Offsite Image Hosting and Symlinks

[euroluxantiques]

Because Gold can't handle offsite image URL for products, I have had to create symlinks from the Assets\ProductImages folder to the url where the product images are located. The images seem to load inconsistently at best. In prior versions of AbleCommerce this same image server did absolutely fine when I was able to put the full url in for the product image. Has anyone else seen this problem with offsite images and symlinks? It sure would have been better to have allowed Gold to handle image url's as in the past, but since I am "out of votes" in the admin feedback system, I can't put it forward as an issue. Sure seems like one to me.

[Naveed]

I have created a new bug for this issue. And will try to post a workaround for offsite image URL's if possible.

[euroluxantiques]

Thanks. This is VERY important as my product image popups and featured products are not rendering at the moment, and all I can come up with is the symlink problems.

[euroluxantiques]

Physically copying all the product images from our offsite image server to the Assets folder seems to do the trick, but of course, it takes time and storage, and you have to keep it in sync. Not ideal, but it is what it is at this point. Please implement product image URL capability in the very near future. This is a major failing on the part of Gold, and I'm probably not the only one that uses a separate image folder. Symlinks simply do not work consistently.

[ForumsAdmin]

We have this fixed for upcomming R5.

[mikek]

Hello,

We have developed an AbleCommerce plugin for distributing product images, css and javascript files over Content Delivery Network (CDN). The plugin allows you to keep
all images on the same server under the default Assets\ProductImages folder, but use CDN for image and script file distribution. The plugin works with any CDN provider
like Amazon Cloudfront, Akamai CDN, Azure CDN etc. and does not require AbleCommerce code or database changes.

Instead of using separate image server you can setup all images trough CDN which is faster, cheaper and more reliable than a single image server. For more info :

http://www.drundo.com/ablecommerce-cont ... ry-service