User guide

Requirements August 08, 2008 / Updated: February 23, 2025

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  1. Server requirements
  2. Requirements for older versions

Server requirements

To operate the current Zenphoto version efficiently, you need (our setup script will also tell you about possible problems):

  • A web server with at least 25Mb of free space (plus free space for images and cache files)
  • Apache 2* (it may work without problems on other server systems like nginx, IIS or lighttpd but we have not tested these.)
  • PHP 7, 8-8.3 (8+ strongly recommended), PHP 8.4 probably generally compatible but not yet fully tested
  • Zenphoto expects native PHP core extensions to be available and may not specifically check or warn about these. Certain missing  PHP bundled or externral extensions recommended or required will be noted on setup as usual. General info: https://www.php.net/manual/en/extensions.membership.php. It is recommend that you have tat least the following PHP extensions and settings:
    • One of these graphics libaries for image resizing:
      • GD 2+ graphics library (usually built in on servers)
      • Imagick graphics libary 6.3.8/Imagick 3.0.0+
    • magic_quotes off (recommended - gone in PHP 8 anyway!)
    • register globals off (required)
    • cURL extension (required)
    • gettext extension (optional, required if you plan to use Zenphoto's translation/multilingual capabilites - note that your server must have the locales for the languages installed you intend to use) 
    • iconv and mbstring extensions (strongly recommended if you are using a none English language with lots of special characters)
    • tidy extension (strongly recommended to properly truncate text content containing HTML)
    • mod_rewrite (strongly recommended) – Note that non Apache servers, not supporting htaccess, may require extra setup
  • MySQL 5+* (5.5.3+ recommended) or MariaDB equivalent – MySQL 8 probably generally compatible but not yet tested
    • Appropriate user account rights. (Setup will note if you do not have sufficient rights.)
    • utf8 or utf8mb4 table and column collations

*Zenphoto is developed and tested on Apache environment.

Requirements for older versions

If you really still have an install with of an old version step by step upgrades are recommended (see https://www.zenphoto.org/news/installation-and-upgrading/ for details). Here is a list with the general PHP and MySQL requirements for old versions:

  • v1.2: PHP 4.1.x
  • v1.2.6: PHP 4.4.8 – 5 / MySQL 4+
  • v1.3: PHP 4.4.8 – 5.2 / MySQL 4 – 5
  • v1.4.2: PHP 5 – 7 / MySQL 5+
  • v1.5: PHP 5.3 - 7.2+ / MySQL 5/5.5.3+ (recommended)
  • v1.6: PHP 7 – 8.1 (8.2) - PHP 8+ recommended
  • v1.6.1: PHP 7 – 8.2
  • v1.6.3 PHP 7 – 8.2 (8.3)
  • v1.6.5 PHP 7 – 8.3 (8.4)

 

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Code examples are released under the GPL v2 or later license

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