Smugmug Speed and Browsing Experience

EdH

I know the Smugmug policy is to not comment on future enhancements but I’ll ask anyway. Is there any work being done on improving the speed of the browsing experience on Smugmug? I know there have been massive improvements from the really slow issues a month or so ago but the fact is that other services (I’m thinking of Zenfolio in particular, but even PBase avnd Phanfare) blow Smugmug away in terms of browsing speed.

I recently started doing portraits as my first “paid” photography work. I did some practice shoots for the children of some co-workers of mine in order to receive some feedback before I decided on how I would present my work to customers. I put the galleries on Smugmug. They loved the layout but complained about the speed and said they almost lost patience going through the pictures in the galleries.

I’m about to create a Pro account on Smugmug but the speed issue has led me to think it might be better to go with Zenfolio and then use another service for print ordering until Zenfolio adds that feature.

I would go ahead and make the switch but I love everything else about Smugmug. I admire the incredible level of service, the direct access to company management here on Dgrin, as well as Smugmug’s desire to continue to improve its service. Based on this, I want to think that one day soon I’ll log on and see a brand new incredibly fast interface that will be far ahead of any other company’s offering.

I know there is only so much information you can share but I’d really enjoy hearing any information that can be discussed.

Andy

EdH wrote:

I know the Smugmug policy is to not comment on future enhancements but I’ll ask anyway. Is there any work being done on improving the speed of the browsing experience on Smugmug?

Ed,

The answer is "yes."

But I'm also curious as to the specifics you are encountering.

For example, in browsing this gallery of yours: http://hetheringtons.smugmug.com/gallery/1971400/1/100353353

The gallery loads in about 5 seconds. Then, image to image (larges) is about 2 seconds. That seems fairly fast to me. Can you tell us more about your connection, line quality (www.dslreports.com/linequality), line speed (http://speedtest.net - choose San Jose)? Thanks, this can help.

mkress65

for whatever its worth, I browsed the same gallery as Andy -- the image to image time for larges was around 1/2 second (I have no idea what the school's bandwidth is, but this seems to indicate an internet or connectivity issue for your viewers.)

dogwood

mkress65 wrote:

for whatever its worth, I browsed the same gallery as Andy -- the image to image time for larges was around 1/2 second (I have no idea what the school's bandwidth is, but this seems to indicate an internet or connectivity issue for your viewers.)

I just did the same thing and saw the photos almost instantly. Much, much faster than trying to browse my own site earlier today-- wanna trade?

Seriously, in my experience, it seems like sometimes everything loads blazing fast on SM pages and sometimes it's slow. Seems like this happens to all sites, though, even the big kids like Yahoo sometimes loads slowly.

EdH

Andy wrote:

The gallery loads in about 5 seconds. Then, image to image (larges) is about 2 seconds. That seems fairly fast to me. Can you tell us more about your connection, line quality (www.dslreports.com/linequality), line speed (http://speedtest.net - choose San Jose)? Thanks, this can help.

Andy,
Thanks for the quick response. From where I am sitting right now its actually pretty quick. I'm at the corporate headquarters of a Fortune 50 company so I've got a good connection. Speedtest is 2401 download, 203 upload right now.

I'll do another test at home today.

The problem is my office is really the only place where I feel the viewing is acceptably fast. At home the speed is very variable. Some days its somewhat ok, other times its not good at all. I understand that much of this depends my ISP (Bellsouth DSL), network traffic, etc. but over the past few weeks I've been trying to check a random gallery on Zenfolio whenever I notice that Smugmug is running slowly. Without fail, Zenfolio is much faster. It seems as if the Zenfolio browsing experience is less directly linked to your connection speed. On any computer I can pretty much flip through a gallery as fast as I can click with Zenfolio. Its pretty rare that I can do this with a Smugmug gallery.

Even on this computer at work the Zenfolio browsing experience seems cleaner. Take a look at this random gallery http://dansantoso.zenfolio.com/p390661275/?photo=h1F0DB316#520991510

The template for gallery viewing is similar to the Smugmug style but clicking on the pictures just seems so much cleaner and quicker compared to my gallery that you posted. Maybe its exacerbated because the picture space is blank on my Smugmug gallery as I click between pictures but the Zenfolio gallery just seems quicker.

I'm glad to hear the answer to my question is "Yes". I really don't mean to be picking on Smugmug but I think the feedback is important and I know you guys take customer comments seriously.

Ed

EdH

To follow up, I'm now trying this at home.

Speedtest to San Jose:
1407 download
224 upload

I don't have a concept as to how fast this is but it does look much slower than my office.

Browsing my gallery now takes about 2 -2 1/4 seconds to go between pictures on the Smugmug style gallery. I'm admitedly not being too scientific, I'm simply counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi.... and getting almost through the word "three" on three Mississippi. Maybe I'm asking for too much but that feels pretty slow. I don't really enjoy browsing my own galleries at that speed.

Andy, I just went to your website (your work is really really great by the way) and the pictures in your "Buy Photos" gallery take about 3 - 3.5 seconds to go from one picture to another. If I want to view each picture on one of your pages (15 images per page) I spend about 45 seconds total waiting for pictures to load. If I'm just browsing for pictures to buy, I'm likely not going to have the patience to go through all 72 pictures in that category.

When I go to the Zenfolio page I put in my previous post from here at my home, I can click through the pictures much faster, just about as fast as I can press the buttons on the mouse and, more importantly, it feels just as fast as it did at my office. The only difference I notice about the Zenfolio page is it takes slightly longer to initially load at first than it did at my office.

My goal is to find a place where I can send people and know that they are having a somewhat consistent viewing experience. If everyone had the connection I had in my office, I wouldn't be too worried. Most people probably have a connection similar to what I have at home and its here where somehow Zenfolio has figured out how to make things faster.

Sorry for the long winded e-mails but I figure the more detail the better. Thanks again for the help.

Ed

Steve Cavigliano

Ed,
It still looks like something else is wrong here. I have similar up and download speeds as you. Even viewing large images in Andy's "Buy Photos" gallery, I am able to get the next image to load in a second or less. A gallery view with all thumbs took <2 seconds to load.

How fast is your computer and how much RAM do you have? Or, are you connecting to the Internet, wirelessly? I have a pBase account also and the viewing times seem very similar to me <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" >

Steve

EdH

Steve Cavigliano wrote:

Ed,
It still looks like something else is wrong here. I have similar up and download speeds as you. Even viewing large images in Andy's "Buy Photos" gallery, I am able to get the next image to load in a second or less. A gallery view with all thumbs took <2 seconds to load.

How fast is your computer and how much RAM do you have? Or, are you connecting to the Internet, wirelessly? I have a pBase account also and the viewing times seem very similar to me <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

Steve

Steve,
Thanks for the response. The computer I did my test on earlier was a HP laptop with a 3.2 Ghz processor and 1 GB of ram. I am running wireless through a Linksys router.

I just did another test with another computer at my house. This one is a Sony Vaio destop with a 2.66 Ghz processor and 1 GB of ram. It is hooked directly to the router. Interestingly enough the line test for this computer is 2447 download and 305 upload. I'm assuming this is because it is hooked up directly to the router instead of wirelessly (I never realized there was that much of a difference, anybody know if this is common?). This is actually faster than my work connection apparently.

I'm running Norton Internet Security on both computers at home.

Unfortunately it takes about 3 seconds to go between pictures in my gallery using the Smugmug view on this computer. Steve, in your Carissa birthday gallery I get about 3 seconds between pictures as well. Sometimes it goes to about 7 or 8 seconds and I get a full white screen before a picture comes up.

The speed of that same Zenfolio gallery is still blazingly fast on this computer.

Any ideas on how I could check to see if its an issue on my end? Thanks again for all of the help.

Jeffro

A couple of seconds between shots....and that's slow? People are in too big of a hurry these days. I got to have it now! Sorry if I took up too much of your time....

wellman

This caught my eye, so I figure I'll throw my hat in the ring.

The major speed boost you feel from Zenfolio is the fact that they prefetch images, meaning that while you're looking a given image, others are being downloaded in the background before you click on them. When you do click, it's blazing fast because the image is "already there."

It's something I'd LOVE to see SmugMug implement! If they did, I'd look something like this...

My $0.02...

Andy

wellman wrote:

If they did, I'd look something like this...

Practice that - I'll take photos

wellman

wellman wrote:

This caught my eye, so I figure I'll throw my hat in the ring.

The major speed boost you feel from Zenfolio is the fact that they prefetch images, meaning that while you're looking a given image, others are being downloaded in the background before you click on them. When you do click, it's blazing fast because the image is "already there."

It's something I'd LOVE to see SmugMug implement! If they did, I'd look something like this...

My $0.02...

W00t! barbbarb

EdH

Andy wrote:

Practice that - I'll take photos

I'm impressed! I ask the question and a few days later you've got pre-fetching and a better interface than Zenfolio.

Seriously though, the beta looks great! Thanks Smugmug!

devbobo

EdH wrote:

I'm impressed! I ask the question and a few days later you've got pre-fetching and a better interface than Zenfolio.

Seriously though, the beta looks great! Thanks Smugmug!

Hey Ed,

This feature has been in development for a little while, and it was just a coincedence with the timing of question.

But yeah, it's very sweet

Cheers,

David