I have a load of images – up to 16 per post plus a thumbnail and a logo. I want to figure out what the best way to handle them is. Since I’ll be adding new entries quite regularly the number of images in the default uploads directory will get quite large.
Is this something I should be concerned about? As far as load times etc. I was going to create a co-gallery post type and attach the gallery images to this post type. Then set the gallery id on the Company edit page ( different post type ) to which the gallery belongs. A little code and I have an image gallery.
Or should I consider ( ad figure out how to ) uploading the images to a completely separate location/directory? Would doing this be worth the effort and is it really beneficial?
Hope that makes sense.
Thanx for your help.
Reduce image size using Photoshop, smush.it, or any other decent compressor. A decent rule is .jpg for photos with lots of colors and/or details and .gif for text and under 256 colors with less details.
Use exact image sizes, if you use php to resize the images make sure they are cached versions of the re-size.
Use a CDN or a non shared fast host.
Make the user cache the image in his browser by using;
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"or<FilesMatch ".(gif|jpg|png|js|css)$"> Expires 2592000if your on apache ( insert your own numerical values).By far the most important thing to do is proper compression an sizing.
Have you considered using a plugin like W3 Total Cache? It allows you to used cached versions of you pages to save load time. If you configure it correctly it should greatly improve your load times.
Link to W3 Total Cache:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/