MySQL BLOB vs File for Storing Small PNG Images?

Question

Is it better practice to store a lot of small PNG images (<5KB mostly) in my database as BLOBs or would it be better to store them as image files in a directory?

Answer 1

From a performance standpoint, serving from local static files will always be faster. Don't go to the database unless you absolutely need to, there's a lot of overhead for making connections and queries.