Coppermine Photo Gallery v1.5.x: Documentation and Manual

Table of Contents

Performance tips

Here are some tips to get the best performance from your Coppermine gallery. It covers changes you can make to both Coppermine's configuration and your server configuration (if you have access to that of course).

Configuration settings

Many of the configuration options have performance implications. Some features can cause load issues when used on large galleries or galleries that are structured in an unusual way. The general advice is to disable any feature you don't actually make use of and to keep any numeric options sane.

General

Things that increase server load generally

Spiking

Things that can cause load spikes on specific pages. If you are on a shared server you should avoid creating load spikes.

Server settings

There are some settings that are not directly related to coppermine, but to the webserver. If you're webhosted, you usually can't manipulate them. Changing your server setup goes unsupported on the coppermine support board. However, it's recommended to look into those settings as well - maybe your webhost can change things for you.

PHP settings

If you have control over your server you can improve Coppermine's performance by adjusting your PHP configuration.

MySQL settings

If you have control over your server you can improve Coppermine's performance by adjusting your MySQL configuration.

Third party tools

There is a number of third party tools that can help you to improve the performance of your gallery. Please note that the coppermine group is not affiliated with any of those tools nor do we support those tools.

YSlow

YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they're slow based on the rules for high performance web sites. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the popular Firebug web development tool.

By adding an .htaccess file containing the following code into your Coppermine gallery directory you can apply some of these suggestions. If you do not use Apache as your webserver you will need to find the corresponding configuration settings for your webserver of choice. If your site no longer works after making these changes you can simply rename or delete the .htaccess file.