Local Images don’t seem to work – plugin isn’t loading local images

Hey icydog,

It looks like your images might end up using the “thumbnail” size file some of the time. We don’t store a thumbnail version at this time, I’m thinking this is what you’re noticing.

You can force the plugin to use the medium size local image file by enabling the setting “Favor local images” found on the “Customize” tab.

That should work!

– Craig

Hi Craig,

Thanks for taking a look. I’ve tried toggling that setting, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. I turned it on for now so you can see what it looks like.

I actually have a test version of this prod website, seemingly with the same settings, but it uses the local images (even with “Favor Local Images” off) and I can’t figure out why it doesn’t work in prod.

Is there any way I can go about debugging this, or perhaps providing you more useful information?

Thanks,
David

Hmm yes it seems that it isn’t even showing the medium local images at all anymore.

When you update your production site, what method do you use? You would want to upload the resized image folder that it sounds like you are aware of as well as the two custom database tables that our plugin uses to track these image files.

You could try resetting everything as this should also fix the issue.

Go to the “Customize” tab, click the “reset resized images”, then view the page once. Then save your settings on the “Configure” tab once to clear the Instagram cache.

Let me know if this doesn’t fix the problem.

Thanks,

Craig

Hi Craig,

I don’t mirror test to prod; it’s a separate installation with different databases, but the plugins and config are the same. The IG feed is pulling from the same account, and I manually inspected the plugin settings for the IG feed and they’re the same on both.

I did actually try “reset resized images” and saving several times but it’s not doing the trick ??

I noticed that if I’m signed in while viewing the page, it does load the local images. But not if I’m signed out. Does that ring any bells?

Thanks,
David

Ahh yes it does actually.

This typically means there is some sort of a security measure preventing admin-ajax.php from being accessed without being logged in.

You can either look at removing the security measure (the use of admin-ajax.php for AJAX calls is the recommended way for plugins to do AJAX) or you could use a shortcode to do all image resizing before the page loads:

[instagram-feed resizeprocess=page]

Currently the page is using only local images but I’m guessing they were successfully resized when you viewed the page while logged in. This should allow all new images to be created without admin-ajax.php.

This will slow the page down for the one unlucky person that is the first to view the feed when a new image is available. Another idea is to use the background caching feature as this will not slow the page down for the first visitor.

Try this out and let me know if you are still having trouble!

– Craig

Hey Craig,

Thanks, that helps a lot. I’m not sure what security thing could be doing this, but it seems that if the local images are generated then it works. So for example if I “reset resized images” and then view from logged-out Firefox, the images don’t appear. But if I first view the page using logged-in Firefox, OR logged-in or logged-out Chrome, then the local images get generated and it works if I view from logged-out Firefox.

The “Favor Local Images” setting still seems to have no effect on any of this; it works the same whether it’s checked or not.

So I guess this isn’t really a huge problem, because as soon as someone visits the page using non-Firefox, it’ll work for Firefox viewers, although of course it would be nice if it worked in every case.

Thanks!
David

The “Favor local images” setting isn’t meant to show images only if they are local. It will show local images if some are found. If not, the CDN version is used. I think this is what you are seeing. The AJAX call triggers the local image creation. If it isn’t working, no new images will be created.

You can workaround this though using one of my suggestions. Otherwise you can be the first one to visit the page when the feed updates as this will work too I suppose.