[cory_booth]

Well in an effort to provide the fastest experience for my users I started looking at CDN or Content Delivery Networks. For those who don't know, CDNs deliver various items for your website so your site platform isn't tied up doing it. In this case I moved my /images/ directory to this service and now my images come from Google rather than my "shared" webhost making my rendering much faster. Items like my smilies, avatars, and things render much quicker.

To do this I followed the instructions here:
http://www.digitalistic.com/2008/06/...-your-own-cdn/

I used the Python version.

NOTE: Google will only allow 3000 images, so when you build your deployment, remove all thumbs.db, index.html, etc... and make sure you have 3000 or less.

Then I modified the path for my smilies to mysite.appspot.com/images/smilies/
I modified the path for my avatars and other items as well.

A key SQL statement you might want to try:

UPDATE `smilies`
SET 'smiliepath' = REPLACE ('smiliepath', 'images/', 'http://mysite.appspot.com/images/')

or similar.

You can also change the image base for sitewide graphics like gradients, buttons, and siteicons in the ADMINCP -> STYLES -> STYLEVAR -> IMGDIR

While I could answer some basic questions here, I can't offer much support for the directions posted in the link as I am too new to the app engine to fully understand how it works.

Now....

I know someone will say, "this isn't a REAL CDN because it doesn't change the delivery location based on the user's location"... Yes, you are right... But unless you are willing to pay $1000 a month for that type of service, this method does something very similar and works great for "free"...