Basic Questions

[DanS]

The time has arrived for me to consider alternatives in image presentation at my website - http://lenslight.com. Vacations to California, and most recently Italy, produced some large albums.

Is EE designed for FAST presentation of high quality digital images? Or, is it more a function of the quality of the server hardware and location access to fast telcom trunks.

To date, I design on my PC with FrontPage 2000 (FP2K) and BreezeBrowser, then upload direct via http. My webhosting company supports both PHP and MySQL and these are available to me under my hosting plan.

Question 1. Can I install EE to a folder within my FP2K website? Has anyone used this approach?

Question 2. To maintain my current design process of working offline, do I (can I) install PHP and MySQL support as well as EE to my PC running MS Windows XP? Or, do they run in the server environment only?

Thanks for the help.

[Pekka]

DanS wrote:
The time has arrived for me to consider alternatives in image presentation at my website - http://lenslight.com. Vacations to California, and most recently Italy, produced some large albums.

Is EE designed for FAST presentation of high quality digital images? Or, is it more a function of the quality of the server hardware and location access to fast telcom trunks.

Hi Dan,

There are three separate parts in serving gallery pages:
1. gallery script builds the html code
2. html code is downloaded by browser with IMG link to image.
3. image is downloaded by browser.

Steps 2 and 3 are dependant on
a) html page size
b) internet connection speed
c) image size
d) and also by (in _extremely_ popular galleries) server speed

But step 1 is what EE does and it does it very fast. Speed of that is of course CPU and disk speed related because MySQL stresses disk access and PHP uses CPU and RAM extensively.

I my home server EE builds a single photo page html code in about 0.1 seconds. Largest portion, 0.08 seconds, of that is what MySQL server takes to process and return the data.

Even a common virtual server will get the html code done in less than a second, more likely in .5 seconds or less. This server, which you are now reading and is running this forum, does an EE page in about 0.18 seconds and that includes EE checking if big image is really available (that can be set on/off in editor). This server runs EE 1.3, the next version is at least two times faster because of new database code optimizations I've made.

Server performance is of course an issue when you start serving big photos and need reliability. I have chosen to pay more for my own dedicated server which means I have rented a whole machine for this forum, my galleries, and few low-traffic web sites I host. Good thing about dedicated server is that it is fully in my control, normally you end up sharing one machine with 200 other sites. Downside of course is that I must take care of it, install programs, set it up and keep it running in top shape. But the company I rent from, http://www.rackshack.net, has also good support when hardware problems and other technical issues may happen (although they do not provide support in setting the server and sites up).

Question 1. Can I install EE to a folder within my FP2K website? Has anyone used this approach?

I see no reason why not. If you can run PHP files in FP directory then EE will work. I think there have been people on this board who run EE in IIS server and in FrontPage environment.

Question 2. To maintain my current design process of working offline, do I (can I) install PHP and MySQL support as well as EE to my PC running MS Windows XP? Or, do they run in the server environment only?

I use and program EE in my Windows XP Pro. It will require that you install MySQL, PHP and some web server (Apache is recommended) into your Windows. EE 1.3 contains "EE Backup" which lets you dump database data (but not image files) between servers and EE installations.

I've installed Apache+PHP+MySQL manually but there are some easy installers in http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Softwa...allation_Kits/ ... E-novative looks pretty good.

[DanS]

Pekka - Thanks for the clear and to-the-point answers!

My only reservation at this point is concern for the size of each of these programs. I looked at the links you recommended and was unable to estimate how much space will be needed to load all four programs. Any guessimate?

Dan

[Pekka]

PHP 15MB
MYSQL 50MB
APACHE 1.3 18MB
plus database and web documents (about 4MB)