Portfolio Item THumbnails Slow to load

[wademd]

Hello,

On my site http://www.thaiguestfriendly.com/bangkok-hotels/

It takes a long time for the portfolio items to load. There are 100 items to show and each item uses the slideshow thumbnail. Each image is around 10kb so it should be fast. I Tried using a lazy load plugin but that didnt seem to work or do anything. It appears that every item has to load before it will show anything. Having my visitors see a blank screen for 30 seconds isnt good for traffic.

Any Idea how I can get the portfolio items to load up faster? I tried Jetpacks Photon plugin but that seems to break the portfolio detail page images.

Thank you.

[wademd]

Also, I tried using a CDN to load images faster but its still super slow. I need to be able to show 100 portfolio items at a time but it takes a long time because it waits to show EVERYTHING at the same time instead of loading 1 by 1. I dont recall having that issue when I was using pinpoint.

Any way to fix that?

Thanks

[Tahir – SUPPORT]

Hi,
Here is a report so you can analyze whats taking the most time to load http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.thaiguestfriendly.com/sEyytM3L#report-yslow

There are just too many image requests that is causing the page load this slow.
I believe you need to use the pagination option in the portfolio .

Thanks
Tahir

[wademd]

Hi Tahir,

Thank you for the reply back. I understand that there are too many images on there. The problem is that not even the first will display until the last one is finished. The other images load on the page that are not associated with the portfolio widget.

Is there any way to get a “lazy load” or “infinite scroll” to be applied to the portfolio widget? Or at least have items load in order instead of an “all or nothing” approach?

Thank you.

[Tahir – SUPPORT]

Hi,
Please see Screenshot Link: http://prntscr.com/2cb2av . As i earlier mentioned you need to turn on the pagination so that only a few thumbs are shown at start and others when they are needed.

Let me know if this works.

Thanks
Tahir

[wademd]

Hi Tahir,

Yes I know I can turn pagination on but I dont want to. I’m just asking if there is a way for the Portfolio to function like how the blog does. You know how the blog seems like an infinite scroll of items that get loaded at different points when you scroll down?

The reason why I dont want to turn pagination on is because I am using portfolio items as each hotel. If I have 100 hotels and 5 neighborhoods, not all the filter categories show up because some of the hotels are listed on other pages. That causes great confusion when using the filters with my users.

But that aside my point earlier is that the portfolio items dont display until all the images are done loading. I want to know if there is a tweak or hack or code replacement to any file that will allow the items to show one-by-one as they load OR maybe show the portfolio items without the images loaded yet.

In the empty loading space when I move my mouse around I can see some of the links from the portfolio items but none of the graphics are shown.

Is there any chance Ed can join this conversation, he has been super helpful and understands what im usually talking about on the themeforest site?

[wademd]

Also you can see here that even 12 items loads slows
http://www.thaiguestfriendly.com/chiang-mai-bargirl-guest-friendly-hotels/

Granted its faster than my bangkok page because its 12 instead of 100+ but its still way too slow.

[Swift Ideas – Ed]

Hi @wademd

Unfortunately it’s not possible to work like the blog, due to the filtering. We may look at enabling infinite scroll when no filtering is used.

Most of the loading time is actually taken up by pinterest. Do you have a plugin that adds this?

Also, maybe you should think about enabling Better WordPress Minify?

– Ed

[wademd]

Hey Ed,

Thanks for the response. Good to finally have someone get what im talking about.

“Most of the loading time is actually taken up by pinterest. Do you have a plugin that adds this?” What do you mean by that? What plugin are you talking about? Do you have a link? I know the portfolio kinda has a pinterest feel but a little confused by what you mean.

THanks for the tip about Minify. Strange though how using W3 Cache and using Max CDN as the image distribution network actually made things slower. I de-activated W3 Cache and things are running a little better.

[wademd]

Also Ed, Is there anything I can change/replace in the code that would allow the portfolio items 1 by 1 instead of waiting to load everything before it displays?

Right now its show after all items are loaded.
logic: Load 1-30 = display item

Most common method would be to load 1 at a time i would think
logic: load1=display-item, load2=display-item, load3=display-item, load4=display-item, ect…

does that make sense? Is that possible to do with this theme? I have seen so many out there where that just happens naturally. Im not sure why this portfolio widget has to wait for everything to load before it can display anything.

[Swift Ideas – Ed]

Hi @wademd,

While that may seem logical, unfortunately it’s not possible to work that way with the script that powers the filtering.

I’m not sure how big your page size is for your portfolio page, but that may be the issue. I’m happy to test it if you can send over a link?

Thanks,

– Ed

[wademd]

Hey Ed,

Thanks for all the responses. I think im just going to switch from using a portfolio item to a blog post. Can I have you add 1 feature though? You can set a custom link for the title for the portfolio, but can you also make that an option for the Blog posts? Right now switching to a blog post fixes my problems being able to use the infinite scroll and I style it close enough to how I want but right now I have the thumbnails going to an external link and the title going to the blog post, then the client would have to client on a button to take them to the link I want them to go to.

Here is what I have:
http://www.thaiguestfriendly.com/krabi-guest-friendly-hotels/ao-nang-bargirl-guest-friendly-hotels/

The using the hotels as a portfolio option is 100% perfect BUT being that I need the infinite scroll and you cant do that within the portfolio widget then this is my 2nd option. BUT I would be eternally grateful if you can add the same external linking options on the blog title too!

Thanks Ed!

[Swift Ideas – Ed]

@wademd – I’ll have a think about this, as having two link options may not be the best idea. Will see if I can find a way around it though.

– Ed