Severe performance problems showing images using custom sizes

denisegoldberg

I've noticed what I would consider to be severe performance problems viewing my site over the past few days. I can't tell you exacty when this started, but I believe it was a recent change.

I see the same problem from my work computer, running IE7 and Firefox 3.x (sorry, don't know exact version, and I'm at home now) on XP, and on my home computer running IE8 and Firefox 3.5 on Vista. I've cleared the browser caches, which made no difference in the screen displays.

I see the problem on my home page, my Kaleidoscope page, all of my "category/subcategory" pages, and on images shown on my blog using <img src= statements. I have replaced the standard category/subcategory pages with html-only pages; the thumb size on the standard pages is too small for my taste. In all cases, I am using custom sizes to display the photos. The standard smugmug-style galleries display quite quickly - so although I may be wrong I am suspicious of the custom sizes.

I displayed the same photo using a standard size and a custom size.

• http://denise.smugmug.com/photos/576219532_dCdo5-M.jpg displayed in 2 seconds.
• http://denise.smugmug.com/photos/576219532_dCdo5-600x600.jpg displayed in 37 seconds.

Here are timings from some of my screens:
Home page, http://denise.smugmug.com
contains 4 randomly selected photos from 1 gallery, displayed with custom sizes
>>> display completed in 47 seconds

Kaleidoscope page, http://denise.smugmug.com/gallery/2659217
contains 3 photos, custom sizes, each photo randomly selected from a different gallery
>>> display completed in 148 seconds

Gallery page, http://denise.smugmug.com/gallery/4859541_NYqCo
contains 8 photos, custom sizes, each photo randomly selected from a different gallery
>>> display completed in 63 seconds

This is relatively new behavior, and from what I have observed (although I could have headed down an entirely wrong path!) it appears to be tied to the use of custom sizes.

Help, please!

--- Denise

denisegoldberg

I just repeated the test using one of Andy's images (just to prove to myself it's not my site...). As with the test above, I used 2 different browsers so there wasn't any question of the image being pulled from the browser cache.

http://www.moonriverphotography.com/photos/491886704_DQLzo-M.jpg
>>> display was instantaneous

http://www.moonriverphotography.com/photos/491886704_DQLzo-600x600.jpg
>>> display took 47 seconds to complete

Same issue in Anne MacAskill's blog at http://beanland.wordpress.com/, retrieving custom-sized photos from smug.

--- Denise

docwalker

Denise, I think have this validated, thanks for your links and help. I am filing a bug report now.

--Doc

denisegoldberg

docwalker wrote:

Denise, I think have this validated, thanks for your links and help. I am filing a bug report now.

Thanks Doc. Please keep me posted on the progress of a fix.

--- Denise

denisegoldberg

Thanks for the fix for this problem - my pages are now back to appearing at a reasonable rate.

--- Denise

Andy

denisegoldberg wrote:

Thanks for the fix for this problem - my pages are now back to appearing at a reasonable rate.

--- Denise