For very high traffic sites it may be useful to split the load between two servers, and have one that serves all of the preview thumbnail files separate from the one that serves the HTML files for your TGP pages. With the ftpthumbs.php utility script, this can be done.
Requirements
This script makes use of the PHP FTP extension. If you are unsure if the FTP extension is compiled into PHP on your server, you can contact your server administrator or check the phpinfo() function through the TGPX control panel. If the FTP extension is not available, you can ask your server administrator to reinstall PHP with support for the FTP extension.
Your server will also need to have the command line interface (CLI) version of PHP installed. If you are not sure about this, contact your server administrator and ask them if the CLI version of PHP is installed on the server. You will also need to know where the CLI PHP binary is located on the server. In most cases it is in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin
How It Works
This script uses an FTP connection to transfer your thumbnails from the server where TGPX is installed to a remote server. During this process the thumbnail URL stored in the database will be updated to point to the remote server for every gallery that has it's thumbnail transferred there. This function only works when you run this script, any new galleries that get added or thumbnails that are created through the control panel will have their thumbnails stored on the local server until you run this script again. If you plan on hosting all of your thumbnails from the remote server, you will want to setup this script to run by cron once a day (or at whatever interval you like) so it can transfer any new thumbnails that have been created.
If your remote thumbnail hosting server goes offline, the thumbnail images will not appear on your TGP pages, so you should take that into account when deciding whether or not to use this feature. You will want to make sure that you are using a very stable server so that your thumbs will always be available for surfers to view when they visit your TGP page.
Configuring the ftpthumbs.php Script
You will need to edit the ftpthumbs.php script before you can use it. It is located in the utilities directory of the TGPX software distribution and can be edited in your favorite text editor (EditPlus is recommended for Windows users). Once you have that file opened in your text editor, you will find several variable settings near the top of that file. Each of the variables that needs to be set is described below.
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$remote_url - The full URL on the remote server where the thumbnail files will be served from
$ftp_host - The FTP hostname of the remote server where the thumbnail files will be transferred
$ftp_user - The FTP username to login to the remote server
$ftp_pass - The FTP password to login to the remote server
$ftp_port - The port number that the remote FTP server is running on
$ftp_dir - The directory on the remote server that the program needs to change into after logging in
It is also highly recommended that you make a backup of your gallery database and preview thumbnails before you run this script. You can backup your gallery database using the software's built in or database backup function.
Running the ftpthumbs.php Script
The ftpthumbs.php script must be run from the command line of your server, it cannot be accessed through a browser. You will need SSH or telnet access to your server in order to use this script, or you will need to run it through cron at specific intervals.
You can now login to the server through telnet or SSH and change into the directory where the ftpthumbs.php script is located. It is recommended that you run the ftpthumbs.php script during off-peak hours, since it will be using some of your available server bandwidth to transfer the thumbnail files to the remote server. Execute the following command to begin the thumbnail transfer process (where /usr/local/bin/php is the full path to the CLI version of PHP on your server):
/usr/local/bin/php ftpthumbs.php -v
When you execute this command, the script will begin running and will display some output to let you know what it is doing. If you remove the -v portion of the command, the script will not output anything at all. You should allow several minutes for the transfer process to be completed, depending on how many preview thumbnails you have. When the script is done it simply return you to the command line of your server. You can now login to the TGPX control panel and use the Search Galleries interface to view the galleries and make sure the thumbs are showing up properly.
Running the ftpthumbs.php Script Through Cron
To automate the process of transferring the thumbnail files to your remote server, you can setup the ftpthumbs.php script to run as a cron job at whatever interval you specify. For the basics of setting up a cron job, see the Cron section of the software manual. Once you have figured out the interval you want to use, you can setup your crontab entry along with any other TGPX entries you have. For example:
0 6,18 * * * /usr/local/bin/php /full/directory/path/to/ftpthumbs.php 2>&1 &
This example would run the ftpthumbs.php script twice per day; once at 6am and once at 6pm. Note that the /full/directory/path/to/ portion would be replaced with the directory path on your server to the directory where the ftpthumbs.php script is located. It is also important to have the & character at the end. This tells it to run in the background so that the server's cron system can go about it's business and not wait for the ftpthumbs.php utility to finish it's task.