Question: i'm building a travel blog (Php) where I might be loading dozens of pictures (size 500x375 weight 150-200kb) so that the page weights more than 4-5Mb.
Which is the way to go apart from caching/gzip to decrease waiting time and make a better user experience?

I'm on a shared server as my budget is very low

thanks

Answer: 
Some options:

* split up the images across multiple pages
* use a 'lazy load' script that will only request images as they come into the viewport
* use AJAX to request images as needed via a user action
* leverage external hosting of the images (flickr, etc) to split the server requests amongst different servers.
If you're displaying dozens of images on one page, I would consider just showing small images / thumbnails that get enlarged when the visitor clicks on them.