Working with albums and images

    Is there any limit to the number of images?

    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.

    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 file system based. The titles are stored in the database as metadata, which you can't use to get a photo and doesn't need to be unique.

    Replacing default images

    Zenphoto uses various default images for display like default thumbs for multimedia items (if no video thumbnail is used) or for password protected albums. You can of course use your own images instead.

    Example: /zp-core/images/err-passwordprotected.png

    To replace this place an image of the same name within one of these places:

    1. /plugins/images/err-passwordprotected.png (globally)
    2. /themes/<yourtheme>/images/err-passwordprotected.png (only for the theme)

    The same can be done with plugins. Replicate the plugin folder structure in your theme and the files therein will override the default ones. Or you can make "global" overrides of files by placing the structure in the plugins folder.

    Where to upload images etc. via FTP?

    1. The main gallery part: Zenphoto is file system based and stores its albums and images within the root albums folder. This folder may not contain images directly but organized in folders. These folders are recognized as albums by Zenphoto and may contain images and further sub folders in unlimited levels.
    2. Files outside the gallery: The files are stored within the folder uploaded that is located in the root folder of your Zenphoto installation and that is created while running setup automatically.

    Name vs title

    The name of a gallery item and its title are independent. Technically you can have an album with the name "album1" and the title "First album". 

    The name also appears in the URL and is important as an unique identifier for the internal object model framework. The gallery part is entirely file system based so the name of an album is its actual folder name on the file system plus any parent (album/subalbum). For images it is the filename. The title is also multilingual capable.

    Moving, copying and renaming images and albums without loosing data entered

    First you need to understand that Zenphoto is file system based. It recognizes albums and images on discovery. What is not found there anymore is considered gone. What is found new is considered new.

    1. Images
      1. Info embeded via image meta data (EXIF/XMP):
        This is the way we recommend. On uploading Zenphoto will read this data and add it to the database. If you you now move, copy or rename image files via FTP the data will travel with the images as it is embeded in them. However the images will be recognized as new even if their data travels with them.
      2. Info added to the database on the backend:
        If you have not embeded the data in the images and move, copy or rename them via FTP the data will be lost. If you want to avoid this you have to use the tools for "move, copy, rename" you find on right side on each image's entry on the backend edit pages. Then the data of the database is moved as well.
    2. Albums
      On the file system albums are just folders. Folders can't have meta data so on moving, copying or renaming a folder via FTP directly all of the info entered to the database on the backend will be lost. This counts of course also to its images except you have embeded their info. If you want to avoid this you have to use the tools for "move, copy, rename" you find on right side on each album's entry on the backend edit pages. Then the data of the database is moved as well. You can also use the drag&drop sorting on the main albums tab.

    We recommend to backup your database before doing such actions in case for some reasons these fail (e.g. file/folder permission issues).

    Anyonymous uploads by unregistered users

    It is not possible to upload via the backend being unregistered and it is really not recommended to lay your site open to the damage people could do to you with un-gated access.

    If you really want to do this, setup an "unpublished, protected" album . (Or leave the album published, but set the default for albums and images images to be unpublished.) Create an anonymous FTP account that allows write only access to this album folder.

    Then your anonymous guests can FTP files and folders to that account until your server chokes with too much traffic or your disk is filled to the brim. You can view this folder and publish/move images you want to approve.

    Why is there no on the fly front editing?

    Zenphoto once had this feature but we threw it out because this is quite vulnerable to cross site reference forgeries and would also cause extra maintaince to make it as secure as the backend is. By separating front and backend we can make the backend more secure.

    Embedding images into Zenpage news articles or pages

    That can be done using a tool of the texteditor called tinyZenpage. Here is a tutorial how to use that.

    Creative Commons LicenseThis text by www.zenphoto.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

    Code examples are released under the GPL v2 or later license

    For questions and comments please use the forum or discuss on the social networks.

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