(Untitled)

System

Hello there!

I recently started using Zenphoto to recreate my portfolio website. I absolutely love it, as it is going to make my life so, so much easier when I want to update my site with new artwork (my current website hasn't been updated in ages, because I dread re-coding, making new thumbnails, yadda yadda.)

There is but one challenge that has me stumped. I would like the top tier albums' thumbnails to show on the website at all times. Here's a mock-up of what would be an Album page: http://amysaundersonline.com/website_design.jpg

To clarify, I have three albums: 2D Artwork, Animation, and Modeling. I want the Albums' thumbnails (which are also links) to show up whether a visitor is on the Gallery or Album page. My reasoning for this is that I don't want visitors to have to go back to the main Gallery page to click another album. My current website ( www.amysaundersonline.com ) is an example of the always-existent-menu effect I want: the content inside the speech bubble is the only thing that changes; the menu is there at all times.

I've spent a great deal of time working with WordPress themes in the past, so I initially thought, "Oh, I'll just use multiple loops: one to show the Album thumbnails, and another to display the current Album's Image thumbnails." However, if I understand correctly, I can't do things quite this way in Zenphoto. I suppose one would create new objects to do what I'm trying to achieve?

Using new objects and class methods, is it possible to tell the Album page, "First, act like you are the Gallery page, and call up the Album thumbnails, THEN act like you are the Album page and generate the Images for the current album"?

I guess what I'm looking for here is a "while (next_album())" that pulls from the top tier albums only, heh heh.

I'm a PHP novice, so I apologize for being a bit of a ignoramus when it comes to using objects, classes, etc. I'm currently learning the basics of using objects in PHP thanks to Google and the Intertubes, though, so hopefully something will "click" soon.

I don't expect anyone to hold my hand and tell me the exact code to use. I'm looking for more of a, "Look over here, ya goof." My biggest worry is that I'm headed in the entirely wrong direction to find my solution, or making things way more difficult than they need to be (as I am apt to do.)

I was unsuccessful in finding a forum post that already addressed this same issue (I could just suck at searching/skimming for things), so any help, assistance or words of advice are appreciated. And, naturally, once I find my solution, I will post it here for others to use.

sbillard

Certainly you can do this. But it will take a bit of coding on your part. The normal "album" loop is context sensitive. So on a gallery page it will go through each of the first level albums. On an album page it will go through each of the albums of the subalbum.

I think your best approach would be to create your own "gallery" loop for the album pages using the Zenphoto object model. I hope you do not want your first level albums "paged" as that would be quite difficult.

You can get a list of first level albums from with `$gallery_albums = $_zp_gallery->getAlbums();` This is a list of the album names. Within your gallery loop you will have to instatiate album instances for each of these albums and use the album properties to display the thumbnails, etc.

Of coure, reviewing the themeing guide and the function descriptions on the web site is recommended. Also please note that I am giving this advice from memory, so I appoligize in advance if I have mis named the above functions.