Watermarks and bandwidth

[wynode]

I've done a search and haven't found anyone else having such issues.

I turned on 'on the fly' watermarking a while ago and have noticed that it seems to be using a bit of bandwidth?

I run a car forum and around 5 percent of my total site bandwidth is due to the calls to /gallery/watermark.php

Suggestions?

[SLix]

It's not watermark.php using up the bandwidth. All requests for image files go through watermark.php, that file name will show up on your logs instead of the actual image file name. So in other words, it is the images that are using up the bandwidth, but you are seeing the watermark.php file name.

[wynode]

Ok so before I started using the on-the-fly watermark the URL in my logs was /gallery/showgallery.php and that was around 1.13% of my bandwidth.

The next month (when I started using the watermark, the usage went up to around 5.12% of my bandwidth and the URL in the logs is /gallery/watermark.php

[Chuck S]

Remember your also loading the watermark image as well as the image so yes bandwidth will go up

[SLix]

Originally Posted by wynode

Ok so before I started using the on-the-fly watermark the URL in my logs was /gallery/showgallery.php and that was around 1.13% of my bandwidth.

The next month (when I started using the watermark, the usage went up to around 5.12% of my bandwidth and the URL in the logs is /gallery/watermark.php

No. Before you started using "on the fly watermarks" the URL in your logs would have been the URL to each individual image file. So a seperate record for each file. Now that you use the watermark.php it shows up in your logs instead of each individual image file.

Sure serving up your watermark image each time an image file is displayed will increase your bandwidth a bit, I would doubt that your total monthly bandwidth has gone up much. It's just now represented by just one file "watermark.php" instead of all the individual image files in your gallery.

watermark.php will use up more server resources than just displaying the plain image file would, but it shouldn't use up any significant amount of extra bandwidth.

[wynode]

Thanks for the replies!