I would like to see a cookbook for doing common tasks within ZenPhoto. Some examples: Display a series of thumbnails for an album on a page. Click on a thumbnail to display a large image on the same page. Place a random image from an album in the size you want on any page. Place an excerpt from a news article on any page. Of course, all of these functions exist in their pure syntax in the docs, but it's not always clear how to put them together to do a specific thing. There are a LOT of users here who could do more with their limited PHP skills if they had a bit more guidance. The forum is good, but I'm finding myself doing a lot of groping through posts and dissecting other themes in order to get a clue how to do something that is not that arcane.
Zenphoto
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For the random image or other stuff on none Zenphoto pages there is the "zenphoto as a plugin" way descirbed on the extensions section which is of course not limited to the random image example.
The functions documentation is generated automatically from the source code comments and there is also a guide how to read that guide. We really are a too small team to write and update such a documentation manually.
To use some of the functions and especially the more advanced Zenphoto "framework" functionality php knowledge is not avoidable (and to teach that is not really our responsibility).
Anyway, if you think a cookbook is needed and would like to write it, please do. We welcome every contribution.