Question

i want to make a personal image, that shows the last 3 items from the user (so he can use as forum signature, but it cant be a dynamic image like user?id=1 because most forums blocks that)
im planning to use GD, thats not a problem but:
– to update the image as data is inserted, do i just put a “update image” in the insert script or there’s a better way? i want to update the image in a max time of 5~10 minutes from the insert

-if 500 users are using this service, is that going to demand way too much resources from the server? not bandwith, i mean to create the image
each user normally updates his items 3 or more times a week, not that much

• since its only update on user actions, cache is not envolved, right?

thank you

Answer 1

it wouldn’t be a performance issue (the estimated weekly load – 1500 images – can be generated in a few seconds). you could also generate the image only when it’s requested and cache it…

you could get around the dynamic url in the forum signature problem, by using a clean url without a querystring:

http://www.my.site/my/image/123

mod_alias can redirect that internally to the image generator…