Using a Content Delivery Network

A Content Delivery Network is a distributed network of servers that can deliver static content to users around the world.

When to use a CDN?

Large Media Files: PhotoPrism stores photos and videos that can be very large. A CDN can help speed up the delivery of these files to users.

Global Audience: If your PhotoPrism instance is accessed from different locations around the world, a CDN can help reduce latency and improve the overall user experience by delivering content from servers that are closer to your users.

Many Users: If your PhotoPrism instance is getting a lot of traffic, a CDN can improve application performance by reducing the load on your server.

Config Options

You can use the following config options to specify the URL of an external CDN and change the cache expiration time for thumbnails and other static content:

Environment	CLI Flag	Default	Description
PHOTOPRISM_CDN_URL	--cdn-url		content delivery network URL
PHOTOPRISM_CDN_VIDEO	--cdn-video	false	stream videos over the specified CDN
PHOTOPRISM_HTTP_CSP	--http-csp		HTTP Content-Security-Policy (CSP) HEADER plus
PHOTOPRISM_HTTP_CACHE_PUBLIC	--http-cache-public	true	allow static content to be cached by a CDN or caching proxy
PHOTOPRISM_HTTP_CACHE_MAXAGE	--http-cache-maxage	2592000	time in SECONDS until cached content expires
PHOTOPRISM_HTTP_VIDEO_MAXAGE	--http-video-maxage	21600	time in SECONDS until cached videos expire

CDN Providers

bunny.net

If you don't have a CDN provider yet, we can recommend bunny.net. This EU-based company has a cute name, but is a reputable provider with excellent performance, a wide range of features, and more than 20,000 customers including big names like Hyundai. We also chose bunny.net for our website and public demo as they are fully compliant with the GDPR.¹

Pricing starts at $0.005/GB and there is no minimum usage or monthly fee, so you only pay for what you actually need.

Learn more ›

Cloudflare

Cloudflare works similar to a reverse proxy, allowing you to make a private server publicly accessible over the Internet. This means that users accessing your instance through their service will only see a single URL, as if they were connecting directly.

You must therefore not configure an external CDN URL, since this could prevent PhotoPrism from loading. Also note that their free version does not include video streaming, so there may be problems with video playback if you are not a paying customer.

PhotoPrism® Documentation

For detailed information on specific product features, services, and related resources, see our Knowledge Base, or read the User Guide for help using the web user interface:

• PhotoPrism® User Guide
• PhotoPrism® Knowledge Base