I am using RW8 for my website (https://www.pdallosart.com) and everything works like a charm. Here is the problem: I have a very large number of images on the site and consequently the file is large, about 192MB, loading much too slowly. Is there any way to reduce the file size (just as one can do for PDF files) without making each individual JPG file smaller, which of course is a major pain?
Thank you in advance for the help.
Best wishes, Peter
Peter Dallos, Sculptor
This won’t help directly but…
I had a quick look at your site. It is downloading “png” files, not “jpg” on the home page. These are large. The first one alone is 1.3 mb. I converted that to a 30% quality jpeg and it came down to 60k with no discernible visual difference.
Apologies - I’m running on barely a 1 megabit per second connection so it becomes very apparent.
Thanks Greg, I’ll check this out.
I think the answer to your question is “No”. You probably need to work on all the images. But it’s actually not a major pain. There are very good batch apps around. One is PhotoBulk.
I really like Retrobatch as it is so flexible and powerful and fast. I could put 800 images into one folder, let Retrobatch work on them to optimize size, dimensions, convert from PNG to JPG, etc. all in one run. More here:
If you are using really large images (e.g. 1.3 Mb each) then you don’t have that many images to convert since each one is so big. I use the guideline of using images no larger than 300k. Obviously if you have a lot of images on one page, then you need to adjust a bit. Even on an image-heavy page I don’t want to use more than about 900k total. But this is just a guideline.
Your second page loads extremely slowly for me:
… the good news is you probably don’t have that many images but they are all super large. My guess is changing the maximum height/width, changing to JPG, and using something like TinyPNG.com for the last step would all work well.
At any rate Retrobatch is a great tool for things like this.
I’d also suggest you consider switching to a responsive theme. You’re using the old Manitoba theme which doesn’t work properly on mobile devices - its much harder for visitors to navigate. And Google will drop non mobile-friendly websites down its page rankings as well.
Will do most of what you need at $9.99 compared to $49.99 for RetrobatchPro.
Retrobatch Pro does more but is a lot more expensive if that’s a concern.
Thanks Rob I didn’t know about Google’s machinations. So, if I switch to a newer theme, do I have rebuild the site from scratch, or RW has a way of doing it without a huge amount of labor? Advice much appreciated
Yes, Photobulk may be enough. But Retrobatch (regular, not pro) is $30. If you are an educator you get another $10 off. So for me the purchase price was not that different, but the feature difference was big between the 2 for my needs.
… honestly to get a sense about how big your photos are (both in terms of k/Mb and pixel dimensions) it may be useful to use the free Photoshop Express Online. Easy to crop, resize. It’s a one-by-one process but you’ll get a good “feel” for how big your images are. You can also convert from PNG to JPG. Here’s the link:
https://photoshop.adobe.com/#
That really depends on how the site has been built, which page types you’ve used, how you made the galleries. However, given you have so many images - great work by the way - that need to be re-sized to reduce loading times, if I were you I’d be tempted to use this as an opportunity to re-think and re-do the site from scratch, rather than trying to just transfer it across. There’s so much that’s changed since the Manitoba days that you could really build something beautiful to showcase this artwork.
Just my two pence.
Rob
Thanks for the advice Matthew and Doug; I’ll get one of these apps. Best, Peter
When I first learned HTML some years back there was a function that let the browsers load a low resolution image before the full quality image was loaded. The internet speed was more of an issue then. Is there a function in RapidWeaver to replicate this?
Here is the description from htmlref.com
lowsrc
In the Netscape implementation, this attribute contains the URL of an image to be initially loaded. Typically, the lowsrc image is a low-resolution or black-and-white image that provides a quick preview of the image to follow. Once the primary image is loaded, it replaces the lowsrc image.
I have not seen that functionality for years and years. It may still exist but I have no idea how to implement this. It certainly is not done by default in browsers.
From a practical perspective using RW, some stacks offer lazy loading. This helps in a slightly different way and does help pages load faster. Some stacks offer it, many don’t. For example see:
https://foundry.elixirgraphics.com/documentation/lazy-load-image/
and for many more details:
The lowsrc HTML attribute is a “non-standard” and obsolete.
Important: The lowsrc property is obsolete and should not be used. Instead, you should use an image format which loads progressively (such as progressive JPEG). Or make sure your images are all well-optimized and balanced for appearance versus size.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLImageElement/lowSrc
Thanks everyone for all the helpful suggestions. I reduced the size to ~60MB and changed the Theme to Simple Business (I like simple presentations without too many bells and whistles). Anyway, it is pretty good and I am happy. One remaining issue: as one scrolls down, the left-hand menu remains on top and hence disappears from view. Any way to make only the content scroll with the menu always in sight? Thanks again. Peter
That’s a old non-responsive theme. It looks really bad on mobile. Might want to rethink that choice of theme.
I am confused Doug – thought that ALL “non-classic” themes were responsive. How do I know which are? Thanks, Peter
Best to stick to ones marked for RW 7 or 8 in the themes dropdown. Others from Realmac are likely older and non-responsive.
Themes from individual devs are going to be a bit trickier to tell.
If you can’t find a minimalistic responsive
theme try
It has a fixed (top/bottom) navigation so it will always be visible
As @pmjd Paul said stick to the ones in RW7 or RW8 dropdown for one of the delivered themes.
All of Themeflood’s themes are responsive. There are a few that are free and all have a try before you buy demo version.
Thanks everyone for all the good advice – there is much to learn. I have converted to the “Engineer” theme and it looks good (at lest to me). Please visit (pdallosart.com) and comment if you wish. Best, Peter