Project Size - Too Large (?)

Elements
1

The issue

Is one of my projects simply getting too big? Should I be managing this better?

Background

Hobbyist. Been using Elements for about 4 months, 12 to 15 years of Rapidweaver before this.

Currently got 2 sites online that are simple, small and not being developed (still made from Rapidweaver).

My 2 other sites are also online and both made using Elements now, one fairly small, the other’s a bit of a beast (and growing).

The BIG project

Updated early yesterday using Elements 1.5.2 and it’s now reached 114MB.

Three main pages and a much smaller and simpler privacy page.

The main pages contain a 220kb hero banner image and around 160 further images each. These have been reduced using Squash, are 600px wide and are typically 85kb each. None of these banners or images are duplicated on other pages. I don’t feel I can realistically reduce image quality or size further, they only just look OK now when viewed as a lightbox image, I fear taking these down to 60 or 70kb would mean I ought to disable the lightbox effect.

I have an imported heading font (460kb TTF) and a paragraph font (54kb TTF) stored under Resources.

I was referring to something on the large site yesterday, I was in the street in an area with 4G coverage and it all seemed a bit slow and clunky, probably not surprising.

The question(s)

Should I be doing something differently?

Can the site continue to grow to 130MB? 150MB?

At what point do things stop being sustainable (am I past that point already)?

Finally

It’s a hobby. I’m hoping for a simple solution, I’m not really looking at throwing $500 at this. I can’t be the only person in this situation so what have others done to resolve this sort of thing?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or help offered. :folded_hands:

2

John - It maybe worth exporting your site to your hard disk. Then look at the files via the finder - arranged from biggest first … and just check that the file sizes marry with your expectations. Usually, there’s something no quite as you expect, Jol

1 Like
3

Good one John - I just did this and I have 4 image files over 4Mb and quite a lot over 300k - which is normally my ceiling. That’ll keep me busy for a while : )

Be great Dan to see a few failsafes built in so that big files get flagged

Jol

4

Mine is over 3 gigabytes the site is 17mb but the media is huge :slight_smile:

5

Jol,

Thanks for the advice, that’s a job for tomorrow.

John

6

Very good idea :+1:

7

I would look into warehousing the images somewhere else so there not a part of your project file.

8

Objectively that’s not really that big. :slightly_smiling_face:

I feel like the historical advice regarding large project files is a remnant from earlier versions of RapidWeaver where the app could become unstable when working with mutli-GB sized project files. There were other things in play as well such as third-party plugins that could add to the instability (various image gallery stacks, etc.), along with Apple’s use of Intel processors which were a lot less performant than their new Apple Silicon chips, and their woefully inadequate RAM in base models.

With the above said I haven’t really put multi-GB sized project files through the ringer in Elements yet, so YMMV. Good news though is I haven’t seen any reports of project file instability in Elements so far. :man_superhero:

But the general advice has always been to warehouse your resources (images, videos, audio, etc.) as those are about 99% of where project file bloat comes from, although unfortunately this adds complexity which some people don’t want to deal with.

Also important to note, project file performance in Elements is not the same as website performance once you export it to your web server. Your project file could be large, but the exported website could still perform quite well once published depending on how you’ve optimized it. :slightly_smiling_face:

9

Arlen,

Might need to think about that (used to do that 10+ years ago, warehoused images at various sizes for different devices / screen sizes I seem to recall). Will give it some thought, thank you.

John

10

Dan,

Many thanks.

Warehousing - have I not seen you say on an Elements video that warehousing is largely a redundant concept these days? Perhaps you were referring to less image rich webpages.

Website optimisation - I have Lazy Loading applied to below the fold images. I’m not sure if there are other Elements features of this nature, might have to see what your bot has to say on the subject.

John

11

Different Dan :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:. We have differing opinions on warehousing, although maybe not? From a technical perspective, I think warehousing is fantastic. From a user experience perspective, I think it’s terrible. :rofl:

If you are working with hi-res photos, like you are a professional photographer showcasing your works, or if you are a videographer showcasing 4K footage, or if you are @MichaelDroste showcasing hundreds of files of audio, warehousing makes a lot of sense from a performance and technical perspective.

If you are just building a regular website with some highly compressed images, a few 720 or 1080P vidoes, and maybe some .mp3 audio files, I think warehousing is overkill. :slightly_smiling_face:

Lazy loading is great! Using Squash to compress your images is also great. I’d also recommend checking out Cloudflare (or some other CDN), as those offer other performance enhancements. :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
12

image
image344×257 44.3 KB

Image size suggestion … green if it’s below 200kb

amber if between 200-400kb

red if it’s over 400kb

??

1 Like
13

Ooops, careless on my part, sorry.

14

No worries, happens a fair bit.

Perhaps my new username will fix that. :rofl:

1 Like
15

:+1: