One solution to blog posts that load slowly
On my camping trips this morning, I found several blog posts that took forever to load. They took so long to load that I cleaned Zoey the Cool Cat’s litter box…….. several times! 
Whenever I find blogs that take a long time to load, I am 99.314159265358% sure that it’s because of big, large, huge, monster, gigantic pictures. (To see how big a picture is, right click on it and then click on Properties.)
Today, then, I offer this suggestion for putting pictures in your blog posts:
-
Resize your pictures before uploading them to WordPress.
That does many things for you.
First, it allows WordPress to render the picture much faster, almost instantaneously, for the smaller size in your blog post. The widest blog I’ve ever seen was right at 1000 pixels. That means that there is no reason for you to upload a picture that is 5184 pixels wide (the size that my Canon 550D gives me). None whatsoever because WordPress is simply going to resize it to 1000 pixels or smaller. It’s the only way WordPress can stick a huge picture into the small blog.
Second, it is much faster to upload a small picture than it is a large picture. The average file size of my 5184-pixel-wide pictures is about 7 MB. Before uploading them, I resize them to 575-pixels on the long side, making them about 100 KB in size. Resize a copy, not the original! WordPress doesn’t have to do any rendering whatsoever, allowing my pictures to show up instantaneously. I’ve never uploaded a picture that was larger than 100 KB.
Third, a smaller picture of 100 KB uses less of your allowed WordPress storage space. You can upload sixty 100-KB pictures for every one 6-MB picture.
Fourth, those readers who are impatient with page and picture loading will stick around, look, read, like, and comment. Try it and see if you don’t get more likes and comments.
SNIPPETS are short posts about anything and everything.
Each SNIPPETS will have at leasst one picture.
After all, this is Russel Ray Photos.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray (that’s me!)
Posted on June 21, 2012, in SNIPPETS and tagged blogging pictures. Bookmark the permalink. 45 Comments.
Thank you Russ for reinforcing what I keep suggesting to people that upload directly from their 21 MP cameras without optimizing for the web. I’m starting to skip on those posts because they take too long to download. There’s no need to upload a dense image nor would you earn merits because is bigger.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING!!!!!!!! I am going to check my photos from now on. I am fairly new at this and knew nothing about pixel sizes. Sorry if I’m one of those bloggers with too large of an image. I will correct if I am.
BE ENCOURAGED! BE BLESSED!
OK this is what I found on my canon point and shoot the kayak photo I posted today said the file size was 1.2 MB and image 3648X2736. Feeling dumb, but didn’t see notation “pixel size”. Now is this file too large. My Canon EOS Rebel T3 gave me 4.4 MG file size and 2848X4272 image size. Like to hear your opinion. Don’t want to upset my blogger friends.
Those would be considered monster files. The 3648 and the 4272 should be reduced to about 1000, give or take. I reduce all my internet pictures to 575 on the long side. I’ve found that’s about the best for providing the detailed pictures that I want to provide, and it lets the Internet easily work with it, not to mention those dastardly smarty pants phones.
I work in the PC world, so I use Image Resizer. You can find it here: http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/
It’s free, downloads and installs easily, and you access it by right clicking on any picture or group of pictures from Windows Explorer.
If you’re in the Apple world, well, you’re on your own. Apple lost me as a customer way back in 1983.
Thank you so much for your help. I never thought about file sizes before. I am glad you said something. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I will take your advice.
BE ENCOURAGED! BE BLESSED!
If you were uploading monster files, you’ll notice a significant difference in uploading reasonably sized files.
I had just gotten Abode photo shop and just started to learn how to use it. Saw how to re size my photos, thanks to you. I have Corel also, will check it. I owe you one.
THANKS!
Awesome, love it when someone notices something they would like differently, then provides info how, & voila all benefit! Kudos!
“.”
Cat
And one more item, if I may add it: not too many pictures in just one posting. Even if they’re fairly small in size, the more pictures, the longer it takes for the post to load.
I have not noticed that but maybe it’s because by the time I’ve looked at the first picture and/or read the text, all the other pictures have loaded.
good advice. thanks
Thank you Russel , for the advice I use a lot of animation which as far as I know can’t be resized, I hope I was not one that you had problems with.
( Sorry for the mix up in your name yesterday, )
Christian Love from us both – Anne
Animation isn’t usually a problem because it doesn’t hold 26 million colors like pictures do, and videos have buffering built into them so that they stream well. It’s just those monster pictures that need to be worked with before uploading them.
That’s some helpful advice. I knew that WP would resize pictures for me, but (and this seems a little obvious now) I didn’t realize that the file size stayed the same. The more technical aspects of blogging are not my strength!
Thanks for the tip! I just made myself a note…..:)
I’ve noticed that background images can cause pages to load slowly as well. Thanks for the follow!
Excellent suggestion! I am one of those who skips certain blogs because the pictures are wayyyy too big to load decently, and I have broadband. Imagine those on dial-up! I size mine down to 600 pixels at 100 pixels per inch (I use Photoshop Elements, but Windows Live Picture Gallery will do it for you too).
I have no idea where to find these numbers and I’m swimming in all this advice that is confusing the heck outta me. I’ll need to check everywhere and everything to see what you all seem to already know. Dang! Talk about feeling like a moron!
Are you PC or Apple?
PC, and sometimes I use my iPhone to connect to WP but mostly PC.
Go to Windows Explorer and click on any picture. Down at the bottom of the screen you’ll see “Dimensions: _____________”. That’s the physical size of your picture. You’ll also see “Size: ________”. That’s the file size in KB or MB; make sure it is down in the 100 KB range, not MB.
The resizer I use is here: http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/
Download and install it. It’s real easy. Once it’s installed, all you have to do is right click on a picture or a group of picture and choose Resize from the menu. Then you’ll have a couple of other options, all of them pretty self-explanatory, but if you need help, let me know.
Thank you for taking the time. This is my ‘learn something new every day’ for today.
as I am a computer moron, I may take you up on the ‘let me know’.
I work from home so except when work actually gets in the way of play, and my little catnaps, I’m pretty much available 24/7.
Cool tips!
Are mine hard to upload?
No. I haven’t noticed any problems at your site, and I was there camping out just three days ago (33 likes and 18 comments).
Yes I know and I love you for leaving the camping site so much more interesting than it was before – I just wondered about the photo thing!
I always re-size mine (since a friend told me the pics I was sending were too big, years ago).
May I suggest you make a comment on the actual blog of these people. I know most people would appreciate the tip if you told them direct. I certainly would.
I used to use the wordpress slideshow option when I wanted to share a lot of photos in one post, but the slideshow seems to make the images so much smaller, that I’ve almost stopped using it. I like my photos to take up as much of the page as poss. (perhaps because I’m short-sighted and have trouble viewing my own pics LOL………..even with my glasses on……….LOL).
I have my viewing screen set on either 125% or 150% nearly all the time now. Yesterday I read a new blog from India and had to ‘view’ the words at 200% zoom, the font was the smallest I’ve ever seen).
Which is why I have my fonts set at 17 pixels. Big but not too big.
I did leave a comment this morning on all the blogs I visited where the pictures were monster. All of those people have been by to like or comment on this post, as well as to reply to my comment on their posts. Makes me feel good because I always worry about perceived negativity or “I’m better than you” when I leave such comments.
Hi,
Very well said, there are also a lot of people that are still on dial-up and never even get onto the blog because their computer freezes before the blog loads.
Great post, Russel. Many’s the time I’ve just given up when someone’s blog does this.
Thank you for the advice. I wish I had thought of it earlier. For the first 2 months I was loading full-size images (7+mb). In finally occurred to me I should resize them, but I think i am probably still using pictures that are too big. I will pick a smaller size for my next post. thanks again.
Thanks Russel for the great advice…I recently had someone kindly tell me my place loaded slower than usual…I’ve been working to decrease this problem so your wisdom comes at a perfect time.
Thanks a bunch!
This is very helpful. Thanks so much Russel!
Seems that several people have found it useful. Good. That makes my week!
dang dude, i was hoping folk would go get a cup of coffee, toast a bagel, watch the evening news, maybe visit the loo and then check out the page (that is if it finally loaded) sigh, now you’ve spoiled my master plan! thanks mucho
I used to take the dog for a walk, water the plants, or go for a 20-minute walk………… lol
i understand
how long does it take you to finish a good article like this one?
It just depends. I use voice recognition software, and since I can talk much faster than I can type, the time required to do posts is reduced considerably.
Thanks for this, I’m still learning as I go and using different devices I sometimes load rather large pictures without realizing it. My father in law points this out to me now and again. Blah, blondy here must get with it
Thank you so much for this! I will go back and edit post and see what happens. Have you had trouble loading my blogs pictures?
No problems at your blog.
Thanks again Russel!
Pingback: PHOTO FRIDAY: WORDS « Francine In Retirement