? I thought this feature was "business"-only ($200/month).

--

Just a note about the feature to move image with mouse pointer when zoomed in. This is an interesting effect actually, and I will add it to my consideration list. That plugin/website in your reference is pretty awful though ... It loads 184 images on page load before the plugin works, and I am getting tons of errors. I get the idea though of course, and have seen it in action also in non-flash websites.

Posted: **16 Jul 2018, 04:19**

I just didn't want to create separate threads for various questions/bugs so bundled it all into this thread. Anyway, I'll talk only about the present X3 issue on my site:

1) Visit https://amazingpics.net on your Desktop. It loads fine, i have no issues with the index/cover page slider.
next, Click on "Blondes" ---> takes 10+ seconds to load the slider.
I use the shuffle feature because the visitors can see new images on the Musical slideshow everyday. Is it possible to have it shuffle only the first 30 images (or whatever the number of thumbnails are on screen) and then the next 30 when the users near the end on thumbnails.
Or
Just limit the shuffle to the first 100 images by default so it looks like new pics on each visit without delay on load.

2) Now, another issue is when you land on this Blondes (or any other category) the slider after loading, does not change. The timer bar fills out till the end and stays there and the image does not change ..... UNTIL you click on pause--->play , thats when the slider starts working. -OR- Sometimes if you dont do this you need to wait for like 30+ seconds on the first pic when it occasionally starts moving to the next slide on its own and then it continues its normal behaviour.

I have attached the screenshots with details.

3) Now when you are in the Blondes (or any) category, go to the main menu Nature ----> click on Natural Beauty
The music stops and there is a whole page reload/refresh (not ajax load like the others). The menu disappears and the whole site loads afresh. Why does this happen only for this category?

3) Sometimes when I visit Nature ---> Lovely forests category it suddenly automatically redirects me back to the homepage after staying on the page for a second or so. I have only seen this happen twice or thrice.

All the above occur on mobile devices too.

I am not concerned about the errors in Chrome console, I only showed them earlier thinking it will help you diagnose n solve this slider issue quicker.

Feature request:
Currently the slider has "Cover" mode and also "Contain" mode. When using slider on galleries (not talking about homepage which looks great), the cover mode looks good on mobile but on desktop the images getting cut seem more obvious....on the other hand if i use Contain mode then the pictures look good on desktop but look too small (like thumbnails or grid size) on mobile devices.
My suggestion is to add an option so people can choose which mode (contain or cover) on which device (Desktop or Mobile)

About Cloudflare Railgun:

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us ... e-Partner-

Partners are able to offer Railgun for free or bundle it with their existing services . Otherwise this is only available as part of the Business plan and higher.

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us ... d-Railgun-

There are two types of partners.

Cloudflare Certified Partner :
Ordinary hosting partners just integrate 'Add your site to Cloudflare" in their Cpanel.

AND

Cloudflare Optimized Partner:
These get railgun service for free.

So if your hosting company is a Cloudflare "OPTIMIZED" partner, then you get Railgun for free.

https://www.cloudflare.com/partners/hosting-provider/

There used to be a list to check which type of partner your hosting provider is. Cant find the link at the moment.

ps: Yes you were right about the Cloudflare apps section, They were turned on and forgotten years ago (old websites on same domain) and kept adding their code.

Posted: **16 Jul 2018, 10:09**

eskimo121 wrote:1) Visit https://amazingpics.net on your Desktop. It loads fine, i have no issues with the index/cover page slider.
next, Click on "Blondes" ---> takes 10+ seconds to load the slider.
I use the shuffle feature because the visitors can see new images on the Musical slideshow everyday. Is it possible to have it shuffle only the first 30 images (or whatever the number of thumbnails are on screen) and then the next 30 when the users near the end on thumbnails.
Or
Just limit the shuffle to the first 100 images by default so it looks like new pics on each visit without delay on load.

Here, it takes maybe 3 seconds to display, after the page is loaded, which takes maybe 1-2 seconds.

Unfortunately, "partial" shuffling simply isn't a feature, and there are many reasons why. It would be quite strange to create a partial shuffle, just to solve slow processing, which could be related to other things also. I would suggest you try to change from SLIDESHOW to GRID mode (and keep shuffle), just to see how much time it takes to build the slideshow (with 800+ frames) ... The slideshow wasn't created to be used this way (unlike the popup), as it generates empty slides for the entire slideshow (although images will load progressively). The popup on the other hand, doesn't care if there are 2000 images, because it doesn't "build" empty slides.

Last, but not least, I don't really see the logic of your approach. From any outsiders perspective, why would a visitor visit the same gallery multiple times? If visit a gallery, I am thereafter "done" with that gallery, no need to visit it again. Or if you have too many images (which you do), I might stop at for example 50, but that doesn't mean I'll visit the next day because I didn't manage to complete that gallery. Even if I did, that means I am viewing in an entirely new order, viewing many images that I already saw. Generally speaking, visitors don't visit galleries multiple times for enjoyment. Why not add everything in a grid instead? It's not logical to consider partial shuffle for this.

I would perhaps consider shuffle on start page, with a reasonable amount of images (say less than 20), so that the front page always looks original. After all, there is a huge chance that SOME visitors may visit your website multiple times, and they will often enter from the start page. Re-visiting a sub-gallery multiple times because they didn't manage to view all images ... then seeing a different order, many images they have seen before ... I can't see how this would be in interest or benefit of any visitors.

eskimo121 wrote:2) Now, another issue is when you land on this Blondes (or any other category) the slider after loading, does not change. The timer bar fills out till the end and stays there and the image does not change ..... UNTIL you click on pause--->play , thats when the slider starts working. -OR- Sometimes if you dont do this you need to wait for like 30+ seconds on the first pic when it occasionally starts moving to the next slide on its own and then it continues its normal behaviour.

I see there is some delay on first image, here about 3-4 seconds, but then all the following images load properly in time. Could be this slideshow plugin, which was not built for this amount of images, has some processing overhead from after the first image loads. This you could easily verify by going to the page gallery settings > advanced > limit, and set it to for example "10". See if it changes anything.

eskimo121 wrote:3) Now when you are in the Blondes (or any) category, go to the main menu Nature ----> click on Natural Beauty
The music stops and there is a whole page reload/refresh (not ajax load like the others). The menu disappears and the whole site loads afresh. Why does this happen only for this category?

This is something entirely different. The JSON output for this page is empty for some reason:
https://amazingpics.net/Nature/Natural-Beauty.json

It should of course look like any other page's JSON output, for example this:
https://amazingpics.net/People/blondes.json

My only vague assumption, is that it has something to do with your special "LiteSpeed" server, perhaps in combination with Dash-Dashes in folder name. To test, try to rename the folder to "naturalbeauty" to see if anything changes. If not, it's something Litespeed-cache-Clouedflare-ish.

This is of course not normal issue on servers. Dash should work fine:
https://demo.photo.gallery/examples/plu ... image.json

eskimo121 wrote:3) Sometimes when I visit Nature ---> Lovely forests category it suddenly automatically redirects me back to the homepage after staying on the page for a second or so. I have only seen this happen twice or thrice.

Can't confirm. There is no javascripts in X3 that would do that, and PHP cannot redirect "after a while" anyway. Sorry, but I have to assume this is something unrelated to X3, unless you have some hidden links somewhere that happen to get clicked for some reason. I really don't know, but I would have to be able to see it for myself.

eskimo121 wrote:Currently the slider has "Cover" mode and also "Contain" mode. When using slider on galleries (not talking about homepage which looks great), the cover mode looks good on mobile but on desktop the images getting cut seem more obvious....on the other hand if i use Contain mode then the pictures look good on desktop but look too small (like thumbnails or grid size) on mobile devices.
My suggestion is to add an option so people can choose which mode (contain or cover) on which device (Desktop or Mobile)

I'm wondering, did you try COVER mode on mobile in both vertical and horizontal phone orientation? I'm pretty sure you didn't because in one of the orientations, a lot (50%+) of the image be cut off. Of course, you don't know what aspect the screen of the visitor is. Keep in mind, this also depends on the HEIGHT (area) you have assigned to the slideshow, and also the ASPECT of the device screen that is viewing the image. Besides, giving visitors "options" just because things don't fit, is not a SOLUTION.

I don't normally push my opinions on X3 gallery owners, and that is why we have lots of gallery options, but in this case I must differ: I think you are using the slideshow layout unproductively.

Slideshow module (as you have noted above) is really not "optimal" for best viewing images. You can set to "cover" to utilize maximum screen, but then some of the image will get cut off. You can utilize "contain", but then you are getting "margins" which isn't too favorable.
Add the fact that screens come in multiple aspects, and you for sure will NEVER get a perfect solution.
Because slideshow is actually part of the page (with scroll) it does not really have any sense of using 100% of the screen area. Even if you set 100%, which would allow the slideshow to take 100% of the screen, it is still susceptible to SCROLL and will often not be centered.
Slideshow should be used for teasers or short intros, or when there are just a few images.
The X3 POPUP is simply so much more powerful than the slideshow. End of story. It takes full advantage of the screen, on all devices, and visitors can rotate screen on mobile if this is beneficial for the aspect of the viewed image(s). Furthermore, a popup would then be combined with one of the GRID layouts, which gives the visitor the option to easily toggle between popup slideshow mode, and scroll through images which they might not want to view.
I really can't see how it's beneficial to force the user to view 800 randomly sorted images. I'm sure you would say "you know your visitors", and I'm sure you know some of them, but any average web visitor will not have patience to view any longer than something way below 100. Keep in mind, just getting half way, would require loading perhaps 200MB of data on their internet (which could be mobile).
Most photo professionals would recommend to "just show a few of your best images in each category". Ok, so I guess your website is more of an "archive" than a "portfolio" perhaps ... That's fine of course, but the slideshow simply isn't a functional layout for archives. It's unproductive for the visitor.
Let's add the fact that I think we may have found out that slideshow is additionally slow when processing this amount of images. Something I wasn't aware of to be honest, but I have never seen it in use with so many images ... for good reason in my opinion.

eskimo121 wrote:About Cloudflare Railgun:

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us ... e-Partner-

Partners are able to offer Railgun for free or bundle it with their existing services . Otherwise this is only available as part of the Business plan and higher.

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us ... d-Railgun-

There are two types of partners.

Cloudflare Certified Partner :
Ordinary hosting partners just integrate 'Add your site to Cloudflare" in their Cpanel.

AND

Cloudflare Optimized Partner:
These get railgun service for free.

So if your hosting company is a Cloudflare "OPTIMIZED" partner, then you get Railgun for free.

https://www.cloudflare.com/partners/hosting-provider/

There used to be a list to check which type of partner your hosting provider is. Cant find the link at the moment.

ps: Yes you were right about the Cloudflare apps section, They were turned on and forgotten years ago (old websites on same domain) and kept adding their code.

That's cool. I have been reading about railgun before, and took them time to re-read it. I doubt it has much benefit for X3, especially because there a very few non-cacheable requests. Basically only the main html document on first page load. Furthermore, their docs are a bit vague ... and compression is already at a maximum https://d.pr/i/9WvNjB. Then they have some over-lapping Argo feature, which we use ourselves. It might have bigger benefits on more dynamic applications.

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