We used Vanilla Forums for a few years. We choose it back then because it was the only forum software that had an importer for the bbPress forum we once started with. We had to migrate to Vanilla Forums because bbPress – originally a standalone forum software – became a WordPress plugin and we had no use for a WordPress site obviously.

We really liked Vanilla but a few years ago a company named Higher Logic took over and now focuses on their paid hosted plans. After neglecting support for the still available open source software itself and not providing proper release updates anymore, they finally made a clean cut in December 2025.

Due to upcoming server updates which will remove PHP versions older than 8.1 which Vanilla is not compatible with, we are forced again to migrate. Since options to import an existing forum database are not that many we have chosen MyBB as the replacement as it also has an importer for Vanilla.

We hope to be back soon and hopefully most user accounts and topics will be still available.

Updates

• 2026-06-02: So far looks good and we were able to fix some issues with the importer and already moved all contents. We hope to get the forum up again around the weekend.
• 2026-06-01: Sadly the available importer tool does not work properly although first tests had been promising. We hope we manage it eventually. Since we do all this in our spare time, it likely will take some days until the forum will be available again.

What should I know before starting a translation?

All existing complete or uncomplete translations are included in the Zenphoto release package. The language selector on the backend options indicates the status of a current translation. 

It would be good if you were quite confident in written English and quite comfortable with Zenphoto itself and with web developement in general, although no coding is required to make a translation.
 
Keep in mind that if you volunteer to make translations there will be the need of updating the languages files at least for every official release since Zenphoto is a work in progress. You may make your translation based on the current release of zenphoto.

Submitting a translation

If you made a translation file, you can of course host it as you like and offer as a download. In that case just let us know about it via the forum.

You also can submit it for inclusion into the Zenphoto package. You will need a free GitHub account and have to create a Git controlled Zenphoto installation of the GitHub development version, preferably on a local server using WAMP, LAMP or MAMP. 

If you update the languages there you can directly update them via GitHub using a pull request. See instructions here: https://help.github.com/articles/using-pull-requests

Translator entry on our site

If you prove to be a reliable and frequently committed translation contributor we also may ask you if you would like to get a translator entry on our Zenphoto team page. Generally we add anyone who is contributing significantly to the contributors page with the public info you provided via your contact anyway.

We really do appreciate the time and work – two of our core team members maintain the Dutch and German translation and know about this – that needs to be put into a frequently updated translation and would like to honor frequent contribution this way.

Development build or official release?

It is recommended to make your translation against the development build on GitHub. This way it will be ready for and matched up to the next release of Zenphoto.The work will be outdated initially since there are changes all the time otherwise.

Currently there are over 4600 strings that need to be translated so it does not really make sense to start with an older Zenphoto version. Some of these strings are only single words, some are doubled for specific reasons. Since we change strings here and there all the time we recommend doing updates frequently at least once a week, so it will be much easier to match a given release date of the next version. You simply will have less work that way than doing all at once. So better think twice before your volunteer... :-) More on that in detail later.

License of your translation

Just to note: Since a translation falls under copyright, your submitted translation should be provided under a open license compatible to Zenphoto's GPL v2 or later license. If no special license note is attached, we will assume GPL.

How does Zenphoto's translation work?

Zenphoto uses the gettext technology to provide translation and localization capability. Currently this requires native gettext support, meaning gettext needs to be installed as a binary PHP extension on your server. 

Zenphoto uses the message-level for translation. We use the standard gettext functions gettext() and ngettext() to translate strings. If you are working with Zenphoto you might have spotted strings that look like this in the code:

Singular:

Plural (actually rarely used):

If a translation is found, "some text" will be replaced by the translation string. If no...

Unbelievable we still exist. We may be a niche CMS by now but we still strongly believe in the importance of free, open source software and independent self hosting and not relying on any paid third party service.

We still are a small team of volunteers. The team changed over the years but the current team is generally on board for 15+ years. And we have no plans to stop even if we may not always be as fast with development as we like to!

So on to the next 20 years!

• Fix path in setup checking if system is case sensitive to avoid open_basedir restriction issues on some hosts [acrylian, fretzl|

General

• Move debug constant definitions to separate file so setup also include it. Fixes broken fresh install setup processes [acrylian, fretzl – Thanks to thomfriedel]
• Internal escaping the $ char in mysql passwords has been removed from the dbBase class. Read more info about this: https://www.zenphoto.org/news/database-password-problems/  [acrylian, fretzl, guirala]

[DONATE]

Plugins

• image_album_statistics: 
  • Add missing $sortdirection parameter to printAlbumStatistic() and printImageStatistic() since getImageStatistic() and getAlbumStatistic() already supported it. [acrylian]
  • Fix wrong parameter usage of some deprecated functions. [acrylian]

Translations

• Argentinian Spanish [guirala]
• Dutch [fretzl]
• German [acrylian]
• Italian [bic]
• Russian [kuzzzma]
• Spanish [guirala]

All included official themes have been marked as deprecated since Zenphoto 1.6. A note is added on the backend. This leads to some confusion especially with new users.

These themes all are quite old and outdated and it does not make sense to update or rework them as their base is quite old. They will be removed with the next major release which is sadly still quite a while away. Untill then these themes will only get bugfixes and no actual feature updates anymore like special layouts. They will get the occasional plugin support if it is just a function to add. There will be at least one new official all-purpose theme included in the future.

There are also these third party themes with "limited support" from us. That means we roughly maintain and fix issues – primarily if made aware of theme – on these themes to keep them compatible with the latest Zenphoto release:

• https://www.zenphoto.org/theme/zpBootstrap/
• https://www.zenphoto.org/theme/zpbase/
• https://www.zenphoto.org/theme/zenji/
• https://www.zenphoto.org/theme/libratus/

We welcome bug reports and/or pull requests with fixes.

There are also some good maintained third party themes you can use

• https://www.zenphoto.org/theme/multiverse/ (the author bic is ZP team member so this is basically "half-official")
• https://www.zenphoto.org/theme/paradigm/
• https://www.zenphoto.org/theme/collections/

Tests showed a rather random behaviour regarding the position of the $ within the password. On some hosts it matters and on some it does not. Also some hosts like our own do not allow the $ sign (and even some other chars) at all.

If you encounter issues best contact your host or simply don't use the $ sign. If needed you can always try to escape characters in the config file manually. 

General

PHP fixes

• Fix some PHP 8.3/8.4 deprecation issues. [acrylian]
• Replace E_USER_ERROR usages with trigger_error() being deprecated in PHP 8.4+ with E_USER_WARNING followed by exit() respectively exitzp() [acrylian]
• Removes E_STRICT error level from internal catalogue if on PHP 8.4+ [acrylian]

EXIF handling

• Catch if native PHP EXIF extension is not available on the server for metadata reading, also gettext some EXIF debug messages properly [acrylian]
• We internally used "LensType" which actually is named "LensModel" according to EXIF specs. The db column remains unchanged for compatibility but the internal EXIF field catalogue has been updated accordingly [acrylian]
• Since the EXIF fields "LensInfo" and "LensModel" are often not stored under their names but as "undefinedTags" in image metadata we added a switch to handle those [acrylian, fretzl – Thanks to hermor and kuzzzma]

Various core changes

• gallery class: Add parameter $physical_only to methods getAllAlbums() and getAllAlbumsFromDB() to always exclude dynamic albums,
  Fix upload and move/copy to dynamic albums which in fact is not possible [acrylian, thanks to Adrian0832]
• authority class: Small improvements to db queries getting administrators or one adminstrator [acrylian] 
• Old deprecated Zenphoto_Authority and Zenphoto_Administrator classes moved to separate files for cleaner separation [acrylian]
• Revert 1.6.5 fix for "null_selection" actually fixing "incorrect" usage duplicating existing select options and causing trouble with correct select type options [acrylian, bic]
• Fix issue with too wide tag select list on the admin album edit pages [acrylian]
• Fix tag suggestions on backend being not full width [acrylian]
• Removes old jQuery resizable calls for resizable elements in favor of native CSS solution.[acrylian]
• Fix debug constant defines in the wrong place to be set via the config file as intended since 1.6. More info on that here: https://www.zenphoto.org/news/debugging [acrylian] 
• New internal constant PRE_RELEASE which enables TEST_RELEASE mode which bundles the debug mode DEBUG_ERROR,  DEBUG_IMAGE_ERR and DEBUG_404 automatically on pre-release versions. This can be overridden by disabling TEST_RELASE via the config file. [acrylian] 
• Admin overview page: Now notes using a pre-release via a warning box and links to GitHub commits for info on changes. Display errors also warns via warning box if enabled. [acrylian] 
• Remove usages of E_STRICT error level as it internally is downgraded to E_NOTICE in PHP 8 and deprecated in PHP 8.4 [acrylian]
• rsslib.php moved from the zenphoto_news plugin to /zp-core/deprecated/ and replaced with /zp-core/libs/class-rsslib.php. It was formerly used internally by the zenphoto_news and the now removed check_for_update plugin. If you did use it directly somehow you need to update your include paths. There is no fallback. [acrylian]
• gallery_statistics utility: Former inline code has been moved and reworked to a new core class adminGalleryStats. If enabled it now also incorporates download statistics. For better overview the page has been divided into subtabs now [acrylian]
• New indexes have been added on the albums database table to improve performance especially related to dynamic albums [subjunk]
• Add more intuitive option to always keep a user album even when a user is removed no matter if the album is delinked or not [acrylian]
• external_auth class has been deprecated and will be removed without replacement [acrylian]

[DONATE]

Themes

• basic, Garland, zenpage, zpMobile: Basic support for scriptless-socialsharing new profile buttons [acrylian]
• basic: The custom tinymce...

General

• Metadata:
  • Fix broken EXIF image metadata import and formatting due to the old Exifer library being removed too soon in 1.6.3 [acrylian, fretzl – Thanks to kuzzzma and bic]
  • Fix duplicate tags on metadata import and elsewhere [bic]
  • New option to choose the metadata refresh behaviour in Options > Image [acrylian]
• Fix password match in registration form [bic]
• Fix and improvements for search album breadcrumbs [bic|
• Fix broken image sorting [acrylian]
• Fix albums to be selectable on the uploads page although a user has no rights to them. This fixes class methods isMyItem() and isVisible() to work as expected for albums regarding album subrighs if checking with UPLOAD_RIGHTS or ALBUM_RIGHTS. [acrylian]
• Fix status inheritance of subalbums of albums in scheduled publishing and that prescheduled published albums sometimes were not properly published [acrylian – Thanks to kuzzzma]
• Fix type of various incremented variables regarding stricter PHP 8+ behaviour [acrylian]
• jQuery 3.7.1, jQuery Migrate 3.5.0, jQuery Ui 1.14 [acrylian]

[DONATE]

New plugins

• tinymce: Long overdue update to TinyMCE 7+ [acrylian, bic, fretzl]
  
  • This is the successor of the tinymce4 plugin which will be removed with the next version. NOTE: If you have used custom configs for tinymce4 you may have to re-create them as a number of former TinyMCE plugins are gone and some options have changed that may cause trouble in the future.
  • The number of default config files has been reduced to slilm, basic and full.

Deprecated plugins

• tinymce4: Use the new tinymce plugin as the successor

Plugin updates

• comment_form:
  • Fix address fields having double autocomplete attribute if that is enabled [acrylian]
  • Adds text and math quiz fields as privacy friendly alternative/addition to captcha for fighting SPAM [acrylian, bic]
  • Support for tinymce4 and tinymce plugins. Note: A tinymce plugin must be active to use with the comment_form [acrylian]
• contact_form: 
  • Adds text and math quiz fields as privacy friendly alternative/addition to captcha for fighting SPAM [acrylian, bic]
  • Autofill available address fields, fixed deprecated log entry due to type mismatch in PHP 8.x [bic]
• downloadlist: Fix download link error due to wrong access rights check [tobifra]
• elFinder: elFinder 2.1.64 [acrylian]
• favoritesHandler:
  • Avoid duplicate instances of the same image/album [bic]
  • Fix Users watching list in admin page [bic]
  • Convert character case of new instances to possibly existing ones, since instance options are case-insensitive [bic]
  • Prevent tag_suggest bind code from output when not needed (i.e. most of the times) [bic]
  • Fix page count and a wrong use of $this in the static function pageCount() [bic]
  • Add instance name set to head title and use the text from the relevant option [bic]
  • Rename favorites class method ad_RemoveButton() to proper printAddRemoveButton() [acrylian]
• html_meta_tags: Fix image usage on non photo images [acrylian, bic]
• OpenStreetMap:
  • Various optimisations for marker popups; option to disable default styles [kuzzzma, acrylian]
  • Leaflet 1.9.4 and leaflet-providers 1.13.0 updates [acrylian]
• PHPMailer: PHPMailer 6.9.2 [fretzl]
• print_album_menu: Prevent printing of empty ul element for subalbums of protected albums [bic]
• redirector: Fix option storing absolute server path to selected file breaking it in case migrated or otherwise changed [acrylian]
• register_user:
  • Fix form not being submitted [acrylian – Thanks to NHTEC]
  • Options moved to separate registerUserOptions class, main plugin class renamed from register_user to registerUser [acrylian]
  • Several internal global variables have been turned into static class properties. If you used a custom form you need to update it as there is no fallback or deprecation warning!
    • $_common_notify_hander => r...