Hierarchy

cjm51213

Hi Folks,

I am radically reorganizing my content. I have a directory structure that zenphoto interprets as albums and content. I think I want to reproduce this using only dynamic albums. It is obvious that I can create a series of dynamic albums, but can I create a hierarchy, meaning can I click on a dynamic album and have other dynamic albums discovered in the list of content? Or, am I back to distributing my content over a directory structure? The dynamic albums are much better because it enables content to appear in multiple places without created copies. The pictures of "Dad" can also appear in the albums "Christmas ...".

So, maybe I distribute my dynamic album definitions over a directory structure, but the content is in a flat directory off to the side that is not visible?

How is the generally done?

Thanks for the help,

Chris.

acrylian

Zenphoto is file system based by core. Dynamic albums are "saved searches" auto updating themselves. Therefore you cannot directly create a hierachy with them and you cannot manually sort within dynamic albums either.

Albums can be part of the dynamic album results if they match the search. You can also of course put dynamic albums within real albums.

The dynamic albums are much better because it enables content to appear in multiple places without created copies.

Be aware that this may create a SEO problem of duplicated content because of that because it technically creates "copies" in term of the pages. The same image in two albums is the same page more or less.

The html_meta_tags plugin has an option to set a canonical url that points to the original album/image to avoid this.

cjm51213

Hi Acrylian,

You can also of course put dynamic albums within real albums.

Yes. Can I put a dynamic album within another dynamic album? Can I have dynamic albums "Japan" and "Weddings" and have the dynamic album "Yoshi's Wedding", available as an album in each and also at some theoretical "Top Level"?

Be aware that this may create a SEO problem of duplicated content because of that because it technically creates "copies" in term of the pages. The same image in two albums is the same page more or less.

Thanks for the warning. This is not an issue for my purposes, but it may be for other readers.

acrylian

Yes. Can I put a dynamic album within another dynamic album? Can I have dynamic albums "Japan" and "Weddings" and have the dynamic album "Yoshi's Wedding", available as an album in each and also at some theoretical "Top Level"?

You cannot "put" anything directly into a dynamic album manually as I mentioned. A dymamic album is a file on the file system and not a folder.. You can only do this indirectly via the search performed to create the dynamic album, e.g. via specific tags.

cjm51213

Hi Acrylian,

If I seek to create an hierarchy of dynamic albums, then I need to do it with an hierarchy of directories within which the saved searches exist. Since a saved search has no tags, it cannot be found by another saved search. I'll need to think about this a bit, but I don't see a problem, even though it is not exactly what I was planning, I think it works.

I suspect that I can build the hierarchy of directories with a script that looks at the tags in the saved searches ...

Thanks.

Chris.

acrylian

Yes, you can create albums that contain dynamic albums. Other than that it will be kind of relative.

Since a saved search has no tags, it cannot be found by another saved search.

A dynamic album can be tagged as any other album and will then also appear in results. You can even limit search results to exclude images via the search options.

I would generally recommend not to don't make the site structure too complicated. The more you overly nest your albums the more confusing/unclear it might become for visitors. An alternative is just to use general albums and tags plus the tag_suggest plugin for a more free structure.

But of course whatever fits for you!