Images Sizes

[allensmith81]

Hi all,

We currently allow users to upload images of 6mb via the admin panel. What size do you support? do we need to allow bigger images now the world is generally better connected?

@AndyK/@JavierG  - Does Khoros have any recent data on this?

[JasonHill]

Hey @allensmith81 

Personally I don't think 6Mb is anywhere near enough these days. We asked support to increase our size limit as people on smartphones don't want to be mucking around trying to reduce the size of their photos to share on the community - they just give up if they get an error message saying the photo is too big. 

Jason

[allensmith81]

 @JasonHill 

I would tend to agree, what size did you settle on and what was your justification?

[JasonHill]

We increased it to 75Mb (the current limit offered) as we thought the most important thing for us is to encourage sharing of high-quality photos and to ensure a seamless user experience when members are posting. Page load times are of much lower importance to us. 

[allensmith81]

Uhmm,

I think we would have a higher concern on page load times at 75mb - anyone else have a view on this?

[sdodds]

@ojas I get the issue with users an uploading images - few photos are taken on anything but smartphones nowadays. People are used to uploading to instagram, etc. quickly and problems will reduce the images uploaded.

But I still agree with @allensmith81, page load times should be a concern. Not only should the Viewers/Visitor experience be as important as the upload experience, but it is important not to leave out the SEO impact of a slow site. So while there is a good argument to be had that smaller image size limits will reduce the number of images that are uploaded to your site (and the potential for engagement), lengthier page loads can limit the overall traffic to your site due to the drop in SEO.

Like most things, it is probably a balancing act. But I'd love to see if Khoros has any data to share about image size, SEO and engagement. It may also be a good product idea to improve image optimization of member uploads to solve for both ends of this issue.

[JasonHill]

@sdodds agree with your sentiment, but every community is different. We set our limit at the maximum because encouraging members to share high-quality images is crucial to our community's success. For @allensmith81's support community, I imagine SEO is more important.  

I've submitted the enhancement request to improve image optimisation because it shouldn't be an either/or - 

https://community.khoros.com/t5/Khoros-Community-Product-Ideas/The-platform-should-automatically-red... 

Jason

[allensmith81]

@sdodds 

I couldn’t agree more but I also see @JasonHills view (btw although support happens on the TechCommunity we are actually a marketing community so we want hi fidelity images but not at the cost of it taking 10 minutes for a page to load :))

[sdodds]

@JasonHill  100% agree. The balance will be different for different communities, audiences and desired behaviors. As long as you make the trade-off with eyes open, that's all that matters.

I've voted for the idea you posted, makes a ton of sense and the platform should keep up with expectations on how images (and other rich media) are shared.

[ClaudiusH · Accepted solution]

I think the problem you describe isn't one:

When a user uploads a large image using the editor's photo upload it will land in the original size in their profile's album. But by default the photo upload offers to insert the image in "Large" size. And that's actually the largest possible image size. Users cannot even select "Original" as size to insert the picture.
Screenshot of image sizes available from editor's photo uploader
So from a 3MB uploaded image, the actual embedded image file which could impact your page performance gets down to 141KB.

So I'm all with Jason here: Allow as big as image size as you can, the UX will prevent them to be too large in size.

[allensmith81]

Thanks @ClaudiusH 

your 100% right, again!

[sdodds]

Good to know - thx @ClaudiusH !

[JasonHill]

Many thanks for the clarification @ClaudiusH. We bow down to your detailed knowledge of the platform!

Jason