Zenphoto
The simpler media website CMS
ZenphotoThe simpler media website CMS
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Trying to install zenphoto-1.6.4.zip to be run using XAMPP on a personal computer running Windows. The intention is to experiment with it a bit for evaluation purposes. However, it looks like, I cannot even get "Setup" to complete successfully.
I must admit there were a lot of strange factors encountered when trying to perform the setup. For example, it indicated that the mysqli component for database access was missing. However, my interpretation of the output from running phpinfo.php (which can be found here) says otherwise. I concluded that this meant I had to select pdo_mysql. There were a bunch of other messages saying things were missing but given that Setup has not yet been performed caused me to think that was odd. Are you supposed to add stuff prior to setup? Then the screen produced once I thought Setup was executing (which can be found here) seemed to stall and never complete. I did look at the file named setup.log (shown here) but given my extreme lack of knowledge and experience with Zen Photo, at this point, this was not very helpful.
Note: There is no such file as "zp-core/zp-extensions/mobiletheme/vendor/psr/simple-cache/.editorconfig".
I did obtain a new version (8.2.12) of XAMPP which I think is still the most up-to-date version. Is it possible that my XAMPP is too up-to-date?
Comments
Setup checks for several server side PHP extensions to be present (see the installation pages on our site for the base requirements. Some are required and some are recommendations as the messages tell. Only missing required PHP extensions will stop setup.
The setup log you linked does tell it is present. Are you perhaps mistaking/confusing this with the old extension "mysql" which is removed in PHP 8?
You can ignored that. Thats a minor issue with a third party libary that added this unwantedly.
Actually that should actually be fine although I have no experience with XAMPP itself (I am on Mac using MAMP).
The setup.log actually looks correct. Please also review the debug.log and if you have access the server PHP error log.
The debug.log file contents are as follows:
*** Start debug.log ***
{10248:Sat, 03 Aug 2024 18:18:19 GMT} Zenphoto v1.6.4
ZenphotoCMS config file is missing. Setup run required.
{10248:Sat, 03 Aug 2024 18:43:47 GMT}
ERROR: Call to undefined method PDOStatement::getMessage() in T:\xampp\htdocs\pbox.v01\zenphoto-1.6.4\zp-core\classes\class-dbpdo_mysql.php on line 174
*** End debug.log ***
Does suggest that this problem might NOT exist if not for having to select pdo_mysql rather than use the preferred mysqli. In that, maybe my real problem has to do with NOT discovering mysqli.
The phpinfo report specifies what file path is used for the php_error_log file but no such file exists. Note: This is a very new instance of XAMPP.
If you entered wrong info on the first setup run in the mysql form you have to update the config file directly within zp-data.
That may indicate that the PDO extension is not installed properly. PDO Statement is a class of that extension:
https://www.php.net/manual/de/book.pdo.php
Actually in that line there should be an PDOexception object.
Perhaps something is in general not right with XAMPP if MySQLi also makes problems. I am sorry I am not able to help with this. Zenphoto works on standard web host setup and does not require any special configuration.
OK, I probably should have mentioned that the database did get filled with tables which suggested to me that something happened as expected. For some reason I'd expect that is about all that gets done in setup. Obviously, I cannot determine that all the tables are correct.
I was also inclined to think that if I were to do it again I'd ignore the warning on the input page for setup and leave the database extension set to the default value of MySqli.
Let me see if I can make sense out of the config file.
You can see a list of all tables here: https://www.zenphoto.org/news/database-scheme/
Exact details like columns are not documented there though.
But if tables are created at least the db connection works as noted on the setup image you linked above. Your setup hangs on some database setup regarding collations and encodings regarding utf8/utf8mb4.
What mysql version do you have with XAMPP? If it is MySQL 8 we might have discovered another incompatibility as we do not have access to MySQL 8 for testing (MAMP does not have it yet and our host uses MariaDB) and there have been breaking changes apparently. We had one fix recently included but so far we didn't get more reports yet.
Perhaps you can review the XAMPP mysql log if there's anything?
The information reported herein is based on XAMPP Version 8.2.12 which corresponds to PHP Version 8.2.12 (the same). The database is Maria DB 10.4.32 which does correspond to MySQL 8.
It might be worth pointing out that I've done what I'm trying to do now with lots of other software and compatibility has been very good. I do NOT recall any such issues over what is now decades of using XAMPP. Furthermore, the experience with migrating both from XMPP to my hosting services as well as the other way around has been excellent.
I'm thinking about trying the automatic setup provided by my hosting service and then migrate the resulting system, assuming it installs successfully, back to XAMPP on my computers.
I am sorry you have this trouble. I never encountered anything like this on any host I ever installed or upgraded Zenphoto…
We have MariaDB 10.5.25 on our host so the db software will not be the problem I guess. MariaDB is not exactly MySQL 8. A fix due to a small syntax change we recently added for MySQL 8 - it was primarily for the favorites plugin - was not needed for MariaDB.
Sure, try the automatic setup of your host. But note we don't actively support any trouble with that and sometimes their upgrade ways don't work properly.
Looks like my hosting service was able to successfully complete the setup. However, the result is quite perplexing. When accessing my new (i.e., have yet to do anything with it) ZenPhoto site on my hosting service the splash page looks like this. Now what do I do? My expectation was that I'd need to sign-on and do some administration for starters but there does not seem to be any way to do that. Maybe I'm supposed to know how to form a link to a login method. Yes? No?
That is of course an empty site. If you used the standard setup way you would have to create a user account after completing it.
The info about the login URL is indeed missing from our install/update doc https://www.zenphoto.org/news/installation-and-upgrading/ so we will add that. But it is documented here: https://www.zenphoto.org/news/login-and-password-problems/
You will have to use the master user credentials created on setup which your host hopefully told you.
Thank you. With that I am now able to logon. However, didn't get past first page without confronting another issue. Here is a screenshot of the top part of the page displayed immediately after successful logon. It seems to be saying I now need to run setup. Given the problems I've experienced that creates some skepticism. In this case I am able to backup both the DB and website files which I have done. Would running setup be recommended by those with more experience than I have? It does look like it is expected that this can happen normally but I'm certainly not someone qualified to say "I know what I am doing!".
About messages like that in general please read:
https://www.zenphoto.org/news/re-running-setup-files/
The load of files listed and the "copied over an unknown release" are a downstream issues of the "weird" behaviour/issue you experienced on your server. Re-running setup may cause you the same troubles again.
That all needs to be solved somehow as you likely need to run setup on the next update and you may see these message on other occasions as well (if the server itself got an update). 1.6.5 is around the corner so to speak. As already mentioned all that is not the usual behaviour. Sadly I have no proper idea about that right now.
Both the DB and website files have now been migrated from my hosting service to my test system. After some minor configuration adjustments the test site was accessed and produced the same result reported above regarding the need to redo setup. With nothing to loose here it was decided to go ahead and elect to "Run setup". That appears to have been successful and this new test site seems to working fine. However, very little has yet been done but no apparent errors or issues at this time.
It might be worth pointing our that this new XAMPP supported testing site appears to be using "MySQLi" just fine. Still don't know what the warning about "MySQLi not connected" meant when first trying to run an initial setup on this same XAMPP system.
Thanks so much for the help. Remains to be seen if this does what I want but I now have something to work with. That would not be true absent the assistance provided herein.
Editing error!
Also, it looks like the normal default is to have site in "Maintenance Mode". In that, administrator needs to logon on "Open" the site. Might make more sense to say "Site has no content yet" given that it does take some administration to create some. Appears as though there is an option, that does need to be set by an administrator, to have the site "Open" automatically after setup runs. This finding appears to explain some of my prior experience. It would have been good to know about that when performing an initial installation.
The setup re-run request internally updates a kind of "system signature" and acts as warning for you as the owner that things change. For example a PHP version update or a MySQL update. Updates from PHP 7 to 8 can break things as can do MySQL 5 to 8 and similar. If they are serious is up to you.
After running setup the site is in maintenance mode because you may have just performed an update you may want to test before opening it to the public. You can change that default.
Yes you have to be logged in for that but you need to be that if you are running setup anyway.
That the mode is enabeld is mentioned here: https://www.zenphoto.org/news/installation-and-upgrading/