Hey everyone,
Just found this place, saw the product, so i downloaded it and installed it. After adjusting for Dreamhost, got it installed pretty quickly. Figured I'd give you some feedback.
Overall, love it.
The fact that this thing is so light on the back end is what makes this great. Ive seen feature requests and suggestions throughout the boards, but I just have to say that the thing that will make this stand out from the tons of other options out there is it's light weighted-ness. So, while developing this further, I would suggest keeping it that way.
Mabey create a dedicated "Hack" section, which has developer-created or developer-approved changes, that people can download and apply at will. If you do that in a unified format, and create a support forum for just them, it should allow for you to keep the original script super-light weight, and awesome, while allowing the "I need this!" type crowd to be pleased as well.
The only other thing that I want other than what is there now is the sub-categories. I know its been discussed and addressed, that it is being worked on. I read thru the entire situation with GalleryXP or whatever that is. Didn't like how that was done after he "renamed" it, and didnt like/get his original mod to work. So, I am anxiously awaiting an answer for it here.
I removed the comments, because that is a hassle I don't need. Unmodded comments is just spam waiting to happen, and I would not enable a user registration system just for the gallery even if it was available. Plus, security with posting into the database via PHP is an issue if not focused on.
Works with mod rewrite on default Dreamhost set up too, which is fantastic. Very important to have this working by default, because so much time is spent by php webmasters converting these dynamic scripts after installation.
My one suggestion for change is to have the url of the image page, the one where description/comments are displayed, not end in the image format file type. Im not a super SEO guy, but I believe that having a non-image file labeled as an image will hurt you in search engines. I think this should be rewritten in the mod re-write to show .html or .php, then just have the full sized image when clicked from there be displayed as it is. Even if it does not hurt SEO, I would prefer it that way just for asthetics and user browsing.
My current live gallery is a "Gallery" version 1, flat file. It's running with 932 sub-folders, and almost 12,000 images. So, for me to keep any sorting and/or functionality with that, I would absolutely NEED a sub-cat functionality with zen before switching over.
And as soon as it is available, Ill be switching.
You can see my test ZEN setup here:
http://www.tfw2005.net/zen/You can see my current live gallery here:
http://www.tfw2005.com/gallery/and thefore understand why sub-cats are so important.
So, thats about it. Keep up the good work, and if I ever get un-dead-ass-broke, Ill be supporting you guys for sure. If I can do anything for you otherwise via testing or graphics, etc, just shoot me an email or Pm.
Thanks!
Comments
This allows people to mass upload to the system without giving them FTP access, which is how I work now with my staff.
The Java applet uploader is definitely cool, I've used it other places as well (Facebook). I don't see it coming in the near future, but it is possible.
I'm Wei Chen, developer of Gallery XP.
I want to make it clear, Gallery XP is not a "rename" of ZenPhoto. I was inspired by Zenphoto when I first saw it, I thought it was the best. Then I developed my own script.
photo2005, and trisweb,
I proposed a solution for a bulk uploader two month ago.
http://www.zenphoto.org/support/topic.php?id=275
No one responded, and finally I tried myself.
It is a Flash8 based uploader. Here is an easy example for zenphoto : http://blog.dukechina.org/zpup.tgz , extract it to zen/ folder. and open page http://...../zenphoto/zen/adminup.php
It is just a simple example and the upload script is not protected by password, so be careful. This uploader requires flash8 plugin. There's no plugin for linux. the plugin for firefox is buggy. Anyway I like it very much, and I hope trisweb could integrate it to zp in the next release.