Zenphoto 1.0.8.2

    Zenphoto 1.0.8.2 was released quietly yesterday. Yep, there’s a .2 after that! Like you’d expect from software released without unit testing, we encountered several little bugs in the 1.0.8 version, followed by another bug in 1.0.8.1, hence, 1.0.8.2, which is now looking good.

    Download Zenphoto 1.0.8.2 Here!

    This is a larger release than the minor point makes it seem, with many changes to the core code and how things work under the hood. Read the changelog for more juicy info, or check Trac for constant updates. Read below for sweet details about this big point release…

    One of the biggest changes is that images that have been cached are now detected and served directly from cache– no more going through i.php for every single image. This reduces traffic, helps with caching, and improves performance and page load time significantly. If you thought Zenphoto was fast before, you were right. So just imagine how much faster it is with every image directly served!

    Of course, it works the same as before if the image hasn’t been processed yet, which retains all of the elegance of the zenphoto image processor. Custom sizes anytime and anywhere you want, but only processed once, and served as static images after that. It works great.

    Second big change is a lot of code refactoring. All of the core (non-admin interface) code has been cleaned up, combined into useful classes, and split into new include files where necessary. There will be more documentation for new functions on the wiki soon.

    Third moderately large change is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. If you hadn’t noticed before, none of your zenphoto image pages ever show up in Google. That’s because the pages they’re on end with ‘.jpg’, so google thinks they’re images and doesn’t scan them. I bet Google Images was mighty confused too! To combat that, I’ve made an ‘image page suffix’ config option, which defaults to ‘.php’ (because they are, after all, php scripts) and goes at the end of your image page URLS. The best part about that is that the URLs are also backward compatible with the old ones, so they work even without the suffix. No need to worry about old links, just start using that suffix! These backward-compatible URLs (and any other URL that leads to the page in a different way) get “301 Moved Permanently” redirected to the one canonical form of the page URL, so you’ve always got one URL in indexes, and for users. This is all Very Good, trust me.

    There are even more changes that I haven’t listed yet… better error messages, safe_mode compatibility, optional unsharp mask for thumbnails, sub-album mod_rewrite URLs, bugs fixed in garbage collection and bad database entries, and more! This is a huge release, believe it or not–but I wouldn’t call it 1.1 because there were no user interface changes.

    So what’s in the works next? 1.1 will have a completely redesigned administrator’s interface, full sub-album support, EXIF display, simple searching, and more. The backend is nailed, and it’s time to do the same for the stuff you see! Development is hot and picking up pace, so keep watching this space for more. Now, go get 1.0.8.2, report bugs at trac, head to the forums to discuss, or leave a comment below!

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

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