I am interested in the theme Forward. I am showcasing art photos and also selling them online.
I need a theme that loads quickly to showcase allot of photos in a good quality - is the Forward theme the quickest loading theme on the market? or what do you recommend? - What quality do I need to reduce the images and in which format so I have the best quality and also the best speed in loading time of the site? what tools can I use to have the best quality at the smallest file size?
How many photos can I showcase in Forward before the site gets too slow? How can I avoid or workaround that problem?
What is the best way for showcasing like an online art gallery: SuperFlex slider or the Light Page solution, or can you recommend a bette solution for showcasing art photography in a clean, simple minimalistic way?
Is RapidCart Pro compatible with Forward? And also compatible with Light Page?
I am building my fist website ever and I think about buying Forward and Light Page, SuperFlex, Production and more - is that all compatible with Forward and RapidCart Pro? - If I use all these extra Stacks will the loading speed and time of the site slow down allot?
Can somebody give me an example of how to use all the Stacks they offer with Forward so I can make the best use of the Stacks and how to set up a website structure that works for my clients?
That’s a lot of questions — ten to be precise! My experience on the forums is that posts with multiple questions often don’t get answered because they require an all encomapssing knowledge of a range of complex subjects that would require several hours to answer completely. It’s best to focus your posts on just a few questions at a time and you’ll often find you get much more detailed responses.
From my experience, I think it is. But I haven’t tried every theme. And ultimately its pageload speed will be defined by how well you optimise all the images. Which is a whole 'nother subject — and one that will no doubt be answered by one of the forum’s image professionals — for example, you’ll find some good advice here from @Rovertek and @Mathew.
I don’t know if Light Page and RC Pro can be combined in a way that makes sense. But manually putting some RC Pro product stacks inside Light Page should work in my opinion.
Light Page, SuperFlex, Production are all compatible with the Forward theme (it’s by the same developer) and therefore should also work with RC Pro.
Generally: if you want to show a lot of photos, try to use “warehousing” instead of putting the image files directly into your RapidWeaver project.
Size down all images to the maximum size you want them to be (for example 900 x 600 px at 72 dpi), save them in high jpg-quality (99%) and then drop them onto a tool like JPEGmini. This way you have top image quality at the smallest file size possible.
I confirm RapidCart Pro is fully compatible with Forward theme.
Here’s a directly link to a product page made completely with Stacks and new upcoming RapidCart Pro version.
How does “warehousing” the images work? If I don’t put the images in my rapid weaver project - where do I put them?
You simply put the images inside a folder on your FTP server and manually link to them. You can do this with an FTP-tool like CyberDuck or Transmit. The speed of your webspace will for sure be enough and your website will be as fast with warehousing as without.
It will make your RapidWeaver project file smaller. The result is quicker loading and saving of this file and much faster site-uploads to your FTP server, since these pictures are already on the server and don’t have to be uploaded again. I’m not saying you should warehouse all pictures of your site (many stacks unfortunately still don’t support warehousing anyway). But if it is possible you should do it.
All this has nothing to do with the speed of your webspace. If it is fast enough to put a website on it it’s for sure fast enough to be used to warehouse images…
I am having a hard time making a good decision on how big I should showcase my art photos online - I know usually the resolution is small - but with the 4K and 5K iMac resolution for example - I want my customers to see my art with allot of detail so they see the quality and hopefully buy - so I think detail matters - on the other hand people will steal my photos -
So whats a good resolution in the 4K and 5K monitor situation we are in now?
Is a size of 2000 x 2000 pixels too big? - what can you recommend?
Do I need to set the resolution to 144ppi because of Retina display? will 72ppi look disappointing on Retina?
I have all my photos in 300ppi - does is make more sense to downsize to 150ppi for photoshop - instead of 144ppi ?
I am also thinking on making it possible to right-click-save the image so people can look at them offline, share them with friends etc - as a strategy to make a sale in the future - what do think? - am I nuts?
@Fabian Optimizing images for viewing in Internet is a common topic for any websites not only for RapidCart Pro.
Displays size and connections speed have increased in latest years but your website, for usability and SEO, must be fast for most of your visitors, not only the few with a 5k display and a fiber connection.
Do you really need product images to be so big?
I suggest you to use max 1000 px, 72 dpi, medium quality JPEGs.
Hi-res photos can be provided separated.
I agree - the website must load fast - I want to use jpg mini and caffein stack to do that - but I want my images to be retina-ready -
When I use 1000 px at 72 dpi the photo will look not good on retina displays - to make it look good on retina should I use 1000 px at 144 dpi - or 2000 px at 72 dpi ? (still don’t understand what a retina display does with a 72 dpi photo?)
How would you provide hi-res photos? and in which resolution?
Browsers don’t support image resolutions other than 72 dpi.
Pixels are what’s matter. If you use 144-dpi images, they are not automatically displayed as “retina”.
All you can do is using 72-dpi images with double pixels amount.
Want to display a 1000-pixels image on retina displays?
Just create a 2000-pixels image and force it to 50% with CSS.
In RapidCart Pro, the same product images are used in both thumbnail and lightbox window.
If you don’t enable lightbox (not your case afaics) just create images with size that’s double the size of your thumbnail column.
If lightbox is enabled, images will be displayed at 80-90% size of the browser window (display size if fullscreen, but who could browse a web store at fullscreen?!) at 1x resolution.
So there’s potentially no limit in image size.
2000-pixel would let you be quite sure to display images at retina or retina-like resolution, but make sure image size in KB is light enough to be usable.
We will introduce a new functionality to add “thumbnail” and “original” images to products in a future version of RapidCart Pro.
Is it possible with RapidCart Pro and also the theme Forward to force showing 50% of image in CSS?
Is it possible to show a 2000-pixel image at 2000 pixels on non-retina display - and only force it to 50% when its displayed on retina? - or will it be shown on all displays as a 1000-pixel image? in that case I would need a 4000-pixel image to be shown at 2000 pixels on retina, right? - can I reduce the size of a 4000-pixel image to KB to make it light enough?
