repost from Hyperscale Forums -- 50,000 large photo scans at the NHC Online Library removed

50,000 large photo scans at the NHC Online Library removed
August 30 2008 at 1:24 PM
by David Aiken
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Major change at the Naval Historical Center from now to Jan 2009

The 50,000 large photo scans at the NHC Online Library are to be removed from now to Jan 2009. All links to these large photos shall break.

This is prompted by the piece in "Navy Times", and a deluge of other complaints about the extreme slowness of the Naval Historical Center website.

Rear Admiral DeLoach and the current web hosts spoke. They told him that nothing could be done to improve things at their end, since the problem is that there are too many image files on the site, and these are clogging up the works. The slow speed came suddenly in early May 2008.

The Naval Historical Center is to contract a new website host. In the meanwhile, the temporary method chosen is to delete the 50,000 image files in stages (the thumb nails are to stay).

The NHC knows there is little benefit to be had in taking down the website's most popular feature, both in terms of maintaining relations with the long-suffering patrons, and in terms of the very real risk that Google and other outside portals to the Online Library's contents would just de-list the NHC due to the massive quantity of broken links that would result. The latter would be a real tragedy, as most of the user traffic comes in via those outside portals. On the other hand, maintaining the NHC site's current glacial access speed is also not a viable option, since hardly anybody can use it unless they possess the patience of Job.

1) Finally, after mulling over the options, the NHC reluctantly decided to pull out the Online Library's large JPG files (amounting to about 25,000 in total), in the expectation that this would greatly reduce the site's overall file population, and also the amount of server/cache capacity that is in use (Those JPGs probably represent 60-70% of the sites total megabyteage).

2) This will leave all the Online Library's content pages (HTML files) and all of its thumbnail images intact, so reference capabilities and all of its internal and external subject links will remain as before. However, clicking on the thumbnails will not bring up the larger JPGs, as they won't be there anymore. We expect that this action will improve the speed of the entire website enough to make it useful.

Understand that this is a temporary expedient, with an expected run of a month (or, in a worst case scenario, until the end of 2008) pending reestablishment of the website at another hosting facility, one that will have much greater inherent server and bandwidth capacity, and which will be far more robust than the current (and increasingly unviable) host.

a) The first to go is all the larger JPG files for the "80-G" series images and some other much smaller collections.

b) Beginning on this coming Tuesday, the JPGs for all the other number series are to be deleted. c) the "NH" items are to be last. IF there is a marked improvement in running speed, the "NH" JPGs may be left alone (those being the core of the NHC's own collection).

However, you should plan on the disappearance of all of the large JPGs during the course of the first week in September.

A suitably garish message, summarizing the actions taken and hopes for the future, has been added to the Online Library's front page, and to the NHC Photo Section's introductory page.

In the meantime, the NHC would appreciate any feedback you care to offer concerning whether or not you are seeing improvements in the running speed of the NHC Website as a whole.

original post link here:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/149674/message/1220117059/50%2C000+large+photo+scans+at+the+NHC+Online+Library+removed