My last host ran across a problem when I installed a Coppermine gallery to their system. I only got about half of my pictures uploaded (about 2,500) when things started to crash (with little to no visitors, I might add). I was told later that it brought down the entire MYSQL database on the webhost and everyone lost their galleries and message boards (I'm not sure this is true or not, the host proved to be a liar on other things).
I was told that the biggest problem was that search engines were caching my images, and they were going to modify a new installation to prevent that. They were also going to modify the code so that only registered visitors would see a full size image.
Does this sound normal to you guys? Have you heard of this happening before? Search engines?!
I know there is a mod for the "registered visitors only" in the FAQ which I will apply myself. However, my old hosts have since threw a tantrum, cancelled my services and refused to even tell me what work they'd done on my galleries to modify them.
I'm wary of installing Coppermine on my new host for fear this happens again. I can cut down on the usage with the FAQ mod, but what can I do about the search engines?
And I know you guys like to have people "figure it out for themselves" but I'm not techy in any way. It's like handing a gentile something in Hebrew and then telling them to find the answers in there. Being told to try and work it out yourself is incredibly frustrating, especially when someone has come so far and learned so much already but is stumped on something so technical that it's completely over their heads. Any specific, detailed, dumbed down responses or code snippets would be MUCH appreciated, even if they are sent in a private message. I'm determined to get my site functional again, and I hate to abandon Coppermine and move to another gallery system.
In fact, would it be easier for me overall just to offer someone on this board money to modify and install a gallery for me to ensure success?