Gallery2 Slow

I have a test install of gallery2 (2.1.2) on my site, because I'd like to get away from the micromanaging I am currently doing with images. Unfortunately, I've found the site to be slow regardless of load (currently 5 and still having problems). I've generated all the thumbnails, but the main page regularly takes 10+ seconds without accelleration. The album pages take about 3-5 seconds. If I max out the accelleration, it takes 2-3 seconds per page, which is closer to acceptable. The problem is, what happens when the server is really under load? Most people won't wait more than 8 seconds for a page to load.

I've used Gallery2 on dedicated servers before and had no problem, but that doesn't really say whether Gallery2 is efficient. I've disabled about half of the modules in an attempt to speed it up.

Is this an issue with DH?
Could it be due to the install being "multi-site" ?
Is Gallery2 just this inefficient?
Is there a better system out there?

I really just need a gallery that looks decent, can be set to automatically generate multiple sizes of uploaded images, and is easy to organize. It doesn't need to be able to support multiple users. Anyone have any thoughts?

Thanks!

Check out Gordaen's Knowledge, the blog, and the MR2 page.

1.) Is this an issue with DH?
yes
2.) Could it be due to the install being "multi-site" ?
Yes
3.) Is Gallery2 just this inefficient?
YES
4.) Is there a better system out there?
Ya... static html image loads that don't use SQL or php. ;)

In all seriousness. gallery2 is heavy weight, and you're on a shared server. SO.. whats the problem? a heavy weight program on very busy servers. 'Unfortunately there's no easy solution other then moving to static pages or finding a dedicated server.



See here what else you get!

In reply to:

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static html image loads that don't use SQL or php. ;)

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...which is easily enough accomplished with a myriad of programs you can run locally on your computer and uploading the output files via your ftp client. The "free" Picassa from the folks at Google is just one example, and it does a very nice job of combining the requisite image optimization, thumbnailing, and html generation for you. It's almost a "no brainer".

Granted, the result is not "interactive" for your users to be able to upload, add galleries, etc., but that isn't its purpose. It is designed to facilitate "efficient" hosting of images, as suggested by this last post.

Different tools are good for different things - "When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail"

--rlparker

Thanks for the inputs bfaber and rlparker.

The main reason I wanted to use G2 is to take a lot of the load off me and I don't really need most of the features, so I don't have a problem ditching it. Picassa looks like it might be a good choice, except most of this I am doing at work on a Mac, haha. When waiting for updates, big scripts to run, etc. I work on other projects :)

The biggest problem with some of the other software out there is that the output tends to not be the clean html that I desire. I maybe end up going with a smarty template or something, since photoshop can easily handle the image resizing part with batch processes. Then it's a matter of whether I want to create a script to plug in the file names or do them by hand or... hmm...

It's a bit frustrating that they offer Gallery2 as a one click install when it is so close to being useless. Oh well, live and learn!

Thanks again

Check out Gordaen's Knowledge, the blog, and the MR2 page.