I have set up a ZENphoto site for my wife, but it is running very slow. I’ve seen other sites loading a lot faster.
Link http://www.maitetobon.com/
I’m using a Window 2003 shared hosting with MySQL 5. All the permissions have been set correctly and the cache and album folders have all the image files in place.
I changed the web path on the .htaccess file from RewriteBase /zenphoto to RewriteBase \
Is it better to use a Linux-Apache web server to host Zenphoto?
Can any one help me to figured out why is it running so slow?
Thanks in advance.

There could be a few reasons for this...

1. PHP runs best in a FastCGI environment or as a server module. FastCGI keeps PHP open between requests and caches memory, while normal CGI needs to run a new PHP process for each request. Are you running PHP as CGI? If you can, use the SAPI modeule for IIS, use FastCGI, or switch to Apache with the mod_php module.

2. We discovered two inefficient algorithms in the 1.1.4 version that could be causing problems - one has to do with EXIF handling, the other with page loading in large galleries. The next version 1.1.5 (due out on Friday February 29th, or try the latest nightly build) may help your problem.

I believe it is most likely a server problem involving PHP's CGI configuration. A correctly configured Windows/IIS server should be able to run Zenphoto just fine, though we do recommend using Apache if given the choice.

Thanks a lot for your reply. I'll check with the web hosting service because I don't know how they have their servers configured.
Regardless I'll upgrade on friday to the latest version though.

I thought I should let you know that WebHost4life is not running PHP as CGI.
I'll wait until the 1.1.5 upgrade to see if the loading time improves other wise
I'll move the site to a Linux server. I'll keep everybody posted to help future users.

I'm having a similar problem on my zen photo gallery, http://www.kyle-brooks.com/photos/. Most of my images are high-res images 1-5mb, but even the galleries with small images seems to be loading slow. I'm using dreamhost. Any idea's on whats going on? I've got no clue how to fix this problem. I thought maybe it was a theming issue, but every theme is having the same problem. It seems like the OP solved his problem, I'd appreciate any help you guys could give. Thanks in advance!

Okay I decided to pre-cache things and it seems to be helping (though its no where near done so I can't be sure). I'm going to have a huge gallery of 1000s of photos..it seems like the pre-caching is going to take a good while, do I only have to do this once and it automatically does it from then on or do I have to do this whenever I add new photos?

Yes, you only have to do it once. Actually caching is done automatically whenever someone visits the site and looks at uncached images.

Thats what I thought...thanks for the clarification!

It also helps a LOT to use smaller originals. Especially on shared hosting like Dreamhost. But, if you need the larger versions then waiting for them to process isn't the end of the world.

I've not done much with my albums for the past couple weeks but last I was, I noticed remarked difference in viewing my albums. Slow to the point the albums didn't load. No changes except nightly builds up to last Friday (think that).

Being that I'm not all that well, would I have messed up somewhere in the update (1.1.5 [1445] was my last try ) to cause this or should I be asking Dreamhost about the server I'm on? (I use their cheap plan and normaly have not had any problems.)

(Even on 56k dial-up, I've had good response until about 2 weeks ago. My images are all optimized for web prior to using on ZP.)