Hi I am making a small website for local business but need help with images and load times since I have never made a website this image heavy before.

the website here at
http://woodartrestore.com/customcabinets.html
on the custom cabinets page has alot of images are are running off of the hosting account on ftp or whatever.

For awhile I did have them linking from photobucket to help load times a little which it did but now images won't appear when hosted from photobucket(the first image is using PB link)

So basically need some tips to make images load faster but keep high quality since the pictures need to show off the works men ship.

Sam,

first step, make thumbnails, even though these are pretty big thumbnails, loading the full sized image and then squishing it down with a smaller width/height is definately not the way to go Super-especially when your reduced size is not perfectly scaled to the original image.

Solution: Use your favorite image editor to scale down the full sized images to the sizes you display on your first page. I scaled your first image down to a 273 x 364 jpeg image using the highest resolution, and my 'thumb' nail was 63k, compared to the 345k image you have there now.

Beter yet, using a little less than 100% quality on the jpeg (80%) I got an image that weighed in at 17K.

This is really what you need to do. Otherwise, everyone will leave the site before you've loaded your second or third image.

Jefkin

PS. in the time it took me to download your first image, do both resizes and write this post (about 10 minutes) your page still hasn't finished loading!!!

I absolutely agree, you need to make smaller thumbnail images that load with the page, then give the option to view a larger image.

At the top of the website design forum I just posted a sticky that has a link to 30 image gallery/slideshow scripts.

thanks I knew deep inside I had to do that but IDK jsut wanted to be lazy but now check it out. Really fast load times now
http://woodartrestore.com/customcabinets.html

also I am gonna have it so when you click on thumbnail it brings you to another page to view the image which is no problem for me but I am making this for a friend who has no web design skill at all and I doubt he will be able to create new pages link them and everything on his own.

So maybe some suggestions? maybe a code to when you click on thumbnail it just opens image in a new window but not part of the site, just a image viewer maybe?

Way better Sam.

loaded your front page in about 25 seconds.

jefkin

it's not that slow