News

Dreamhost offers zenphoto as 1 click install! March 09th, 2008

Category: Announcements, News

We just learned that Dreamhost, one of the biggest hosts in the US, now offers zenphoto as a 1 click install option in favor of Gallery 2.

“And I guess that also explains why Gallery, the photo management software we offer as a one-click install is SO crazy confusing, slow, and horrible! I’ve looked at its source code, and the one thing I could not describe it as is short.

Which is why for our new EASY one-clicks, I’ve decided NOT to port Gallery over. Not even a little. INSTEAD, we’re giving “zenphoto” (notice the stylishly understated all-lowercase-ness) a try. It doesn’t allow you to do all the fancy-shmancy things Gallery does like sell your pictures or order prints, but it is super-simple to use to upload, organize, and view photos!”

We are a little proud of this, since Gallery is a well-tried program, too. And that “missing” feature we probably will get included, too. But, like all things, there is a downside: the zenphoto installation files are not within the users webspace, they are maintained by Dreamhost. This means two things, (1) no custom files including themes and (2) Dreamhost keeps zenphoto updated to the latest version without even having to ask.

For you Dreamhost users who want a little more customizability, or who want to upload files to their webspace via FTP, Zenphoto installs just fine the “normal way” under a standard Dreamhost account. Just download it from this site and follow the easy install instructions.

Read the complete text on the Dreamhost wiki: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/V10.2_February_2008


12 comments

12 Comments so far

  1. Andy March 9th, 2008 9:49 am

    Congratulations zenphoto team!

    As Gallery 2 developer it’s good news to see the rise of a strong competitor that was missing in the last years. zenphoto and Gallery 2 have a lot of differences and serve different needs. Yet both products have more and more similarities and have similar applications.

    I look forward to seeing both projects innovate faster and develop even better products due to the great competition and sharing the same open-source mindset.

    BTW: Dreamhost is still offering Gallery 2 as a one-click installation. zenphoto is offered as an easy, managed solution and Gallery 2 as an advanced, complete-control solution. Which kind of mirrors reality. :)

    Best regards,
    Andy, Gallery 2 developer

  2. John March 9th, 2008 3:07 pm

    I’m a Dreamhost customer and tried the one-click install. It of course works as advertised. I liked the relative simplicity of ZenPhoto, so just installed it directly on my own webspace so as to have control over the albums, etc. It was easy (my first such experience). There are a couple of tricky details, like getting the hidden .htaccess file set up because I didn’t see it in the expanded archive, which I just drag-n-dropped. But it wasn’t too hard to figure out I had just left it behind.

    I’m looking forward to convenient upload tools as available for gallery (especially for iPhoto)

  3. Tristan March 9th, 2008 6:40 pm

    I just had an idea — we should guide Dreamhost in using the “external album folder” feature to make the /albums/ folder accessible to their users via FTP or other file access.

  4. Jonathan March 9th, 2008 9:24 pm

    I just tried the Easy Install on Dreamhost as well. I am loving ZenPhoto so far, but really want the ability to mass upload via FTP. Looks like I’ll have to uninstall and manually re-install as well. It was a good way to let me try things out with zero effort though :)

  5. Tristan March 10th, 2008 11:26 am

    Thanks for your comment Andy, we too see the different needs that Zenphoto and Gallery serve, and many times have we pointed people to Gallery2 when they were trying to go beyond Zenphoto’s intended purpose.

    We see this as a big stepping stone for us in the publicity book! Hopefully the competition does continue, all to the benefit of the users and photographers alike.

  6. John March 10th, 2008 3:58 pm

    Tristan, if the album folder would have been available using an “external album folder” structure, that would have been enough to let me use the one-click installation. For what I’m doing, access to the themes, etc. is secondary in importance.

  7. James March 13th, 2008 1:40 pm

    I’ve been with Dreamhost forever, and I’ve been using Gallery2 forever. I think its time to switch.

    My biggest issue with Gallery2 is the code bloat and the difficulty in creating my own template without a lot of hair pulling and crazy MySQL sniffing to determine what album I was in. It works, but creating new albums and properly theming them is annoying.

    I’ll be installing zenphoto and giving it a spin. It would appear that theming will be a bit easier and since I don’t need or want most of the features of Gallery2, I won’t miss them.

  8. Josep Sanjuas’ blog › zpu - ZenPhoto file upload utility June 5th, 2008 4:03 pm

    [...] an online image gallery software, as a one click install application, as the ZenPhoto developers proudly announce. I decided to give it a try to host my personal pics, and I definitely recommend it, the most [...]

  9. dreatrorgove December 29th, 2008 8:29 pm

    Классно всё: и картинка ,и информация

  10. Nathan V February 17th, 2009 12:39 pm

    I found this program that allows you to upload for a one click install. It’s a lifesaver for using the simple version dreamhost gives you.

    http://www.majorsilence.com/zpu

  11. john.jacko June 1st, 2009 6:20 am

    Hi,

    I’ve set up a zenphoto-account via the “automatic” installation process but I do not find the server and/or folder(s) where the photos etc are storeed. Especially, I’d like to use the ftp-upload for multiple files at once instead of the web interface.

    Could you help me in any way?

    Thanks!

  12. acrylian June 2nd, 2009 10:00 am

    Please use the forum for support questions. Thanks.