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Gallery previews load slow and irratic
Hi, i recently changed hosting provider and did a backup and restore of my site including content with images. In my new hosting all works fine but the galleries preview images load very slow and irraticaly, some just keep displaying the rotating orange circle forever ?? Any ideas how to fix this ??
Re: Gallery previews load slow and irratic
If you can provide a link, I can diagnose any issues.
Keep in mind, first few times you are viewing pages on your X3 website, all images need to be resized (by server) and stored in cache. Naturally this is a slower process, and proportional to the amount of processing power offered by your shared hosting environment.
Keep in mind, first few times you are viewing pages on your X3 website, all images need to be resized (by server) and stored in cache. Naturally this is a slower process, and proportional to the amount of processing power offered by your shared hosting environment.
Re: Gallery previews load slow and irratic
If the website is julsfoto .com:
Looking at your start page, you have 4 images in the slideshow at massive file-sizes, ranging between 4 and 13 MB per image. That's 20-30MB just to load images into the slideshow. Why are you not resizing images on upload?
This image http://julsfoto.com/content/1.index/WoodNymph.jpg is more than 11000px!
Next up ... check your gallery page http://julsfoto.com/Birds/caribean/. The originals for each image are also massive, for example http://julsfoto.com/content/2.Birds/2.c ... _287-2.jpg (3000px). Basically, when you access that page, you are asking your server "hey please resize dozens of massive images simultaneously". Even your desktop would struggle with that.
The only reason you don't get an error in the first place, is because you have a private virtual server perhaps, with a high amount of memory available. Just because it has a lot of memory does not change the fact that processing all these massive images will take a lot of time, and requires a lot of processing.
Ultimately, this has a simple explanation: You have a large amount of incredibly large image sizes, and your server will struggle to resize all these images at anything else than slow speed. Sporadically, you may also get "timeouts" or even errors, if the total sum of used memory exceeds allowed amount.
Once images get cached in required sizes, speed will slowly increase. You should still reconsider your uploaded image sizes though ... No users wish to download 10MB sized image, which are scaled down in browser anyway.
Looking at your start page, you have 4 images in the slideshow at massive file-sizes, ranging between 4 and 13 MB per image. That's 20-30MB just to load images into the slideshow. Why are you not resizing images on upload?
This image http://julsfoto.com/content/1.index/WoodNymph.jpg is more than 11000px!
Next up ... check your gallery page http://julsfoto.com/Birds/caribean/. The originals for each image are also massive, for example http://julsfoto.com/content/2.Birds/2.c ... _287-2.jpg (3000px). Basically, when you access that page, you are asking your server "hey please resize dozens of massive images simultaneously". Even your desktop would struggle with that.
The only reason you don't get an error in the first place, is because you have a private virtual server perhaps, with a high amount of memory available. Just because it has a lot of memory does not change the fact that processing all these massive images will take a lot of time, and requires a lot of processing.
Ultimately, this has a simple explanation: You have a large amount of incredibly large image sizes, and your server will struggle to resize all these images at anything else than slow speed. Sporadically, you may also get "timeouts" or even errors, if the total sum of used memory exceeds allowed amount.
Once images get cached in required sizes, speed will slowly increase. You should still reconsider your uploaded image sizes though ... No users wish to download 10MB sized image, which are scaled down in browser anyway.
Re: Gallery previews load slow and irratic
Hi, thanx for you response. I am actually using a lightroom ftp plugin to upload images and it resizes them from raw to jpeg automatically. But i can adjust the setting for width, height and resolution. What do you suggest i use for them to reduce the size while keeping a good web resolution and fast previews ??
Re: Gallery previews load slow and irratic
We generally recommend 1600px (long side) for a modern website like X3. This is a large image size that will look good on all screens, as well as retina (high-density) screens. Yet 1600px is still "web friendly", and should output a file-size around 400-800kb. Furthermore, the image will resize down to smaller preview images in X3 5-10x faster.
For reference, resizing an image (on server or anywhere) requires processing power proportional to the amount of pixels. See how exponentially this is affected by image size in the below example:
1600 x 900 = 1,440,000 pixels
4000 x 2250 = 9,000,000 pixels
Although 1600px seems to be a good number, nothing wrong with anything from 1200px up to 2000px either. Over 2000px, and you are pushing it a bit in terms of what you should expect of your visitors internet connection when they view the full size images.
PS! You mentioned you are using Lightroom FTP to upload images? Nothing wrong with that, but I assume you are creating the pages and consistently checking the images from your X3 panel? X3 uses a refresh-page-cache feature, which is managed when any "change" is made from the panel. Since X3 cannot detect when you upload images by FTP, you may experience "stale" pages which don't update to show newly FTP-uploaded images. To fix this, you can simply trigger URL yourX3website/panel/touch.php from your browser, which basically tells X3 to refresh page-cache because "something changed".
For reference, resizing an image (on server or anywhere) requires processing power proportional to the amount of pixels. See how exponentially this is affected by image size in the below example:
1600 x 900 = 1,440,000 pixels
4000 x 2250 = 9,000,000 pixels
Although 1600px seems to be a good number, nothing wrong with anything from 1200px up to 2000px either. Over 2000px, and you are pushing it a bit in terms of what you should expect of your visitors internet connection when they view the full size images.
PS! You mentioned you are using Lightroom FTP to upload images? Nothing wrong with that, but I assume you are creating the pages and consistently checking the images from your X3 panel? X3 uses a refresh-page-cache feature, which is managed when any "change" is made from the panel. Since X3 cannot detect when you upload images by FTP, you may experience "stale" pages which don't update to show newly FTP-uploaded images. To fix this, you can simply trigger URL yourX3website/panel/touch.php from your browser, which basically tells X3 to refresh page-cache because "something changed".