Updating the Wikipedia entry made me explore the Zenphoto website and I have a few ideas that would help improve it.
Articles about ZenphotoAcrylian suggested that, and I think it's a very good idea. We should probably highlight the difference between that page and the "testimonials" page.
User Guide – the current oneI'm aware that it is generated automatically by Zenpage, but I think a custom-made page would be a welcome addition. In a nutshell, that page would be structured like the table of content of a book, and would refer to the existing pages of the User Guide.
I could work on that if you want, but it won't be in the next couple of weeks.
We could probably include in that table-of-content-like page a link to outside tutorials and video tutorials.
User Guide – for lambda usersI played with the idea of doing a plugin/pages of a theme that would contain instructions for gallery users/updaters. The "plugin" idea is too complex for my limited knowledge of PHP, so instead I worked on pages included on my own theme. However, the "pages for a theme" are not easily exported.
So I'll probably develop those pages on my own website and will see how well they are received by my gallery users at Church and at the office. Once they pass that test, I'll post the link to my website. Once the work is completed, I'm quite open to sending these pages onto the Zenphoto server, or having them included as web or PDF pages in the Documentation folder...
ExtensionsIs it possible to classify them in 3 groups:
– officially supported and maintained: included in the current release package (green icon)
–
Generally compatible (3rd party) (with the blue checkmark like on the Extensions page.
– Unsupported or incompatible third party extensions (with the red exclamation mark)
In the details page, I would replace the "originally introduced with Zenphoto x" by "last updated with Zenphoto x". I find it particularly important for hosted extensions and themes, because I usually can see the "last updated" info on external websites.
For example, "google analytics for Zenphoto" is said to be introduced with Zenphoto 1.2.6 (so I won't even look at it), but the external webpage refers to version a version updated 2011-12-27.
Some extensions might also be removed or have a mention that they only work with Zenphoto 1.2.6 – 1.2.9 (admin_toolbox, for example). Since many of these external plugins are developed by Acrylian or Sbillard, it probably would be relatively easy to update those descriptions.
ThemesClassification is great, but I would include the "last updated" mention (just like above).
Demo and Screenshots menusAs it stands, the "demo" is useless. I would probably replace the "Demo" menu with a single menu that links to articles, testimonials.
The "Screenshots" menu could include a link to the OpenCMS demonstration site at
http://www.opensourcecms.com/scripts/details.php?name=Zenphoto&scriptid=150The "live demo", plus all those screen shots and a mention that the Zenphoto website is indeed powered by Zenphoto should be enough of a demo.
Zenphoto
Comments
By reading "1" I expect 1 answer, not the initial posting.
Wete
@michel:
User Guide – the current one
I think that is too complicated. That must be maintained frequently. We have an collector TOC for troubleshooting entries. Since the real flexibility and strenght of Zenphoto lies in custom theming that is of course partly aimed at people with coding knowledge. You will never be able to do all fancy stuff without the knowledge
User Guide – for lambda users
We could certainly create a separate category for "beginners" or something. Someone must maintain them for the future and frequently, too.
Extensions/themes We could do that but someone would have to test all the 3rd party extensions (some are not even plugins as general hacks and tools are listed as well).
We generally have no time to test or check third party extension or frequently check if or when they are updated or even abandoned (we have tool to check if the links are still valid though). That is why it says "introduced" and not "updated". This is btw generated automatically based on the date of the the release post and the extensions/theme entry and not manually.
Many 3rd party tools are not updated since when they were introduced. I agree that this note should be removed from the official plugins as they are always current anyway.
Bascially the same above applies to official and 3rd party themes.
demo
Why is this useless? It shows the standard Zenpage theme in a standard usage for a guide what you can do. Of course our own site is also a demo for Zenphoto but a quite heavily customized one.
Actually we once had a link to opencms on the demo site but that apparently got lost somehow. I will re-add that.
@wete: Since it says "posts" and not "answers" technically the initial one is also one...;-) I will see if that can be done
Thanks for the feedback. I am aware that a lot of things are subjective and that there are only 24 hours/day! In the other post, I think sbillard basically answered my main concern with regard to extensions and themes.
As for the Demo, I'm wondering what is its use, considering it brings a mostly empty gallery with 1 news item. Isn't the Zenphoto website by itself a better example? Aren't the examples in the Showcase gallery more appropriate? Maybe I'm wrong!
One idea might be to create one or two albums and upload a couple of photos to give an idea of what is achieved in 10 minutes.
The demo is meant to act as a plain default example without any customizing. Most showcase entries are done by people who know what they do. The demo is more a guide for people knowing what it can do "out of the box".
@wete: I will see what bbpress allows. I have right now no memory of how the post count is done and if bbpress provides any means to get an calculate with it. Other than Znephoto it does not have any documentation and you have to look into the files itself to find such things.
And the file comments are not that extensive either. but we probably have sometime to think of moving to another system since the bbpress who are the wordpress guys focus sadly on the bbpress as a WP plugin only.
Regarding checking older extensions, if you two or one of you has the time and motivation to help with that we would welcome such contributions. Fretzl recenetly helped with cleaning up and tagging the showcase which we do basically once a year/half year as people not always notify us if they abandon ZP or change the look of the site.
I fully understand the challenge. I admit a bit selfishly that I think I prefer to look at User docs first. Apart from allowing me to finish one project before starting yet another one, it will allow me to get a few photo uploaders to populate my gallery.
Regarding documentation, the table of content seen on Piwigo documentation page shows a bit what I had in mind: http://piwigo.org/doc/doku.php .
Regarding the forum
Although I slightly prefer a total number of posts per thread (less conventional, but more logical for me), I personally don't care between having number of posts vs number of replies. One nice addition would be a "New" icon for threads and/or replies that have been updated since my last visit.
Actually we try to make Zenphoto easy to use without having to read something like that. At least for the basic standard functionality. I have good experiences with people you could call basically computer or at least web illiterate. But I did setup the sites and coded them and disabled everything for their user accounts they don't like options etc.
We also have a lot of documentation on the backend itself for that reason.
I also plan to make a screencast tour through the backend. However that will not show detailed usage as IMHO things often best are tried yourself. But anyone is also invited to make screencast or the like. We gladly add everything to the screencasts and our youtube channel.
Regarding the forum:
I must admit I never cared about the number of posts since sbillard and I actually read the forum via RSS. The newest topic are alway on top of the front page. I have no idea if bbpress allows them to be marked for a visitor (see my comment about its documentation above).
When I was a development manager I always felt that the documentation should be written along with the design specification. Unfortunately not an option here. But the reason for that was that if something was difficult to explain it was probably designed wrong.
So, to the best of our efforts, we will make changes to Zenphoto to make it easier to document. Unfortunately that will probably have to wait until we begin on 1.4.4 since we are almost ready to put 1.4.3 to bed. The other caveat is that some things may be too "ingraned" to be changed radically. But we can try.
So my comment was that you initially try to make the beginner's guide as general usable as possible from the start. That way you don't have to make much changes later.
Since you are part of the team as an translator anyway, I think speak for sbillard and me that you may contact us via mail directly as well if something is really unclear in progress. Probably not every bit of the progress must be discussed on the forum (but could of course).