Personally, I take offense to this comment. The load problem is due to whatever server you use to store your images having too small a pipe -- our GetDPI server has a huge pipe. View layout is simple if you choose a unified size and format for your images AND use the "Insert Image" icon to post it. If you use the simple "attachment" option, then all you get are thumbnail links to an uploaded file, so while it's fast, the view sucks --- which is why we do NOT recommend using it but left it in for folks who wanted a simple way to load a single image. Several folks appreciate it and continue to use it for simplicity, so it is what it is, but it is the ARTIST's choice, not ours...
At the end of the day *IF* you use the GetDPI image gallery which is FREE, then images will load lightening fast, be sized to three sizes with the default at 1000 pixels unless your original is smaller than that (the other two sizes are a thumb and an original size as uploaded), and display quite nicely in our forum body if you use our "insert image" icon method and if further desired, the centering tag center and /center in the "[ ]" brackets..
Sorry, but I take offense when people "assume" it is our end that's broken when we've gone to extreme measures to deliver a really fast, easy to use PHOTO site. I do agree the forum album software could have a better UI, but all the info on how to use it is there and it works very well once you get the hang of it. There is an album update in the works which we will load when it's out of beta.
Finally, I understand the desire to drive folks to your own photo blog, but the bottom line is if it's good, they should find it and use it anyway without the need to drive traffic to it from a dedicated forum thread. In this, I agree that a signature link should suffice, but I'll leave it to the group of "bloggers" here to decide for themselves...