ZenPhoto

For common used terms please also read the Zenphoto glossary.

1. I’m having a problem installing, what should I check first?
2. I have problems installing Zenphoto on Dreamhost
3. When I have a problem with Zenphoto, where can I get help?
4. My pictures are in /zenphoto/albums/MyAlbum but the URL says /zenphoto/MyAlbum! It’s wrong!
5. What is mod_rewrite and how does it work?
6. My host is 1&1, and I dont have thumbnails
7. How do I enable mod_rewrite?
8. I think I found a bug! What do I do?
9. Someone’s asking for a PHPInfo(), what is that?
10. Help! My images aren’t displaying after installation and setup!
11. Why are some thumbnails/sized images not generated? Why does Zenphoto make my server crash while processing images?
    
12. I have set my Album to not published (my images to not visible) but they still show up when I view my gallery.
13. I have password protected my album but I can still view it without entering the password.
14. I don’t have any items in my Theme Colors (Spam Filter, Watermark) dropdown list
15. When I click on “Gallery” the directory structure is shown
16. I forgot my admin password, now what do I do?
17. Is it possible to administrate images hosted on another server?
18. Why does deleting of an album via the admin interface fail?
19. Why does Zenphoto not show a thumbnail from my video?
20. The number of thumbnails on my theme’s album view does not match my setting
21. I have just installed version 1.1.7 and I cannot change the language
22. Is it really necessary to pre-cache my images at all?
23. Is there any limit to the number of images?
24. I am having difficulties with zenphoto language translations.
25. Some of my Images aren’t loading and/or pre-cache doesn’t work.
26. What is magic_quotes_gpc and why should it be disabled?
27. I am having probems with album sorting?
28. I am having probems albums (images) witth accented characters in their names?
29. Setting permissions for Zenphoto files and folders
30. Is it possible to remove the filename extension from image names in the URL?
31. I did enable a plugin but why I don’t see anything of its features on my gallery?
32. Can I integrate Zenphoto with Wordpress or another CMS?
33. Can I extend the functionality of Zenphoto myself?
34. Does Zenphoto work with PHP Safe Mode?
35. Is it possible to configure TinyMCE differently?
36. I have moved my zenphoto installation on my server and now all urls are wrong!
37. I have enabled comments on the gallery options and for each image and album but there is no comment form showing up on my theme!
38. Is it possible to manage youtube videos (or from another portal)?
39. How to protect my images from hotlinking?
40. How to move my installation to a new server?
41. Can I just use specific files of a nightly build or svn version to fix a problem in a stable release?
42. Opening full images using Thickbox or any other JavaScript “box” script does not work
43. I have problems installing or upgrading using SimpleScripts
44. How do I disable the right click button to protect my image against downloading?
45. Why is the image rotate button grayed out?
46. How not to show albums on the gallery and/or password protect albums (as well as other Zenphoto items)
47. I am having problems logging into the Zenphoto administrative pages
48. The colors of my images are wrong

I’m having a problem installing, what should I check first?

Make sure you’ve:

1. Downloaded files for latest zenphoto release.
2. Uploaded everything to your web server (including .htaccess file in root zenphoto directory)
3. Visit your gallelry. Setup will run and show you a system check status.
4. Correct any issues indicated.
5. Press the GO button.
6. Upload the pictures you want into your albums directory, and organize them how you wish in folders and subfolders (zenphoto will currently only handle the subalbums if you’re using the subalbums testing-dev theme)

If you need more help, go to the Zenphoto Forums.

I have problems installing Zenphoto on Dreamhost

A tutorial by our user bensp: http://www.zenphoto.org/support/topic.php?id=316&replies=31

When I have a problem with Zenphoto, where can I get help?

Keep reading this page, or go straight to the Support Forums.

My pictures are in /zenphoto/albums/MyAlbum but the URL says /zenphoto/MyAlbum! It’s wrong!

No, it’s not! The URLs are correct as Zenphoto makes them. They aren’t supposed to have albums in them because they aren’t pointing to the folder! They’re rewritten by the Apache module mod_rewrite, which translates URLs into script arguments, in this case, inputs to zenphoto. Read the next question to find out how this works.

What is mod_rewrite and how does it work?

mod_rewrite is an Apache module for translating URLs. In zenphoto with mod_rewrite enabled, http://www.zenphoto.org/zenphoto/impressionists/ is the URL you see (even though the album is stored at /zenphoto/albums/impressionists on the server — the two are related, but not the same). Then, mod_rewrite translates the requested /zenphoto/impressionists into /zenphoto/index.php?album=impressionists! They’re the same! The first URL, which looks like paths to a folder, is called “pretty” or “cruft-free”, because it’s user-friendly and easy to remember. Pretty cool huh?

If you get “404 – Page Not Found” errors and images that don’t show up, you probably have told zenphoto to use mod_rewrite, but you don’t have it enabled on your server. You should set the configuration option mod_rewrite to false. Logon to Admin, click on the Options tab then the Gallery configuration tab. Uncheck the box for Enable mod_rewrite and press the save button. Or you can read the next question to see how to turn it on.

I have problems installing Zenphoto on 1&1

If you don’t have thumbnails you will need to open up the .htaccess file and add the following line to it if you are running php4.

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

For further issues please take a look at this tutorial:
http://www.cyberward.net/blog/2009/05/installing-zenphoto-on-1and1/

How do I enable mod_rewrite?

mod_rewrite is an Apache module, so it requires Apache. If you’re on a shared web host, you’ll have to e-mail them and ask for it. Most large web hosts that use Apache will have it enabled already, but yours may not, it’s not uncommon. When the apache module mod_rewrite is not loaded, you can´t use mod_rewrite within your ZenPhoto configuration. Via phpinfo() you can look to see if mod_rewrite is listed as loaded module. If is not, you can load it by open the httpd.conf of your apache and uncomment (delete the leading #) or add this line:
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Secondly, you need have the correct.htaccess file in your zenphoto installation. If you have copied the one from the distribution, Setup will have updated it to your configuration. Otherwise, make sure the RewriteBase line is correct. It should be the URL to your zenphoto after the domain name. For example, the RewriteBase for http://www.zenphoto.org/zenphoto looks like RewriteBase /zenphoto .

Third, you need to make sure mod_rewrite option is enabled (see the last question.)

I think I found a bug! What do I do?

If you think you’ve found a bug, first check for a new version and upgrade if you find one. If that doesn’t fix the problem, then search for the bug, look for a similar bug, and if you still think we don’t know about it, submit a ticket on Trac! (Note: you must register to see the new ticket link.) Be as thorough as possible and include your server configuration (Apache version, PHP version, etc.) and a detailed description. Also include a URL to your site, preferably the link that shows the problem. We can do a much better job of helping you if we can see what is going on.

Someone’s asking for a PHPInfo(), what is that?

PHPInfo() is a method by which you can get a HTML (browser-based) report on your version of PHP which is installed on your webserver, and also any information about installed modules relating to your ISP or webhost configuration of PHP. It provides very useful information for supporting zenphoto, as it will help us to determine vital information about your server.

This is how you can display your PHPinfo():

1. Open a new text document in your favorite text editor.
2. Add the following line to the document: <? phpinfo(); ?>
3. Save the document as phpinfo.php and upload it to your webserver in an web-accessible location.
4. Execute the document by pointing your browser to the file (e.g. http://www.yourhost.com/locationoffile/phpinfo.php

This will output a large amount of very useful information for you to peruse. You can provide this link to the support forum as a means to help us troubleshoot your configuration. You should delete the file once the issue has been resolved just to be safe.

Help! My images aren’t displaying after installation and setup!

There are a number of reasons why you photos might not display after installation and setup.

1. You may need to check your permissions on your albums directory and cache directory. The permissions should be 777 to allow Zenphoto to display everything properly.
2. It could be that PHP Safe Mode is enabled. Your ISP will need to help you with this configuration. You can obtain more information in the FAQ item entitled “What is PHP Safe Mode?”
3. Check your .htaccess file if you’re using Apache, and make sure you have the correct path for the RewriteBase line at the top. If you’re not using Apache or it doesn’t seem to be working, reset your mod_rewrite option.
4. Search the ZenphotoForums for help, or start a new topic there. Zenphoto has a very helpful community, so don’t be shy!

Why are some of my thumbnails/sized images not generated?  Why does Zenphoto make my server crash while processing images?

If you’re running a web server on a VPS or other resource-limited environment, then you might not have enough memory available to the server to process very large images. You can use the following table as a guideline to see how much memory you need available to process images of different sizes:

• VGA Image, 640 x 480 pixels => needs ~4.1 MB Memory
• SVGA Image, 800 x 600 pixels => needs ~4.8 MB Memory
• 1 MP Image, 1024 x 798 pixels => needs ~6.3 MB Memory
• 2 MP Image, 1600 x 1200 pixels => needs ~11.7 MB Memory
• 6 MP Image, 2816 x 2112 pixels => needs ~22.6 MB Memory
• 8.2 MP Image, 3571 x 2302 pixels => needs ~41.7 MB Memory

As you can see, the 8.2-Megapixel 3571×2302 image requires a very large amount of memory to process, and that’s simply because of the number of pixels. It doesn’t matter if the image is only 2 or 3 megabytes when compressed in JPEG form, or what colors the image contains or anything– it’s just how big it is, because all of those pixels have to have a place in memory while the GD library processes them. There’s no way around it!

Another problem is that browsers often make two requests per server at the same time to speed up image loading. This is perfectly normal, but if two requests for that 8-megapixel image are made and both need processing, then the memory requirement is doubled. The only way around this is to limit the number of requests your browser makes. In Firefox, this can be done by going to about:config as the URL and searching for the network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server option and setting it to 1.

In future versions of Zenphoto, ImageMagick may be an optional image processor, which may require less memory, and at least won’t share memory with Apache.

Some of my Images aren’t loading and/or pre-cache doesn’t work.

There could be many reasons for this, so the best way to diagnose this problem is to view the actual image error itself. You can do this by adding ‘&debug’ to the image URL zenphoto uses to process the image. To do that, locate the failed image in your gallery (it should show just the filename with a box around it, in place of the image), then right-click it and choose ‘Copy Image Location’ (Firefox; in IE, choose ‘properties’ and copy the image URL from there). Then, paste that URL into your address bar, and at the end of it, type “&debug” without quotes. Press enter to see the image processor’s error message. If you need help diagnosing it, feel free to post on the support forums.

I have set my Album to not published (my images to not visible) but they still show up when I view my gallery.

If you are logged in as the administrator all albums and images are visible so that you can edit, delete, etc. them. Log out and they should become invisible.

I have password protected my album but I can still view it without entering the password.

There are three things that might be happening here:

1. You are logged in as the administrator. Administrators are allowed to view any album, password protected or not.
2. You have logged into the album at sometime in the past. Album passwords are remembered in cookies so that vieweres do not have to log in at each page display.
3. If you are viewing an image page of a gallery that was not part of the zenphoto distribution it may not have implemented password protection. It is necessary for all image.php pages to use checkforPassword() to protect elements that you do not want displayed if the viewer has not logged in.

I don’t have any items in my Theme Colors (Spam Filter, Watermark) dropdown list

Check your CGI log. You will probably find that the PHP glob() function has been disabled. Zenphoto uses this function in multiple places. But, don’t pannic. There is a define at the front of functions.php which you can change to enable replacement code for this function. Find the line define('SAFE_GLOB', false'); in functions.php and change the false to true.

When I click on “Gallery” the directory structure is shown

Clearly the problem is that index.php isn’t set as a default file for directories under Apache (or whichever server you’re using).

If it’s Apache and you have access to your server’s main Apache config file, you need to edit your apache.conf or httpd.conf and find the DirectoryIndex line. It should read:
DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm default.html or something similar.
Change it to:
DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm default.html index.php and whichever other directory default files you want, but definitely add the index.php to that line That should do it.
Read more here…
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_dir.html

or

If you have no access to the main config file, create a file called index.html (This is the file that Apache looks for (This is set up in http.conf)) and write a redirect code to point to the index.php file.

I forgot my admin password, now what do I do?

If you supplied an email address in the Admin options there should be a Captcha string image on the log-on page. Entering that string as the log-on password will email you a link to reset your password. If the Captcha is not there, or if you don’t get the email, you need to delete some database items.

Delete the Administrators table. You may also have to delete the rows of the Option table where the name field is adminuser and adminpass if they exist in your installation. Run setup to recreate the table. You will be prompted to enter a new admin user name and password. Now be sure there is an email address to send the reset link the next time!

Is it possible to administrate images hosted on another server?

Zenphoto unfortunately does not support this. Zenphoto must be installed on the same server as the photos it is hosting. This is what we recommend.
Even if this was possible, it would be very slow as Zenphoto is filesystem-based and uses many filesystem operations, and doing that over a network would slow things down significantly.

Why does deleting of an album via the admin interface fail?

This may be caused by some files within the folder of that album that should not be there like for example the hidden/invisible .DS_Store files the finder of Mac OS X creates. They may be transfered with upload folders or archives. You would have to delete these files directly via ftp. Best is to avoid uploading them in the first place.

Why does Zenphoto not show a thumbnail from my video?

Zenphoto is not able to generate thumbnails from videos and shows therefore a default replacement image. There is no way at all to do this automatically with PHP without installing a extension on your server itelf.
But you can do it manually: Make a screenshot from your movie and put the image named as the movie (for example: movie named movie.flv, image named movie.jpg — lower case suffixes are required!) into the album folder where your movie is located.

The number of thumbnails on theme’s album view does not match my setting

When a theme specifies a setting for the number of image (or album) thumbnails to display in a “row”, the thumbnails per page will be rounded up to the nearest multiple of that specification. Prior to the 1.3.2 release setting these were done via the  normalizeColumns function. Post 1.3.1 the settings are on the theme options tab.

I have just installed version 1.1.7 and I cannot change the language

There is a problem with the 1.1.7 release that occurs on virgin installations or upgrades from releases prior to version 1.1.6. It may not be possible to change the language from HTTP Accept Language. To correct this, make a file named fixlocale.php and insert the following code:

<?php
require_once('template-functions.php');
query("INSERT INTO " . prefix('options') . " (name, value, ownerid) VALUES ('locale','en_US', 0)");
?>


place this file in your zp-core folder then browse to it. Once the script has run you will be able to change to the language of your choice. This problem is also corrected in the nightly builds.

Is it really necessary to pre-cache my images at all?

Zenphoto was designed to lazy-load images to allow a gallery of unlimited size while still allowing viewing any image at any time regardless of whether it has been processed or not. It does it on the fly. It was not designed to process them all at once, the pre-caching was a hack that was added on later. The following diagram shows the process:

Better to leave them be, let the gallery work as it is, and process them when they’re first requested. For users, this will mean a very slight delay the first time an image is *ever* viewed, and absolutely none after that. This is how Zenphoto is designed to work, and we think how it works best. No need to pre-cache anything, just quit worrying about the initial lag from the first processing, it only happens once.

Is there any limit to the number of images?

Nope, there are no limits to the number of images Zenphoto can display in a gallery or album. Zenphoto is file system based and unique in that it scales relatively well due to its simple design. The speed of the gallery is dependent on a few minor things, namely the number of images in any given album.
Zenphoto should be able to handle any number of images in the entire gallery – it will help greatly with performance if they are separated into smaller albums. Even then, single albums with 2000+ photos are possible and will still be usable.

If you’re having trouble with the speed of large galleries, try using the static_html_cache plugin to cache Zenphoto pages. Frequently loaded pages will be much faster.

I am having difficulties with zenphoto language translations.

There are several problems you might be having with language translations:

1. There is no language selection for my desiered language.
   Zenphoto relies on volunteers to translate each release. We have a large number of dedicated individuals making translations. There may be a translation for your language which was not avaiable in time for the zenphoto release. You can check by reviewing the language tickets on TRAC. If you language does not have a ticket, consider volunteering to produce it. For details see our translation tutorial.
2. There are phrases which are displayed in English even though I have selected a different language.
   Zenphoto is an ever evolving software. We will occasionally include a translation that is not 100% complete feeling that something is better than nothing. Check the language tickets on TRAC to see if there is an update for your language. If that does not resolve the issue, post a note on the ticket indicating what revision of zenphoto your are running and phrases which are displaying in English. (It will also help if you indicate where you see them, eg. the Stopdesign image page, the admin theme tab.)
3. When I select my language I get an error saying that the locale is not supported on my server.
   Language support requires two capabilities in addition to #1 above. First the server running your site must have support installed for the locale associated with your language. (See #4 for the second capability.) If you are getting an error when selecting a language saying that it is not supported on the server you will have to contact your provider to get the server updated with the necessary language support. You can get a list of locales your server supports by running the list_locales script. For further information on locales see Controlling your locale with environment variables and Locales mini-HOWTO.You can also look at the output of the list_locales script to see if there is an alternative language that fits your needs. For instance, if Zenphoto supplies a Spanish (Latin America) tranlsation But your server does not support it. Maybe your server supports Spanish (Bolivia). You could rename the es_LA folder to es_BO and get the translations.
4. Even though support for my language exists, I am getting only English text.
   Zenphoto uses a PHP feature named gettext() to support translations. If you are getting a notice from setup.php that PHP gettext() support is not installed all text will be displayed in English no matter which language you have selected. We hope in the future to have a replacement library to provide translations for installations with no gettext() support. Until then you will have to arrange with your ISP for gettext to be installed.
5. I have selected HTTP Accept Language on the admin gallery configuration tab but I am not seeing text in my language.
   Your browser must specify your preferred language. To see what is being reported as your preferred languages run the list_locales script. (Also see #3 and #4 above.

What is magic_quotes_gpc and why should it be disabled?

To quote from the PHP manual itself:

Warning This feature has been DEPRECATED and REMOVED as of PHP 6.0.0. Relying on this feature is highly discouraged.

magic_quotes_gpc is an early functionality of PHP that was ill-conceived and has been a great burden to developers, as well as end users ever since it’s inception. It encourages sloppy code and consumes valuable resources when it is enabled.

You can disable magic_quotes_gpc by editing your PHP.ini file. Change the line magic_quotes_gpc = On to magic_quotes_gpc = Off You can also disable magic_quotes_gpc in your zenphoto .htaccess file by adding the line php_value magic_quotes_gpc off Please contact your hosting provider for further assistance.

I am having trouble with album sorting

If you have used either the move album or the copy album feature introduced in zenphoto version 1.2 you may be have some albums which do not have the proper parentid. You can run the parentid_check script to check for an fix any problems with parentid’s. The script should be placed in your zp-core folder. A fix for the orginal problem was made to the nightly builds and included in the 1.2.1 release; however, any move or copy done before the fix was made will result in albums that need this correction.

I am having trouble with album (images) with accented characters in their names

It is best you avoid using accented characters in your file or folder names. it is really unnecessary to have them in file/folder names since you can edit the title to use whatever characters you like. Your site viewers see the Title, not the file/folder name.

The technical explaination is that zenphoto stores its data in UTF-8 format in the database. But your files ystem probably uses some other character set, most likely ISO-8859-1. So when zenphoto gets the name of the image (filename) or the album (folder name) the character set of that string will not be UTF-8. This is OK so long as the string also does not contain any characters which are invalid in UTF-8. Unfortunately many accented characters from ISO-8859-1 are not valid when interpreted in UTF-8 so when the string is stored into the database MySQL truncates it at the first non UTF-8 character.

Current versions of Zenphoto will handle conversion of file system character strings to UTF-8 representation. However Zenphoto assumes that the filesystem characterset is ISO-8859-1, so if yours is in some other character set, things still will not work. Another player in  this drama is the character set assumed for Image URIs. Most servers seem to use ISO-859-1 even though the page claims to be in UTF-8. If your server actually assumes UTF-8 for these, you need to change the UTF8 image URIs option on the gallary configuration tab.

Permissions for Zenphoto files and folders

Zenphoto defaults the permissions for files and folders baased on the file permissions of the zp-core folder. This usually is the correct setting. However some server configurations may not work with this setting. Zenphoto must have read access to all files and folders within the zp-core, albums and the plugins folders. (For some features such as image uploading Zenphoto also needs write access to the albums folder.) It must be able to read and write to the zp-data, cache and cache-html folders. The themes folder must be readable as well. For the theme editor to work Zenphoto must also be able to write to this folder.

Ideally, permissions should be set up with 0644 files/0755 directories ([rw-r--r--] files and [rwxr-xr-x] directories) permissions, with [youruser:webservergroup] ownership. If you can do that, we highly recommend it.  The idea is basically to keep ownership of the files yourself, give group access to the web server, and shut everyone else out.

Some servers are configured so that scripts cannot be executed from folders with weak permissions. We suggest you start with the strictest permissions and relax them if that causes permissions errors. Unfortunately, there are many permutations of how servers can be configured and not all are reasonable or rational. You may have to experiment to see what works for your situation.

NOTE: As from Zenphoto release 1.2.4 you can alter these defaults from the setup program. See the Strict Permissions entry. Starting with release 1.2.7 Setup will attempt to modify the permissions on its files and folders. However, if it is unable to do this you will have to manage the permissions manually.

Is it possible to remove the filename extension from image names in the URL?

No, the unique identifier to find the photo requested is the actual filename, and the only way to get that is from the URL, so it must contain the filename. That’s just how ZP works, it’s filesystem-based. The titles are rather stored in the database as metadata, which you can’t use to get a photo and doesn’t need to be unique. Take a look at this diagram to learn how Zenphoto discovers images.

I did enable a plugin but why I don’t see anything of its features on my gallery?

We did not setup all standard theme with all plugin feature because they are optional. On our themes page your can see what standard theme supports which plugins.

This means <ou have to add some of them to your theme files yourself. This is generally very easy as it is mostly just adding one extra function where you want the plugin’s feature to be visible. Please refer to these text to learn how to do that:

• Zenphoto functions documentation
• How to read the functions guide
• Theming tutorial

Can I integrate Zenphoto with Wordpress or another CMS?

Not really, Zenphoto is actually a standalone CMS of its own. Technically, there are basically three recommended ways to “integrate” Zenphoto with another CMS:

1. Match the look of your Zenphoto site to your existing CMS site is to create a zenphoto theme using the CSS and HTML from yoursite’s theme.
2. Technically more advanced is the zenphoto as a “plugin”.
3. For Wordpress specifially there are techniques available collected here : http://www.zenphoto.org/2009/11/integrating-zenphoto-into-wordpress-tutorials/

Also please review our theming tutorial. For Wordpress specifially there are some Wordpress  tools available.

Or maybe you want to run your entire site with Zenphoto using the CMS plugin Zenpage.

Can I extend the functionality of Zenphoto myself?

Yes, you can. Zenphoto supports an extensive plugin architecture .  It is best you extend using these tools. You can browse to the extensions section and see what’s already available.

Zenphoto is open source, so you can modify its core directly. Bear in mind code changes to the core Zenphoto code may make upgrading difficult later on, and generally hacks have little or no support.

Does Zenphoto work with PHP Safe Mode?

Safe mode is generally considered bad practice for web hosts and users, as it breaks many programs and does not provide any real improvement in security.

1.0.8 and above should now be compatible with PHP safe mode. If any problems occur in a safe_mode configuration, please report a New Ticket describing the problem.

There may still be problems uploading using the administrator’s interface while in safe_mode. This problem is not possible to fix, as in safe_mode it is impossible to both create a folder and write to that folder using the web server alone. You may only upload to existing folders that you’ve created using FTP upload. To get around this, we recommend you upload via FTP, or create the folders you want using FTP, and also ask your host to turn off safe mode as noted above.

Is it possible to configure TinyMCE differently?

Yes, of course. You find the configuration file for the text editor under /zp-core/js/file editor_config.js.php. You will find all info about configuration options on the TinyMCE wiki: http://wiki.moxiecode.com/index.php/TinyMCE:Index

I have moved my zenphoto installation on my server and now all urls are wrong!

If you first installed Zenphoto within www.yourdomain.com/zenphoto and later decide to move it directly into the root www.yourdomain.com you need to run setup (/zp-core/setup.php) again. This will correct the rewrite base within the .htaccess file.

You need to do the same if you want to keep Zenphoto within a subfolder but would like to rename it to /gallery for example.

I have enabled comments on the gallery options and for each image and album but there is no comment form showing up on my theme!

Zenphoto 1.2.6 introduces the comment_form plugin that needs to be enabled to enable the comments section.

Is it possible to manage youtube videos (or from another portal)?

Zenphoto is actually meant to manage multimedia files on your own webspace  but with Zenphoto 1.2.6 there is indeed a way:

1. Enable the class-textobject plugin on the backend plugins page.
2. Upload a plain text file (.txt) with code to embeed a specifc (video) file via ftp or the backend.
3. To use an thumbnail besides the default one follow the same instructions as for video thumbnails.
4. That’s all.

How to protect my images from hotlinking?

Although Zenphoto has an option for image protection it does only protect from getting the (full) image link from your gallery site itself but not prevent real hotlinking from outside. Everyone who knows how Zenphoto stores images can find out the direct link with ease.

You can change the location for your albums by modifying the zp-config.php file.  There is comentary in the file that will guide you in making such a change. Please carefully note the comments, specially for “external” album folders. Also note that server filesystem permissions settings may prevent you from making these changes.

So, to really protect your images from hotlinking you need to use .htaccess (if you server supports this). Here is a little generator tool for this: http://www.htaccesstools.com/hotlink-protection/. We additionally have prepared a template htaccess file you could adjust.

How to move my installation to a new server?

1. Install Zenphoto on the new server. Do not run setup yet.
2. Copy all customized themes or plugins from the old to the new location.
3. Copy the albums and the cache folder from the old to the new location and if you used Zenpage also the uploaded folder.
4. Export the database using the database backup tool on the admin overview page of the old install.
5. Copy the backup folder with its content to the root of your new installation.
   Now run setup (zp-core/setup.php). It will provide the option to import that database backup when you have to set your user/password details.
6. Now access your site/admin backend and everything should be as usual.

Can I just use specific files of a nightly build or svn version to fix a problem in a stable release?

This is strongly discouraged — unless you have been told to do this by the developers — as we have made many changes and certainly do not test except as a complete package. You could, of course, do a file comparison to see what has changed exactly.

Opening full images using Thickbox or any other JavaScript “box” script does not work

If you see some weird messy text showing instead of the full image you need to disable the full image protection on the backend options (Options > Images > Full Image Protection). These “box” scripts need to access the full image directly which naturally is not possible if it is protected.

I have problems installing or upgrading using SimpleScripts

We don’t support using installtion helper scripts like SimpleScripts and we don’t know what these are doing. If you have problems please ask the creators of SimpleScripts.

There are frequent reports that especially upgrades are often not working as expected. A user has provided some instructions on this forum thread.

We recommend to do a manual install as described on our installation page.

How do I disable the right click button to protect my images against downloading?

The question boils down to “how can I protect my intellectual rights by preventing viewers from capturing my images while still making them available for view.” Usually the actual question is “how can I disable the right click button {so that people cannot download my images.}”

The first part of this question is easily answered. There are many java scripts available to disable this action. Unfortunately, the second part of the question is not addressed by the first. The right click/save target as context menu is only one of a myriad of ways that someone can capture web content.

There is a very good discussion of this on about.com. But, just in case this link goes away without us noticing, I will summarize what it tells you.

• Disabling the context menu (what right click takes you to) is very annoying to people used to using the context menu for web browsing. Disabling it may turn people away from your site in disgust.
• Disabling the context menu does not prevent capture of web content, it only prevents one small method of doing so.

So, if you wish to protect your images you need to take a different tact. Some suggestions are:

• Watermark your image. Zenphoto provides a means to do this.
• Upload only small, WEB quality images. These images may be captured, but will be useful only for WEB pages.
• Imbeed copyright information in the image — both in the metadata and with steganalysis.

But please do not cripple your site by disabling the context menu. Even if you do, it is quite easy for the viewer to re-enable it by typing javascript:void oncontextmenu(null) into the address bar of the browser.

Why is the image rotate button grayed out?

The GD graphics libary on your server is missing support for image rotation. You have to contact your host about that.

How not to show albums on the gallery and/or password protect albums correctly (as well as other Zenphoto items)

If you do not wish albums or images to be shown in your gallery they should be marked not published. If you want to restrict access to them you password protect them. You will note that there are four states you can get out of this:

1. Published/not password protected: Any one can see these items
2. Not published/not password protected: People have to “know about” these items to view them. (That is they need to know the URL.)
3. Published/password protected: People will know of these items but not be able to access them without the password.
4. Not published/password protected: These are truely restricted to “logged in users”

This is also the same for Zenpage pages and news articles/categories (passwords for categories only).

I am having problems logging into the Zenphoto administrative pages

First please review http://www.zenphoto.org/2009/03/troubleshooting-zenphoto/#16. If you are still having problems after following that advice you will have to enable some debugging to allow the developers to observe what is happening when you attempt your login. Locate your site’s functions-basic.php file. Using a text editor find the line which contains define('DEBUG_LOGIN', false); // set to true to log admin saves and login attempts Change false to true and save the file. Now drop your administrator’s table as described in the referenced troubleshooting article. Delete any debug_log.txt file in your zp-data folder. Run setup, create a new user/password, then attempt to log in. A new debug log will be created containing infromation the developers will need to troubleshoot your problem.

The colors of my images are wrong

First, most web browsers ignore color profiles. The latest Safari (since 2.0) and Firefox (since 3.0, disabled by default) are currently notable exceptions. It is said that Internet Exporer 9 will also have support.

Second, there are two aspects of color space. The first is the RGB values of the pixels. Then there is a color profile which may be associated with an image. So you can have pixels which are sRGB or adobeRGB or some other “color space”. If the pixels are not sRGB then typically the web programs will not display the color correctly. If they are, then things should be fine.

Zenphoto does resizing of images with image processing libaries that are installed on your server. Zenphoto supports two of them:

1. GDlibary: This is the default libary which is most commonly availabe on servers. GD does NOT support or preserve color profiles embeeded in images.
2. Imagick libary (since 1.3): This is capable to preserve color profiles (due to a bug it is not in Zenphoto 1.3.1 yet) but the recommendation to use sRGB still persists.

Also beware that the commonly used “export to web” feature of some well know image processing tools generally does strip meta data including color profiles from image to achieve smaller file sizes.