IH4 creates copies of your images (leaving the original images untouched) and resizes and optimizes them and stores them in the bmz_cache folder. This way, IH4 can serve up various sized, already optimized images on the fly as pages load when visitors browse your store. This is why you are seeing continual additions to that folder.

Emptying the bmz_cache folder will simply cause IH4 to recreate the copies. For sites that have a lot of images, this is a good thing to do from time to time as a part of your regular server maintenance.

The clear cache tool in the admin was designed to do this for you at the click of a button, but it doesn't work, so clearing the cache must be done manually either through your cpanel's filemanager or an ftp program.

Now, regarding the snapshot addon - this tool is designed to take a snapshot of your files and folders at various points in time for the purpose of being able to quickly and easily compare the contents of your store between one point of time and another to easily identify differences in the event of a hack.

Since files are being continually created by IH4 and stored in the bmz_cache folder, you will naturally have differences in your snapshots.

Changing the IH4 script to force all images to be created at once and then stored undermines the core functionality of IH4 and is not recommended.



Quote Originally Posted by gruntre69 View Post
I have a question that I can't find answered in the readme. I have read the whole readme...

I've installed the snapshot mod running as cron after having a site hacked and starting fresh with Zen 1.5

I notice that there are continual additions to the BMZCache folder.

Are the images for IH4 created on demand by users browsing the site?

If so, is there anyway to force the script to run and create all the images at once so that the snapshot of the website files will remain unchanged?

What does the clear cache in the admin tools actually do?

Should I exclude BMZcache from the snapshot tool? I'm reluctant to do this because I've heard hackers can disguise a file as an image. I certainly don't want to be hacked again and am now taking security as seriously as possibly.