Slow File Uploading

I am trying to upload files through your file upload interface and it takes forever. Sometimes I get an error that says the network connection timed out. What is wrong?

We're sorry for the difficulties, and understand how frustrating this can be. When we first built the CMS, the only thing people uploaded were images and a few documents. These were relatively small. At the time, we didn't anticipate the explosion of multimedia on the internet, but recently we've improved the uploading abilities for multiple files and larger files. The existing interface should work fine in most cases, and if you are experiencing slowness, it is most likely due to your internet connection speed. Answering the questions below will help us find a solution to your problem ASAP. But you may also use a traditional FTP Program (File Transfer Protocol) to upload a lot of files to a "batch" folder on your server, and then use our Batch Interface in the Control Panel, to import them all into your library.


1. What type of file are you uploading?
Are you uploading to your Images, Resources, or Multimedia Library? And what type of file is it, .mp3, .flv, .jpg, etc.?

2. How large is the file?
A 5MB file may take 20+ minutes to upload, depending on how fast is your internet connection. If your file is 20MB it could take an hour or more.

3. How fast is your internet connection?
To find out your ISPs actual speeds, go to: http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest and do their bandwidth test. Choose the city closest to you and run the test. After the test is complete, below the interface you will see your results. Typical results for a highspeed connection may look like this:

Download Speed: 2185 kbps (273.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 202 kbps (25.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

Most people don't realize that even if your ISP provides decent download speeds, most likely they have severly limited your upload speeds. Note the difference of the above tests. The download speed is 10 times as fast as the upload speed. If you do the math, a 20MB file (which actually equals 20480 KB), will theoretically take 13 minutes. However due to lots of other factors, it may take a lot longer.

Let us know what your rates are and we can help you determine what your speeds should be.


4. Do files ever upload quickly?
And at any given time there could theoretically be trouble with your internet connection, the network between you and the server, or the server's network. But that should be isolated, and if you always experience the same speeds then most likely your connection speed is slow.

5. Have you tried uploading files from another location?
If you try to upload from another location, is it ever faster?

6. What browser and version are you using?
Is it Internet Explorer 6 or 7? IE6 has a known bug that does not upload files through our interface. And IE7 has a known bug (which just recently appeared in a new released update) that does strange things with data posted from a form, including uploading files, and may interfere with the file upload process. These are browser bugs which are beyond our control to fix.

7. Can you try uploading with another browser?
Try using a free browser like Firefox (www.firefox.com). Let us know if that works better for you or if you still experience the same problems.


If you have multiple files (like hundreds of images you want to populate your image library with) or you have several large files you need to upload, should FTP the files to your server and then Batch them. See the related article below.