Gallery page size excessive

  • Unknown's avatar
    cardinal51 · Member ·

    Good morning all,

    I have a page with several Tiled Galleries. Looks great, but although the thumbnails are smaller in screen size they are actually not smaller files.

    This results in an excessive amount of data needed to be downloaded when the page is loaded.

    Is this sloppy programming or am I doing something wrong here ?

    Please advice

    Thanks

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Hi there, let us know the address of the site you’re working on. Thanks.

  • Unknown's avatar
    cardinal51 · Member ·

    Hi Jennifer,

    Thanks for your response.

    It is not a public page. So I will try to send it as a private message.

    I guess my question boils down to:
    Should the Tiled Gallery option create thumbnails that have a reduced file size, or is it only reducing the on-screen size?

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Hello again, I was trying to establish if your site you needed help with is hosted here on WordPress.com. Is this for cardinal51 or another site?

    If you have an upgrade plan here on a WordPress.com site, the quickest way to get support for this issue is by using the contact us form in your site’s dashboard or at https://wordpress.com/help/contact rather than posting directly to the community forums. Otherwise, all support for free sites is given here in our forums.

    If this is for cardinal51 here’s what I’m seeing on your Gallery page. You’ve uploaded images that are 1920×1080, but you’ve saved them as PNG. The file sizes are 2M or higher. That is a killer on load times and in terms of SEO. Try optimizing your images for the web and as JPGs, which will bring down the load time. https://wordpress.com/support/media/image-optimization/

    Post back here if you have other questions about this topic.

  • Unknown's avatar
    cardinal51 · Member ·

    Hi Jennifer,

    At the moment I have the “Personal Plan”. It is confusing what forum I should use for support. Thanks for offering to use the direct contact option. Should I use that option instead or is it fine to keep using this forum ?

    I understand reducing the file size will speed up the page loading. Judging from your answer the code for the gallery does not create reduce file size thumbnails and is not supposed to do that, this is the way it was designed. It only reduces the width and height of the original files.

    That is an easy way of doing things but of course it is not the right way. Depending on one’s point of view of course :-)

    What option should I use to get a gallery with real thumbnails that not just appear smaller but also have a reduced file size ?

  • Unknown's avatar
    cardinal51 · Member ·

    I forgot to mention (and am unable to find the edit option to update my previous post) that SEO is not important in my case. The less hits the better, as a matter of fact no SE hits at all would be the best :-)

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Hi there, you’re welcome to post questions wherever you wish, but the Personal plan does give you direct support via LiveChat (when available) or via email directly with WPcom’s support staff. https://wordpress.com/support/help-support-options/ rather than needing to post in the public forums.

    If SEO is not important to you, then let me ask if anyone is going to be visiting your site on a mobile device or from rural areas where internet speeds may not be optimal? Think of the size/weight of the image as data transfer instead. Site visitors will likely click away off your site before heavy images load.

    Also, if you don’t want your site to be publicly available to visitors, then you can make your site visibility Private and invite only those people you wish to view the site. https://wordpress.com/support/settings/privacy-settings/

    And lastly, back to your original question, first I would republish that single gallery page as an index and publish the galleries in child-pages by date.
    https://wordpress.com/support/pages/

    If you use the Child Pages shortcode on the Gallery (Parent) page, it will automatically update to include the new Child page each time you add one.
    https://wordpress.com/support/list-pages-shortcode/

    Another option is to use pagination on the Gallery (Parent) page and add the latest page always at the top of the page with a link to earlier galleries at the end of each gallery.
    https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/blocks/page-break-block/

    I have a couple other ideas, but need to test and will be offline for a while.

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    BTW-is there a particular reason you saved/uploaded those images as PNG rather than JPG? They’re both lossy formats.

  • Unknown's avatar
    cardinal51 · Member ·

    BTW-is there a particular reason you saved/uploaded those images as PNG rather than JPG? They’re both lossy formats.

    Yes, default in Win10 saves screenshots as PNG

  • Unknown's avatar
    cardinal51 · Member ·

    Hi Jennifer, thanks for all the help and suggestions.

    Think of the size/weight of the image as data transfer instead. Site visitors will likely click away off your site before heavy images load.

    That would be ok. But I did recognize the issue. Therefore I wondered why the gallery option is not the way galleries should be and started this thread.

    I reduced the data on the page a bit by using higher compression.

    Also, if you don’t want your site to be publicly available to visitors, then you can make your site visibility Private and invite only those people you wish to view the site. https://wordpress.com/support/settings/privacy-settings/

    Thanks, will look into that.

    And lastly, back to your original question, first I would republish that single gallery page as an index and publish the galleries in child-pages by date.
    https://wordpress.com/support/pages/

    I understand, a good suggestion. I had planned to go that route for each month, not for each day.

    If you use the Child Pages shortcode on the Gallery (Parent) page, it will automatically update to include the new Child page each time you add one.
    https://wordpress.com/support/list-pages-shortcode/

    Sounds like a neat feature. Will look into that.

    Another option is to use pagination on the Gallery (Parent) page and add the latest page always at the top of the page with a link to earlier galleries at the end of each gallery.
    https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/blocks/page-break-block/

    Please be aware that I am not looking for an option to use the data on the page or split the page. I know how to do that.

    My original question was why the gallery option is not a real gallery option because it seems it only creates thumbnails in screen-size and not in file-size.

    of course all you good suggestions are still really appreciated.

    I have a couple other ideas, but need to test and will be offline for a while.

    You going on vacation or to jail ?

    :-)

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Hello again, What’s this thing called a “vacation”?

    default in Win10 saves screenshots as PNG

    Odd, in my Snip & Sketch tool in Win10 it gives three options when you go to save: PNG, JPG and GIF. Just need to use the drop down at “Save as type.”

    I got a bit caught up in the changeover from the Classic to Block Editor at MySite, so overlooked your follow up post. My apologies. Meantime, glad you found some of my suggestions useful.

    Looking at your Gallery from August 19, I see those thumbnails are 239×134 pixels but given the amount of time they are taking to load, it does looks like the full image is loading in the background, but let me tag this thread to ask Staff to help unravel the mystery.

  • Unknown's avatar
    cardinal51 · Member ·

    Easiest and fastest way to take screenshots is the PrintScreen key. Especially when taking shots of full screen videos. Defaul file format use by Win10 is PNG

  • Unknown's avatar
    cardinal51 · Member ·

    Easiest and fastest way to take screenshots is the PrintScreen key. Just hit the key and file is saved automatically. Especially handy when taking shots of full screen videos. Default file format used by Win10 is PNG in my case.

  • Unknown's avatar
    cardinal51 · Member ·

    Just did some checking of the html code, seems my initial complaint is not correct. The the page is filled with thumbnails like

    src=”………….press.com/2020/08/2020-08-19-53.jpg?w=750

    Those 750 width pixels files are about 150 kB. That is definitely a lot less than the 650 kB original file.

    But it does seem the on screen size is way less than width 750 pixels, looks more like width 350 pixels. Not sure why that is, seems a waste of resources.

  • staff-blorbo · Staff ·

    That’s because of Retina/hiDPI screens, which most screens are these days.

    They have a much larger pixel density, meaning more pixels are crammed into a smaller space, this requiring images that are larger than the space displayed, otherwise they’d be blurry or pixelated.

    You can read more about that at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_density

  • Unknown's avatar
    cardinal51 · Member ·

    Thanks Mac, I will read up on that

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