We've changed how the view count on photos is handled. We had originally been counting every time the thumbnails where loaded. That meant any time a user visited any page where the thumbnail was displayed the count would increment. We admit - this wasn't a very useful way to do it! So we've made some changes.
The photo view count will now only increment under the following conditions:
- If the thumbnail is clicked on
- Only for the first click, not for any subsequent size views (changing the size from original to large will not increment the view - you are still viewing the same photo)
- If the user that uploaded the photo is the user viewing it, then the view count won't increment (we are interested in other people viewing it, not the person who uploaded it)
It will also go some way to removing the "junk" that was gathering in the "Seen on" section. Now your stats should be much more accurate and relevant!
Performance
An issue that was frustrating many users was the load time of the thumbnails. We hear you - so we've worked on the performance.
The following improvements have been made to thumbnail loading
- Removing the view count on every thumbnail load has significantly decreased load times.
- We made other code optimisation improvements to make loading faster.
- We've tightened the sizes, so that loading doesn't let the layout break.
- We've added "missing photo" functionality that will show when an image is broken or missing, rather than continuing to try and load the photo.
- We've made changes to the upload process, that will attempt to prevent broken or missing photos from appearing on the website.
- We're working on a "clean up" facility, that will remove any broken photos automatically.
