All features of Media Gallery work for my website and I am quite happy with the software, however the load times of gallery thumbnails have always been poor (especially with DSL internet connections).

Previously, I have let thumbnails be auto generated. Some of the original images are large and I expect that auto generating thumbnails will incur a time penalty.

In an attempt to improve performance I have generated thumbnails separately, and placed them in a sub-directory to the parent folder containing the original images. I cannot use the exact same file name for the thumbnail because my configuration searches sub-folders and the thumbnail would be displayed along with the original image. So, I've created thumbnails as THM files. The reference to these thumbnails (in the subdirectory) is thumbnails/{$fileName).thm. An example of a thumbnail is originalImage.jpg.thm.

This all seems to work. In a gallery element (IMG tag), the src attribute points to the original file, and the data-navthumb attribute points to the corresponding thumbnail file in the sub-directory.

So MY QUESTION is why does this not significantly improve performance load times in the media gallery? Once loaded, a 2nd visit is much faster, but the initial load is still very slow.

My website can be viewed at placercameraclub.org/

A sample page exhibiting this problem is:
placercameraclub.org/by-club-member/last-name-i-to-p/dennis-morgan.html

Thanks for any help I can get from this forum.

Regards,

Dennis Morgan

Hello,

We can't open placercameraclub.org/by-club-member/last-name-i-to-p/dennis-morgan.html page, 403 error occurs:



About thumbnails, if auto-thumbnails generation is enabled, the extension will generate thumbnails when a gallery page is opened first time on frontend. If gallery folder(s) contain a lot of images (or large images), it can require time to generate thumbnails, but next time when open this page (by any user), it will be loaded fast because it doesn't require to generate thumbnails again.

Regards,
ARI Soft

Hi Ari Soft,

Thank you for your quick response.

I have blocked most IP ranges outside the USA to reduce hacking attempts primarily from Russia, and China. I would be happy to add your IP range to my allowed list so that you can view the website. Please respond to me with your IP's in use.

Initially, I configured media gallery to auto generate thumbnails. I did notice that 2nd and subsequent attempts to view a gallery were faster. But after a day or so, a re-visit to the same gallery seemed to be loading as slow as the initial visit. I assumed this was a caching issue, and that after cache items expired, the stored images (including thumbnails) were no longer available and had to be re-generated.

In an attempt to improve performance, I turned off auto generation of thumbnails, and I created thumbnails via a separate process. I placed these in a sub-folder under each folder containing original images. Because I have contifured media to search sub-folders (for jpg's), I couldn't use a jpg for the thumbnail file as both the original and thumbnail would be displayed in the gallery. So, I created thm files for the thumbnails, and for the nav thumbnail path, I used thumbnails/{$fileName}.thm. This seems to work and the data-navthumb attribute in the img tag points to the correct thumbnail file.

A 2nd visit to a gallery is even faster than with auto thumbnail generation. However, after a day or so, revisits to some of the galleries are loading at the same speed as the original visit. Again, this looks like a symptom of an expired cache. This may not be related to thumbnail usage, but I am still looking for a means to improve loading performance of thumbnail loading for a gallery. I am beginning to wonder if media gallery may also be loading the original images (in the backgrond) as the same time that thumbnails are being displayed. If so, it would be nice to give priority to thumbnail loading. I am using integration with Smart Content - Sexy Lightbox; could it be that original images are being pre-loaded while the initial thumbnails are being displayed? When I click on a thumbnail, the original image displays almost instantly. This behavior may help to explain some sort of caching issue related to original images.

I have attached a screen shot of my thumbnail configuration.


Thanks again for your help,

Dennis

Populate "Thumbnails path" parameter (currently "Nav thumbnails path" parameter is filled, it is used to show thumbnails in navigation bar when widget supports this ability) with the following value:

thumbnails/{$fileName}.thm



Regards,
ARI Soft