Why is there a significant delay in the activity refresh after the image upload reaches 100%. I test this in the test site too and the same problem is there. How can we speed this time up??
Once the image is uploaded, that’s only part of it. WordPress generates multiple thumbnails at different resolutions. It then adds the image to the custom media library post type. It also extracts and imports all the image metadata. Uploading just gets it to the server. It has to do all of this after. If you want it to happen faster, you’ll need a faster webserver. Often times this is only a problem if you have $5/month webhosting on some shared webserver that limits your resources and has a few thousand clients on one server. If you have a dedicated server, like I do for my websites, the delay in refresh is maybe 1.5 to 2.0 seconds at the most.
This isnt a problem with rtMedia and it’s not actually a problem at all, it’s all about your webserver.
Ben
Hi Ben
- So the demo site of rtmedia is also hosted on a shared server? Because the refresh time is also similar for the demo site.
- How does buddypress activity plus plugin achieve a much faster refresh?
@Navinachettri – I can not speak for the rtMedia server, because I do not work or help them with anything. I’m just a customer, nothing more, nothing less.
The BuddyPress Activity Plus plugin does a lot less, which is why those updates appear faster. It’s literally just a few lines of text, not a feature rich plugin such as rtMedia.
When it all comes down to it, with webhosting – you get what you pay for. 
Cheap hosting = crammed servers. Once you hit a dedicated server of your own, things start to run as they should – very fast.
Hi Ben
So all I can conclude is that rtMedia designed for people who can afford to have a dedicated servers only. For the rest of us we cannot have users waiting for a few minutes to have the images uploaded. Thanks for your insight.
@Navinachettri – No. You are 100% incorrect. It is not rtMedia. It is WordPress that generates all the various thumbnails and does all the image crunching. But you should not place blame on WordPress either, you should place blame in the crappy webhosting company you currently use.
With webhosting – You get what you pay for! Try a better webhost.
Hi Ben
So the only problem that you see is with my webhosting and my localhost (configured via XAMPP). Because the speed is similar in both.
I don’t think the problem is in my child theme as with the twenty fourteen theme also the speed is the same.
Can you suggest an alternative to XAMPP before I can zero on my webhosting service.
Also Ben, I forgot to mention:
I have tried in twenty fourteen theme with only Buddypress and rtmedia plugins enabled with no improvement in speed.
Sorry for jumping into this late.
@illusionsglass Thanks Ben for all the support you have provided so far.
To answer your questions:
demo sites are NOT as fast as they should because we do not have much caching enabled. Also there are too many demo sites are on same $20 server from - https://www.linode.com/pricing
Image processing is often can be speed up using PHP imagemagick. Please check if your server has it enabled? Another variables are SSD/CPU Cores. On demo sites both are present.
To test hosting impact, it will be better to buy a linode/digtialocean VPS. They are available on hourly basis so for testing you will end up spending less than $1. You may use https://rtcamp.com/easyengine to have optmized server setup.
I am not sure about other plugin, but if its simply attaching files to activity, without generating thumbnails, then it is going to be “faster” at the cost of less functionality. But as you are exploring rtMedia, you may need additional functionality as well.
Out of curiosity, may I know how big image files you are uploading and how many of them at once?
Hi Rahul I have been uploading images that is sized between 200-300kb one at a time
That shouldn’t be a problem then.
I just tested uploading image to demo site - http://demo.rtcamp.com/rtmedia/members/admin/activity/8165/ and it took expected time.
When I am uploading media in buddypress, rtmedia made many calls to different plugins in the site for the short time of the upload. So this explains a part of the latency.
The question is WHY?
Is rtmedia deliberately made to reduce performance in the free version and such issues will not be there in the pro version?
I have imagick working now.
@rahul286 Just wanted to understand how imagick would speed up this process than GD (though I don’t see any difference)?
Is it due to Coding style as referenced in GD vs Imagick?
If so, is rtmedia coded in ways to take advantages of this?
When your server has Imagick installed, WordPress uses it first.
As rtMedia uses WordPress Media API, rtMedia automatically benefits from Imagick.