Hi,

I have a question about the maximum value for "Thumbnail cache expiration time". Users "cheetah" and "Salamander" asked for this some years back but did not really get any answer.

I had a problem with long loading times with Simple Image Gallery PRO. I found out the problem was that the gallery reloaded after the "Thumbnail cache expiration time" expired.

When I enter one of my larger Image Galleries with 46 images, and the "Thumbnail cache expiration time" is expired, it loads very slow (it takes about 40 seconds).
As long as the "Thumbnail cache expiration time" is not expired it loads very fast (about 2 seconds).

I tried to set the "Thumbnail cache expiration time" to two days (or rather 2880 minutes that is). That worked fine, but as soon as the "Thumbnail cache expiration time" expired after two days, the load time was slow again of course.

Now I am wondering what is the maximum "Thumbnail cache expiration time". Can I for instance set it to one year /525600 minutes? (60 X 24 X 365 = 525600 minutes).

In this way new visitors on my web page would not have to wait for the gallery to cache every now and then and this would make my site faster and more predictable. If I want to add new pictures I could just reset the cache with setting "Thumbnail cache expiration time" to 0 and then setting it back to the large value again.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Akustikoi

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Here is one of the larger galleries:
asbjornflo.net/en/art/norway-remixed/norway-remixed-photo

We suggest to set the plugin cache to 120.
If your performance is too slow, make sure that your images are not too big..

That is the same answer that was suggested in these two threads as well:
forum.joomlaworks.net/simple-image-gallery-pro-%28plugin%29/thumbnail-cache-expiration-time-9657/
forum.joomlaworks.net/simple-image-gallery-pro-%28plugin%29/thumbnail-cache-expiration-time/

But is it possible to set it to a very high value so that it takes a long time to expire? Is there an upper limit to this value? Could you set it to one year? (525600 minutes) Is this possible?

In this way, a large gallery would only take 2 seconds instead of 40 seconds to load.

For some people: This is a bug.
Someone who understands the recommendation but has a slow shared hosting may want to try other gallery components that simply generate the thumbnails once. If you know that once you create a gallery pictures will be the same: why would anyone generate the same thumbs every 2 hours? No matter how big the gallery: it just does not make sense to overwrite perfectly good thumbs over and over.

Just like many other forum users with the same concern, antiakusmatikoi's question is pretty straightforward:
What is the maximum value for "Thumbnail cache expiration time"?
Of course: who would -again- overwrite good thumbs?

The answer is quite shocking: "We suggest to set the plugin cache to 120."
Why? Why would you do that?
What is the maximum allowed time?
Does anybody know?

Can you disable the expiration?

But still if gallery has for example 30 pics and those are never changed why thumbnails should be recreated at all? Do that once and stay that way.

I suggest there should be an option to choose rather turn off thumbnail cache expire or not.

Your problem is that you are the first one visitors to rebuild cache after expire time. And you probably click at every Item, or many of them, you have.
All visitors after you who click at Item will have fast page load. So nothing to worry about.

I set my SIG PRO cache time to 1 month. And i have "Clean cache" plugin.
I changed all instances in SIG PRO PHP files to cache2, made folder "cache2" and let "Clean cache" plugin delete all native cache folder at every save and apply in admin panel.

That way thumbs from SIG PRO stay away and they are OK. And i can delete cache folder regulary without fear to delete hundreds of images from SIG galleries.

But still if gallery has for example 30 pics and those are never changed why thumbnails should be recreated at all? Do that once and stay that way.

I suggest there should be an option to choose rather turn off thumbnail cache expire or not.

You have that option. Put time to 10 years, if you wish.