PhotoPost chewing up mass amounts of bandwidth!

pgstmh · August 14th, 2008, 09:29 AM

Ok...I need some help here. My photo gallery is chewing crazy amounts of bandwidth and I need to figure this out. FAST.

From day 1, the parameters setup pertaining to uploaded pics both in size and dimensions were waaaay too high. So I fixed that now, but I'm stuck with a whole bunch of pictures that are far too big. Also....a few different variables dealing with caching were disabled, so I enabled them to help with bandwidth as well.

Is there a way that I can rebuild the database to downsize already uploaded pics?

Anything else I can do?? My website isn't really that big to be chewing up the amount of bandwidth that it does. Already 17203.17 used this month.

Main Index - The Midwest Hunter Photo Gallery

There are tons of stats that I can give if someone wants to help me dig into it further.

Thanks!!

pgstmh · August 14th, 2008, 09:34 AM

I should say that the amount of bandwidth I stated that was used is for my whole website. Sorry about that.

But my stats are showing that the vast majority used seems to be coming from the photo gallery. I'm ready to turn the gallery off for a few days to make sure that my thoughts are correct, but I thought I'd ask a few questions 1st to see if you all have any ideas for me.

Thanks!

Chuck S · August 14th, 2008, 10:44 AM

You can rebuild medium and thumbnail images in Admin => Scan Database if you have lowered those sizes to lower those image sizes. You can not rescan large images already uploaded as thats the image used to redo mediums and thumbnails. You need something to work with as a basis.

Anyway doing that should help. You can also restrict the gallery in registration options that only registered users can see the main images so guests only see thumbnails and have to register. This will cut down on bandwidth

You can also setup hotlinking stuff incase people are hotlinking your images elsewhere

http://www.photopost.com/tipsphp.html

pgstmh · August 14th, 2008, 10:59 AM

Ok. I'll rebuild both the thumbnails and medium images.

I'd really rather not restrict viewing of images if I don't have to. So I guess I'll look at all the other avenues 1st.

1)In the scandb....What is this and what does it do? "Check here to rescan photos and save EXIF information."

Chuck S · August 14th, 2008, 11:01 AM

That would extract exif information on Photos if there is some. you need to have jhead installed on the server to do that.

pgstmh · August 14th, 2008, 11:12 AM

Ok...I'm running the rebuild on thumbnails and mediums and it's giving me a whole bunch of messages saying "rebuilding". I'm assuming that's a good thing and it's now rebuilding already uploaded pics to the new size and dimension restrictions I put in place??

Chuck S · August 14th, 2008, 11:39 AM

Yes sounds like that so

pgstmh · August 15th, 2008, 08:39 AM

Chuck,

In my stats, it's saying that this is what is chewing up so much bandwidth. Any idea what this is??

FILE TYPE

php Dynamic PHP Script file 171496(hits) 25 % 14.06 GB 87.6 %(% of bandwidth used)

pgstmh · August 15th, 2008, 08:41 AM

I don't know if you remember, but we integrated photopost with my vB board in April roughly.

TheMidwestHunter.com Forums - Powered by vBulletin

I shut down the photo gallery to see exactly what might be chewing up all this bandwidth, so if you need to get in....let me know.

Chuck S · August 15th, 2008, 12:13 PM

What is the actual filename? it just looks like to me that 25% of the bandwidth on your site is one filename. I really cant respond without knowing the script

pgstmh · August 15th, 2008, 12:39 PM

I don't really know what the exact file name is. I've searched and it doesn't tell me. I need to find someone who knows a lot more about this than me to help me out.

The 25% number refers to the number of hits. 171496 is 25% of the site total, but it's also 87.6% of the total bandwidth being used.

skidpics · August 15th, 2008, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pgstmh

I don't really know what the exact file name is. I've searched and it doesn't tell me. I need to find someone who knows a lot more about this than me to help me out.

The 25% number refers to the number of hits. 171496 is 25% of the site total, but it's also 87.6% of the total bandwidth being used.

Might sign up at StatCounter Free invisible Web tracker, Hit counter and Web stats for a free stats service - it gathers loads of information.. Including who is going where on the site..

Chuck S · August 15th, 2008, 05:58 PM

Okay well if that 25% script is showphoto and your showing large photos to everyone I can see the bandwidth being high. It really depends on how you set things up. What are your thumbnail medium and width height thresholds in admin upload options?

pgstmh · August 16th, 2008, 09:49 AM

I'll just throw down some parameters that might lend into all this.

Thumbnail image max width and height in pixels 80
Max allowable image width in pixels 640
Max allowable image height in pixels 480
Trigger medium graphic height and width
An uploaded larger than this will create a medium image of this size. 600
Quality setting for resizing/thumbnails? 60

I'm not allowing members to upload video of any kind. Pics only.

Enable IP Cache Timeout
This variable is used to track IP addresses and userids for voting and viewing purposes. This is set in HOURS. 0 disables this setting Set to 5
Use photo view caching to reduce view update queries on high load sites?
Set this to YES if you want to enable the view caching code which caches photo view updates Set to yes
Use category cache?
On some larger sites, using the category cache can actually reduce performance. set to yes
Minutes to cache index page data for featured photos, statistics and PALs?
Number of minutes to cache information. Default is 10 minutes, 0 means no caching. set to 12

Chuck S · August 16th, 2008, 12:14 PM

Those all sound fine so unless you have tons of guests viewing the gallery if your site is very busy I dont see anything wrong. your bandwidth will always be tons higher with a gallery versus a forum etc.