I have a channel listing characters in a TV show. On the index page of that channel, I display a visual index to all characters. The index looks like this and it uses Solspace's Tags module to pick out the image for each character:
<ul>
{exp:channel:entries channel="{current_channel}" limit="500" orderby="title" sort="asc" disable="member_data|pagination"}
<li>
<div class="CharIndexItem">
<div class="CharIndexImage">
{embed="Characters/Snippet_Image_index_GoT" character="{title}" byname="{{current_channel_id}_byname}" actor="{{current_channel_id}_actor_name}"}
</div>
<div class="CharIndexText"><a href="{comment_url_title_auto_path}">{title}</a></div>
</div>
</li>
{/exp:channel:entries}
</ul>
And the embed like this:
{exp:tag:entries channel="channel42" limit="1" tag="{embed:character} Index"}
<a href="{comment_entry_id_auto_path}"><img src="{42_image:small}" border="0" title="{embed:character}{if embed:byname != ""}, {embed:byname}{/if}{if embed:actor != ""}, played by {embed:actor}{/if}" /></a>
{/exp:tag:entries}
Now, since the show has a lot of characters, that index ends up with a lot of embeds. Right now it isn't a problem, but the site gets hit with very heavy traffic when the show is on air, so I am thinking it may cause an issue then. Is there any way to cut back on these embeds? I do need to stay with Tags as the method of marking the images that get used for each character, it is the only workflow that really makes sense.