slideshow widget loads full size image ??!!!

Hello Nextgen Gallery friends,

I’m optimizing a WordPress website and while I find the Nextgen Gallery to be a heavy plugin most of the time – I was a bit surprised to see how bloated every page on this particular website is.

A big reason this site is loading poorly is due to the fact that two slideshows in the 179px width sidebar are loading full size images.

In other words – the sidebar slideshow widget is loading 32 images on every page and each of those photos is 1024px by 768px.

OUCH!

So, either I am missing something completely after digging into the plugin setup instructions and settings, OR there is not a setting allowing me to display the image thumbnails instead of loading the full size images.

Suggestions? Tips?

For some reason my thinking is that a widget slideshow by default uses the image thumbnails instead of the full width images. I cannot imagine why using full size is a default that makes any sense on a website. Without knowing she’s doing this to her website by displaying Nextgen Gallery slideshows in the sidebar – this website is potentially ranking lower in search and producing higher bounce rates as a result of Nextgen Gallery on her site.

Hopefully I am missing something in the options for this plugin, but there must be a way to fix the issue.

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/