Posted by cbmeeks on 06/12/07 12:27

I am writing my own family photo sharing site that I hope to take
public (like so many others). Anyway, currently, when the user
uploads a picture, I store the picture outside my htdocs folder and
record the image details in a MySQB db. When you browse the picture,
I read the record and build the image by sending an image/jpeg header.

Seems to work but I am a little disappointed with performance.
Granted I am running on a really old machine which might be the
reason. lol

Seriously though, if I take this public and get extremely lucky and
millions of photos are uploaded, would this be the best method?

I've read pros and cons of storing images in a database. I've read
about Flickr, SmugMug, Photobucket having HUNDREDS of millions to over
a BILLION images stored!

Obviously, load balancing plays into this but what other secrets do
you think they use?

One thing I worry about is my file system. I have something like:

pix
-----user1
-------------thumbs
-----user2
-------------thumbs

etc...

Any pointers would be appreciated.
Thanks

cbmeeks

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