Slideshow, Galleria Image Gallery - Freshen up
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First I'd like to say how much I like what Concrete5 does. It is absolutely great. I am learning in layers and still have a lot to learn, but the website seems to be coming along.
Slideshow and Galleria Image Gallery seem to require "freshening up" or reinsertion after cleaning out the cache.
This is time consuming. I am wondering if I am doing something wrong or if it actually is a problem, as it takes a long time to fix. The images are lost, but the block is often okay after I enter edit mode and select the set of photos.
I probably should have considered ProPhoto which I understand does not have those problems. I am just wondering if it is something I am doing. I have been a little lazy about shrinking and compressing photo size, due to time issues. Many of these images are 700K some sets are 80K-120K. Are there any quidelines or requirements about this?
When I clear the cache, I first turn off all the caches, then I hit clear. I do that several times. I am not sure, but I relate this image problem in Slideshow and Image Gallery to this action. How can I avoid the labor intensive resetting of all the slideshows and Galleria blocks?
I also am starting to have a very real concern about the speed of Concrete5. I have the fastest 6 year old computer you could buy at the time, with 7200rpm dual scsi raid set for speed, Dell Dimension XPS Gen 3 Pentium 4 3.6ghz, 2gb ram, and it is still quite fast, faster than many machines even now, yet when I click on a content5 page it seems to take a long time to become visible as it processes all the php code. I have been hand coding in CSS and Html and those pages are a dream compared... I am very worried that when I finally manage to upload all of this huge file system... (which has many many FTP errors in the process- what a pain, and I realize I am not going to be able to upload it again easily once I get it up there!) ...and get it working, its going to be even slower, which will be totally unacceptable. So I know Franz has given us 5 things to do to speed it up which I really appreciate and will try to do.
But what can I do as a user to make my pages sing? I'd like them to be fast enough so I don't lose viewers.
What kind of equipment is required for a VPS to get this program going faster?
I do hope you will not take these questions the wrong way, but use them to improve the program. Right now, but accepting I am new, I'd suggest some real thought about speeding this baby up. Maybe there are code areas that can be tightened up, memory leaks that need to be clamped down on (I am from early 1984 CAD days and was a bleeding edge alpha/beta tester and when my machine starts slowing down after awhile and I have to shutdown and reboot, there's something going on in that area I think.)
I believe any speed improvements would help tremendously with Concrete5's popularity and use. I realize you have an ambitious program ahead and have been working very hard, but perhaps it is time to look up and consider...
I only say this because I want this program to succeed and get better!!
Best Regards,
Rick
Slideshow and Galleria Image Gallery seem to require "freshening up" or reinsertion after cleaning out the cache.
This is time consuming. I am wondering if I am doing something wrong or if it actually is a problem, as it takes a long time to fix. The images are lost, but the block is often okay after I enter edit mode and select the set of photos.
I probably should have considered ProPhoto which I understand does not have those problems. I am just wondering if it is something I am doing. I have been a little lazy about shrinking and compressing photo size, due to time issues. Many of these images are 700K some sets are 80K-120K. Are there any quidelines or requirements about this?
When I clear the cache, I first turn off all the caches, then I hit clear. I do that several times. I am not sure, but I relate this image problem in Slideshow and Image Gallery to this action. How can I avoid the labor intensive resetting of all the slideshows and Galleria blocks?
I also am starting to have a very real concern about the speed of Concrete5. I have the fastest 6 year old computer you could buy at the time, with 7200rpm dual scsi raid set for speed, Dell Dimension XPS Gen 3 Pentium 4 3.6ghz, 2gb ram, and it is still quite fast, faster than many machines even now, yet when I click on a content5 page it seems to take a long time to become visible as it processes all the php code. I have been hand coding in CSS and Html and those pages are a dream compared... I am very worried that when I finally manage to upload all of this huge file system... (which has many many FTP errors in the process- what a pain, and I realize I am not going to be able to upload it again easily once I get it up there!) ...and get it working, its going to be even slower, which will be totally unacceptable. So I know Franz has given us 5 things to do to speed it up which I really appreciate and will try to do.
But what can I do as a user to make my pages sing? I'd like them to be fast enough so I don't lose viewers.
What kind of equipment is required for a VPS to get this program going faster?
I do hope you will not take these questions the wrong way, but use them to improve the program. Right now, but accepting I am new, I'd suggest some real thought about speeding this baby up. Maybe there are code areas that can be tightened up, memory leaks that need to be clamped down on (I am from early 1984 CAD days and was a bleeding edge alpha/beta tester and when my machine starts slowing down after awhile and I have to shutdown and reboot, there's something going on in that area I think.)
I believe any speed improvements would help tremendously with Concrete5's popularity and use. I realize you have an ambitious program ahead and have been working very hard, but perhaps it is time to look up and consider...
I only say this because I want this program to succeed and get better!!
Best Regards,
Rick
Dear Jordan,
Thank you for taking the time to relate your experiences. By "freshen up" I mean regenerate the 3 indexes, and clear the cache several times, then turn it back on. At that point I seem to have difficulties with the Slideshow and Galleria Image Gallery because the images no longer appear, when a "public" user, then if I login as admin when I edit the page and then the block (slideshow and Galleria Image gallery), Simply pick the "image set" and save and update, the images seem to come back on every page, for me as admin. But then I go back to being "public" and the slideshow and galleria do not show or have images.
I suppose the next thing I have to do is delete the block and redo it, which I have done for each page (many times), and I am getting tired of doing this. because I clear the cache often. Something is not working right, or I am doing something wrong.
My images were pretty large, say 1 meg to 7ook, but now they are less, about 150k to 50k. The galleria and slideshow, do not like to load a large number of slides or images. They take less time and are better behaved if you keep the number of images down, say 10 -20 images.
I am using the latest Firefox. I have now noticed that the site is a little faster when I am not logged in as Admin. (Editing and Dashboard overhead). However I am still concerned about the PHP overhead and page refresh. I have a VPS which I am going to upload to, but I have been editing the site and using Concrete5 locally on a wampserver install under windows. That is how I am experiencing the slowness. The computer is an old fast luggable laptop, Inspiron 9100 2005 with 2gb ram and dedicated graphics card. I also have been using my fast desktop to edit the site, also on wampserver, and it does lag even with this machine.
Thanks for your thoughts on the slide and image problem
Thank you for taking the time to relate your experiences. By "freshen up" I mean regenerate the 3 indexes, and clear the cache several times, then turn it back on. At that point I seem to have difficulties with the Slideshow and Galleria Image Gallery because the images no longer appear, when a "public" user, then if I login as admin when I edit the page and then the block (slideshow and Galleria Image gallery), Simply pick the "image set" and save and update, the images seem to come back on every page, for me as admin. But then I go back to being "public" and the slideshow and galleria do not show or have images.
I suppose the next thing I have to do is delete the block and redo it, which I have done for each page (many times), and I am getting tired of doing this. because I clear the cache often. Something is not working right, or I am doing something wrong.
My images were pretty large, say 1 meg to 7ook, but now they are less, about 150k to 50k. The galleria and slideshow, do not like to load a large number of slides or images. They take less time and are better behaved if you keep the number of images down, say 10 -20 images.
I am using the latest Firefox. I have now noticed that the site is a little faster when I am not logged in as Admin. (Editing and Dashboard overhead). However I am still concerned about the PHP overhead and page refresh. I have a VPS which I am going to upload to, but I have been editing the site and using Concrete5 locally on a wampserver install under windows. That is how I am experiencing the slowness. The computer is an old fast luggable laptop, Inspiron 9100 2005 with 2gb ram and dedicated graphics card. I also have been using my fast desktop to edit the site, also on wampserver, and it does lag even with this machine.
Thanks for your thoughts on the slide and image problem
If images are showing up when logged in but not when viewing publicly, it might be because you have permissions set to prevent guests from viewing files. Log in and go to Dashboard -> File Manager -> Access, and look at the option for "View Site Files" under guest -- is it set to "No" instead of "Yes"?
I have had problems in the past running Concrete5 locally on WAMPServer on older Windows machines, so the speed issue may take care of itself when you put the site up on a real server (hopefully).
Also, if the galleries you mention bog down when there's lots of images, you may want to try my free Sortable Fancybox Gallery addon --http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/sortable-fancybox-galle... -- it only shows the thumbnails on the initial page load (full-size images are not loaded until a thumbnail is clicked on). So it takes a bit longer for each full-size image to load when the thumbnail is clicked, but the initial page load is faster because it's not loading all full-size images at once.
Best of luck.
-Jordan
I have had problems in the past running Concrete5 locally on WAMPServer on older Windows machines, so the speed issue may take care of itself when you put the site up on a real server (hopefully).
Also, if the galleries you mention bog down when there's lots of images, you may want to try my free Sortable Fancybox Gallery addon --http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/sortable-fancybox-galle... -- it only shows the thumbnails on the initial page load (full-size images are not loaded until a thumbnail is clicked on). So it takes a bit longer for each full-size image to load when the thumbnail is clicked, but the initial page load is faster because it's not loading all full-size images at once.
Best of luck.
-Jordan
Dear Jordan,
Good suggestions. I have checked the
Dashboard -> File Manager -> Access, option for "View Site Files" under Guest -- It was set to "Yes". So I guess that's not to problem, unfortunately. So are User Groups "Editor", "Member". "Registered User", and of course "Admin".
Further steps taken to fix this:
1. Removed all unused "Versions" in each of the files. In some cases there were 40 "versions".
2. Made sure that the "Accepted Version" is the one that actually works. I've deleted all other versions then.
3. I have noticed that when I log in as an Editor" and delete a slideshow block for example, then add the same slideshow block back, save, there is no change, the slideshow does not show up. I save and publish, and log out and "guest" does not show the slideshow either. Then when I log in as Admin and delete the slideshow block and recreate, it shows up properly. Then I save it, publish it, log out, and often it is viewable as "guest", but sometimes it goes away later. The problem seems to be anomalous.
4. Also when I delete and recreate the slideshow blocks, I always check the "thumbnail" checkbox if there is one availabe to speed up loading.
5. I have had several PHP failures due to loading time.
4. I am next going to try to totally clean up the photo files, although I did the once before:
A. Deleting everything that is not used.
B. Uploading sets again, making fewer photos in each set and dividing them into two slideshows.
C. Using Sortable Fancybox Gallery because it loads the thumbnails first.
I hope this works. Thanks for the suggestions about loading time!
Rick
Good suggestions. I have checked the
Dashboard -> File Manager -> Access, option for "View Site Files" under Guest -- It was set to "Yes". So I guess that's not to problem, unfortunately. So are User Groups "Editor", "Member". "Registered User", and of course "Admin".
Further steps taken to fix this:
1. Removed all unused "Versions" in each of the files. In some cases there were 40 "versions".
2. Made sure that the "Accepted Version" is the one that actually works. I've deleted all other versions then.
3. I have noticed that when I log in as an Editor" and delete a slideshow block for example, then add the same slideshow block back, save, there is no change, the slideshow does not show up. I save and publish, and log out and "guest" does not show the slideshow either. Then when I log in as Admin and delete the slideshow block and recreate, it shows up properly. Then I save it, publish it, log out, and often it is viewable as "guest", but sometimes it goes away later. The problem seems to be anomalous.
4. Also when I delete and recreate the slideshow blocks, I always check the "thumbnail" checkbox if there is one availabe to speed up loading.
5. I have had several PHP failures due to loading time.
4. I am next going to try to totally clean up the photo files, although I did the once before:
A. Deleting everything that is not used.
B. Uploading sets again, making fewer photos in each set and dividing them into two slideshows.
C. Using Sortable Fancybox Gallery because it loads the thumbnails first.
I hope this works. Thanks for the suggestions about loading time!
Rick
Jordan,
I hope I've discovered the problem.
The wampserver php.ini's for the Apache Server and PHP were set up with 2mb max_upload and 30 sec max_execution_ etc.
See this post if you are interested.
http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/usage/slideshows-and-gall...
Thanks for your help!
When using the site as a "Public" user it is much faster, which is just great. Should I increase memory from 64mb to 256mb for php.ini settings?
I hope I've discovered the problem.
The wampserver php.ini's for the Apache Server and PHP were set up with 2mb max_upload and 30 sec max_execution_ etc.
See this post if you are interested.
http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/usage/slideshows-and-gall...
Thanks for your help!
When using the site as a "Public" user it is much faster, which is just great. Should I increase memory from 64mb to 256mb for php.ini settings?
As for general speed, I used to have some speed problems, but since Concrete version 5.4 I haven't noticed anything major (I also have APC installed, and am running on a VPS, although I have many client sites on cheap shared hosting accounts and those run fine as well). Which browser are you using to edit your site? Some browsers are much slower at running javascript than others (especially IE), so using Firefox or Chrome can speed that up if you're not using them already.
Hope that helps.
-Jordan