Creating thumbnails manually

plaf

Hiya.

Is it possible to create the thumbnails for a zenphoto gallery manually? I'm thinking that doing it on they - while extremely cool - takes a bit of time and bandwidth that could be put to better use doing something else Is there a spot of documentation somewhere that can tell me about options, perhaps?

Thanks in advance!

acrylian

There is a function for pre-caching the images and thumbs on the admin's first page.

plaf

Very cool, thank you!
I have to say this is the nicest, bestest gallery I've found after scouring the interweb.

AndriaD

I have been searching the docs and this forum for hours, trying to find out how to create thumbs manually -- I've set up the theme (zpFocus) to be able to crop, and I've cleared every cache I can find, but the thumbnails don't change when I crop them -- they're still showing in their original uncropped format, so I figure I need to do something to make this thing make new thumbs -- but WHAT?!? It's driving me NUTS!!

aarghh!
Andria

acrylian

You can create them manually but then you would have to complay to strict naming convention. Not a convient way. Zenphoto does all this autmatically.

If it does not work for you you need to check two things:
- server logs for possible errors
- check if the static_html_cache is enabled. If you need to clear it to see changes. Also clear the image cache to be sure you get fresh files generated.

AndriaD

Hmm... I'm not using the satic_html_cache plugin; I HATE caching, because it always seems to cause problems like this. I went to the "Overview" page and clicked "refresh database". I don't know what "refresh metadata" will do, so I did not click that. On the options/theme page, I made sure that the "crop" box is checked (although it's grayed out in zpFocus; I changed it by changing the themeoptions.php), and hit "apply"; I went to the albums/images page and freshly cropped a few thumbs, clicked "apply"; I clicked my own Firefox "clear cache" button; I have no earthly idea what "image cache" you're talking about, but I cleared Firefox's cache. And I'm STILL seeing not-square thumbs, the same ones I had before I decided to turn the cropping on. There is not one thing in the "docs" that offers anything for me -- frankly there aren't many docs at all, unless you're a programmer, which I am DECIDEDLY NOT. So HOW DO I MAKE IT CREATE NEW THUMBS WHEN I'VE CHANGED SOMETHING THAT ALTERS WHAT THE THUMBS SHOULD LOOK LIKE????

This is driving me absolutely NUTS!!! It's like, oh sure, upload an image, get a thumb -- BUT THAT THUMB WILL BE IMMORTAL, IT WILL NEVER CHANGE, no matter WHAT you do! At this point it looks like I'll have to delete and then reupload ALL my images, just to get new thumbs!!!!!!!

I reiterate, ARRRGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
Andria

AndriaD

Ok, here's a weird thing: my ALBUM thumbs have been cropped -- which I DID NOT want -- but my gallery thumbs are still not cropped. WHAT is going on with this?

AARGHHHH!!!!
Andria

acrylian

the Static html cache is a good thing as it keeps load from the server if you have a lot of traffic.

"refresh database".
matches the database entries with what is on the filesystem. As you probably read already Zenphoto is file system based regarding albums.

"refresh metadata"
Refreshes the meta data, e.g EXIF-data embedded in the images.

Be sure to clear the image cache if you change sizes.

NOTE: zpFocus is a 3rd party theme I don't know anything about. Themes may choose as set by the theme author to not let you change thumb sizes for layout reasons.

AndriaD

Ok, when you say "clear the image cache", what does that mean, exactly? I've clicked my Firefox "clear cache" button, and I'm not running the static-html-cache thingie (almost no traffic, as my site is strictly a "isn't our new home great?" for my extended family), so what else is there to clear, where do I find it?

I'll check over the zpFocus theme; as I said, I edited the themeoption file to turn on cropping, but maybe there is something else that is keeping the thumbs from being cropped and/or displaying their new versions on the pages. (When I click on the thumbs in the admin edit page, it allows me to crop them, shows the new thumb on the right side, and since I turned on cropping (in the themeoptions file), it's not telling me that cropping is turned off -- so I have no idea why my new thumbs aren't showing up -- the new album thumbs are showing up, even though I really didn't want to crop those -- now I'll have to edit the images for those so that cropping them doesn't destroy the image).

In short, everything appears to be set to support cropping, but I can't RE-generate thumbs -- THAT is my problem, none of this other -- I don't know how to make zenphoto create new thumbs after it's already made a thumb for an uploaded image.

Thx,
Andria

acrylian

Zenphoto's image cache stores the sized and/or cropped images that it generates be it on the theme or backend. By clearing this you request them to be recreated. There is a button on the admin overview page usually.

As said the zpFocus theme may require a special image size that you cannot change. A theme may set sizes on the theme itself. This overrides all backend settings and the backend does not "know" about that so it cannot tell you.

If you modify a theme file be sure you know what you are actually doing. See the theming tutorial to learn the basics.