Hidden Images Not Hidden Anymore?!?

SamirD · November 8, 2010

I just discovered one of my galleries not having hidden images anymore. On top of that, it looks like any rotations are also back to the original orientation. :scratch

I hope this isn't a permanent issue affect my other galleries as I have THOUSANDS of them set up like this that I would need to redo. :cry

Anyone else seen anything funny?

Gallery link:
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW

Andy · November 8, 2010

What images are supposed to be hidden?

SamirD · November 8, 2010

Andy wrote: »

What images are supposed to be hidden?

I don't remember.

cry

cry:cry

But I know this one wouldn't have been published:
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769722980_FQkvX

In a series of the same shot, only one would have been published:
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769721607_ohDvM
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769721668_PorA4
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769721758_Gmt2y
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769721850_R6Tq2

Oh please tell me this hidden marks aren't permanently gone. I would have literally 100,000+/100 man-hours of work instantly added to my plate.

cry

Andy · November 8, 2010

SamirD wrote: »

I don't remember. crycry:cry

But I know this one wouldn't have been published:
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769722980_FQkvX

In a series of the same shot, only one would have been published:
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769721607_ohDvM
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769721668_PorA4
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769721758_Gmt2y
http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769721850_R6Tq2

Oh please tell me this hidden marks aren't permanently gone. I would have literally 100,000+/100 man-hours of work instantly added to my plate. crycrycrycry

Hi Samir, we didn't do anything that would unhide photos. I just checked my galleries and another as well, that have hidden photos and they are hidden.

Are you using any sort of scripts or api stuff?

SamirD · November 8, 2010

Andy wrote: »

Hi Samir, we didn't do anything that would unhide photos. I just checked my galleries and another as well, that have hidden photos and they are hidden.

Are you using any sort of scripts or api stuff?

The only thing I'm using is a script I made myself that gets a list of galleries from a particular category. I then use that list to make a random image that can be clicked to get to the same image in the source gallery. That module is in action on the lower right side of the www.huntsvillecarscene.com homepage.

I checked a few other galleries that have showed up in the random image module--they're fine. I checked other published galleries from that same time period of January 2010--they're fine. This gallery seems like it's just an odd man out, but it still scares me because I have so many thousands of galleries that I won't know if this has happened to another gallery.

I tried an experiment. I logged out so I would see the gallery as a guest--and the images are still hidden.

I guess the marks just don't show up for some reason when I'm logged in as the owner. And I now I really don't care if they don't--I was so panicked that I'd have to redo years of work that I was about to have a heart attack.

Thank you for the quick response Andy, and for all your help.

Andy · November 8, 2010

Samir, this photo is NOT hidden http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769722980_FQkvX
but you are saying it is.

SamirD · November 8, 2010

Andy wrote: »

Samir, this photo is NOT hidden http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769722980_FQkvX
but you are saying it is.

Yikes! This is really strange. When I was on the gallery logged in, there were 154 photos. When I clicked log out and then clicked on the link to return me to the gallery, the count in the gallery was 74, which is what would happen if the hidden images were still hidden.

Something funny is happening.

jfriend · November 8, 2010

SamirD wrote: »

Yikes! This is really strange. When I was on the gallery logged in, there were 155 photos. When I clicked log out and then clicked on the link to return me to the gallery, the count in the gallery was 74, which is what would happen if the hidden images were still hidden. Something funny is happening.

Samir, this comment has nothing to do with your hidden images, but I noticed that you have a lot of external stuff in your page.

Your site is loading script files from all of the following sites:

cdn2.picmedia.com/get_dom_data.php
www.huntsvillecarscene.com/adserver/adjs.php
pagead2.goodlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js
googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/test_domain.js
google-analytics.com/urchin.js
services.picamedia.com/js/picad.js
b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js
s11.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js
www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js
dcn4.picadmedia.com/set_page_meta.php
adservices.picamedia.com/get_aff_ad.php
googleads.g.doublet.net.net/pagead/ads
dg.specificclick.net

Do you really need all these? It's a no wonder your site is bogged down by customizations. You have custom scripts loading from 13 different external hosts. And, it looks like you have at least three different hit tracking services installed.

And then there are a bunch from facebook and twitter which may be Smugmug's doing (I'm not sure).

And then there are the scripts that Smugmug uses to make the site work.

SamirD · November 8, 2010

jfriend wrote: »

Samir, this comment has nothing to do with your hidden images, but I noticed that you have a lot of external stuff in your page.

Your site is loading script files from all of the following sites:

cdn2.picmedia.com/get_dom_data.php
www.huntsvillecarscene.com/adserver/adjs.php
pagead2.goodlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js
googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/test_domain.js
google-analytics.com/urchin.js
services.picamedia.com/js/picad.js
b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js
s11.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js
www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js
dcn4.picadmedia.com/set_page_meta.php
adservices.picamedia.com/get_aff_ad.php
googleads.g.doublet.net.net/pagead/ads
dg.specificclick.net

Do you really need all these? It's a no wonder your site is bogged down by customizations. You have custom scripts loading from 13 different external hosts. And, it looks like you have at least three different hit tracking services installed.

And then there are a bunch from facebook and twitter which may be Smugmug's doing (I'm not sure).

And then there are the scripts that Smugmug uses to make the site work.

Yeah, that's why I've learned to turn all customizations and features off when reviewing pictures. It's sped things up 300%.

Most of those scripts carry over from the footer from the main huntsvillecarscene.com site, although I haven't touched fb or twitter yet.

It's surprising that all three of those statistics sites vary wildly in their results.

Unique visitors yesterday:
Sitemeter: 253
Statcounter: 362
Analytics: 317

I just use sitemeter to error on the side of too less rather than too many.

There is one script that's been added on my SM site that's not yet on the main site, but since other galleries seem to show hidden marks fine, I don't think it has anything to do with this problem.

jfriend · November 8, 2010

SamirD wrote: »

Yeah, that's why I've learned to turn all customizations and features off when reviewing pictures. It's sped things up 300%.

Most of those scripts carry over from the footer from the main huntsvillecarscene.com site, although I haven't touched fb or twitter yet. It's surprising that all three of those statistics sites vary wildly in their results.

Unique visitors yesterday:
Sitemeter: 253
Statcounter: 362
Analytics: 317

I just use sitemeter to error on the side of too less rather than too many.

There is one script that's been added on my SM site that's not yet on the main site, but since other galleries seem to show hidden marks fine, I don't think it has anything to do with this problem.

My point was that now we understand why your customizations are so slow. You have older computing equipment and a TON of externally loaded customizations. This is not a Smugmug issue. This is an issue with how you've chosen to customize your site.

SamirD · November 8, 2010

jfriend wrote: »

My point was that now we understand why your customizations are so slow. You have older computing equipment and a TON of externally loaded customizations. This is not a Smugmug issue. This is an issue with how you've chosen to customize your site.

Yeah, I knew there were some slowdowns related to the customizations, but I didn't realize how much until I just used a bare SM look. And Andy didn't notice anything was any slower with customizations, so that didn't help point me in any direction. I just happened to stumble on it when I turned off the facebook and twitter buttons when reviewing because they would be the last thing loading. Then I kept turning stuff off until it got blazingly quick. I got to a point I wasn't waiting on the site anymore.

Now I've got a quick setting for galleries that I'm reviewing versus publishing. I know it's probably still a bit slower for my site visitors, but I know they've got faster processors than I do even if they are running XP, so I'm thinking the javascript should execute pretty quickly.

jfriend · November 8, 2010

SamirD wrote: »

Yeah, I knew there were some slowdowns related to the customizations, but I didn't realize how much until I just used a bare SM look. And Andy didn't notice anything was any slower with customizations, so that didn't help point me in any direction. I just happened to stumble on it when I turned off the facebook and twitter buttons when reviewing because they would be the last thing loading. Then I kept turning stuff off until it got blazingly quick. I got to a point I wasn't waiting on the site anymore.

Now I've got a quick setting for galleries that I'm reviewing versus publishing. I know it's probably still a bit slower for my site visitors, but I know they've got faster processors than I do even if they are running XP, so I'm thinking the javascript should execute pretty quickly.

It's not only the execution, but also loading JS files from 10 different servers. That's a DNS lookup and then a download from every one of the servers and the browser will typically only do a few at a time, the rest get serialized. Some of these JS files might be cacheable in the viewer's browser cache, but the first page would not. It's up to you, but it seems like you have excess if you want your site to be performant. Do you really need 3-4 different hit tracking services? Do you really need 3 different ad serving services?

SamirD · November 9, 2010

Andy wrote: »

Samir, this photo is NOT hidden http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769722980_FQkvX
but you are saying it is.

Any update on this? Have all my hidden marks vanished in this gallery? :cry

SamirD · November 9, 2010

jfriend wrote: »

It's not only the execution, but also loading JS files from 10 different servers. That's a DNS lookup and then a download from every one of the servers and the browser will typically only do a few at a time, the rest get serialized. Some of these JS files might be cacheable in the viewer's browser cache, but the first page would not. It's up to you, but it seems like you have excess if you want your site to be performant. Do you really need 3-4 different hit tracking services? Do you really need 3 different ad serving services?

Yeah it's definitely a lot of overhead. But most people have enough cpu power to not really notice the execution. As far as the hit tracking and ad serving, the answers are yes and yes. I'll actually be adding another few hit trackers in the near future to better position myself to apply to ad networks.

I just don't think there's a way around the bloat. :cry

SamirD · November 9, 2010

SamirD wrote: »

Any update on this? Have all my hidden marks vanished in this gallery? :cry

Bump. I need to know if this happened so I can start going through the thousands of galleries I have to see if this is an issue and develop a workaround.

SamirD · November 9, 2010

Andy wrote: »

Samir, this photo is NOT hidden http://newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com/gallery/11007614_uQVYW#769722980_FQkvX
but you are saying it is.

I can see it too now Andy. :cry I don't know why it worked when I logged out that one time. I hoping that there's some data sync problems in the datacenter and that it will find the hidden marks and put them back.

Otherwise, I do have a serious problem as I do rely on the hidden marks to not show images or hide images that have been requested to be hidden. If I can't rely on the hide marks, I need to know.

Andy · November 9, 2010

Hi Samir, we didn't unhide it - I'm sorry. I really have no explanation for this.

SamirD · November 10, 2010

Andy wrote: »

Hi Samir, we didn't unhide it - I'm sorry. I really have no explanation for this.

I was afraid that would be the answer.

cry

cry Time to check all the other galleries and redo the work on this one. :cry

Thank you for the reply Andy.

SamirD · November 10, 2010

I also just noticed all the image rotations were undone.

Could it be possible that this gallery had to be restored from some sort of backup that didn't have any of these changes applied?

Andy · November 10, 2010

SamirD wrote: »

I also just noticed all the image rotations were undone. Could it be possible that this gallery had to be restored from some sort of backup that didn't have any of these changes applied?

No Samir, we did not do that.

SamirD · November 10, 2010

Thank you for the reply. Do you know when the hide feature was introduced? I know it was prior to April 2008, but that's it. I searched the release notes, but didn't find it.

Andy · November 10, 2010

SamirD wrote: »

Thank you for the reply. Do you know when the hide feature was introduced? I know it was prior to April 2008, but that's it. I searched the release notes, but didn't find it.

Looks like late Dec 2007.

SamirD · November 10, 2010

Andy wrote: »

Looks like late Dec 2007.

Thank you Andy!

SamirD · November 10, 2010

I went through every one of my published albums from the introduction of the feature in Dec of 2007, and I'm happy to report that it appears that this one album was the only one where this happened.

Hidden marks were still found on all the other albums.

I'm concluding it was just a freak occurance, but documenting it here in case someone else runs into the same issue. Well that's 6hrs down the toilet, but better than a couple of thousand hours...

Special thanks to jfriend for his hidden images customization--that alone made this research at least 3x faster.

Hidden Images Not Hidden Anymore?!?

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