Hosting issues for a site with lot of images

You really didn't explain what is going on, you said you are having issues but what are the issues that you are having? What is your website?

If you site is running slow, see if you can disable CloudFlare and see how it runs then. What is your Dedicated Server specs? Who are you hosted with?

It also may be a script that you have on the site if it is moving slow, a dedicated server should be able to handle 6k visitors.

One of the biggest old problems of hosts is graphics. The reason is that what happens is that when a person goes to a page, it only downloads HTML! The browser then goes through each link and requests THAT. That drives the hits up. going to a page with 6 new graphics creates SEVEN hits! THEN, if those graphics are LARGE, it can take a LONG time, and eat bandwidth.

Frankly it is MY policy, and I suggest YOU do the same, to keep pages under 3 seconds. You should also display NON scaled graphics! By THAT, I mean SOME sites may take a 3" x 5" graphic, and have html render it as 1" x 1.5". OK, that works. It may look the same. WHAT is wrong with it? You are now downloading TEN times as much and YOUR server and the visitors browser are burning resources! ALSO, consider resolution. Do you REALLY need the resolution on the site? AND, if it is layered, MERGE THEM! If it is animated, have fewer FPS. If you can use text and color, DO! You can EASILY make these changes, speed u your site, lower costs, etc... If you are REALLY having 3-6K users a day, this is a BIG deal! IMAGINE! A 6K graphic on your page, that you don't need, means you have over 1GB extra bandwidth that month for NOTHING! If you have to pay....

Steve

Get all of those images onto a CDN such as Amazon S3. Get them off your server. That will take a big strain off your server.

you should optimize server, database, codes, etc. 4-6k visits a day is not a big traffic at all even at a shared hosting account. your server is able to handle over1 million page views a day.

i have checked your site. the images are processed by php engine. you should check your httpd or htaccess file or server control panel if there something starting with "AddHandler"

Why are you letting people link to the images on your server? Is that why it's gaining popularity? Or are they link buttons to your site? If you're just hosting images for other people and aren't getting anything out of it turn on hot link protection and cut them off.

Try to host your images on amazon s3 or some external service , get the trouble out of your server!

Migrating the images to some other external Content Delivery Service (i'll suggest Amazon S3) will certainly ease the server's workload. Could you tell us the specifications of your Dedicated Server?

6K per HIT=180000 over a month
10Mbps=~2,592,000,000,000 a month
That means 14400000 hits a month or 480,000 a day
6000 HITS/day(about 180000a month) with only 6K =1/80th of 100% of the bandwidth

Hopefully, they will view more than 1 page and, if you have graphics, you almost certainly will have more than 6K per page. GRANTED, they make networks that are over 100 times as fast now, but almost no host is going to have anything close to that going to your system. They make ones 10 times as fast, but THAT usually isn't pure either. ALSO, this doesn't take into account downloads and other load, or memory or CPU speed, or switching time. BESIDES, it assumes all access is spread out, and it WON'T be! There will likely be several spikes and valleys.

So I would say that you should stay away from shared systems. Besides, a problem like this will have a shared host SHUT YOU DOWN!!!!! And they LITERALLY kill first and ask questions later. It could be HOURS before you are notified.

As for the graphics being fed through PHP, they should be fed DIRECTLY! It is bad enough that the HTTP server has to process them, but IT is optimized for that, and nothing can make things better, since it will be ADDING work. As for the CDN, etc? as I said earlier, doing such a thing WOULD reduce the load on your server, if they are loaded DIRECTLY! If the PHP on your system loads from THEM, it will INCREASE your problems, starting wth DOUBLING the bandwidth usage. If they are loaded normally from the browser, the bulk of the load will shift to the CDN.

Steve