View Albums error _vti_cnf

dbanghart

I have 4 albums on my website. Things were working fine until recently. When I open two albums (Acrylics and Pastels) there is an error. At the top left is displayed a red x in a box and "_vti_cnf". The album photos are displayed.

Here is the location of my main zen photo albums site
http://susanbanghart.com/art2/

Here is one of the sites with the error
http://susanbanghart.com/art2/index.php?album=acrylics

acrylian

did you ever user Microsoft's Frontpage for editing your theme? That is to my knowledge a hidden folder Frontpage uses to store data. You can just delete that file that must be somewhere in your album's folder using FTP.

Btw, you should consider to upgrade, 1.2.1 is quite outdated.

sbillard

"_vti_cnf" is typically a part of a Frontpage web. Have you somehow got Frontpage interfering with your site?

At any rate, you seem now to have an album named "acrylics/_vti_cnf". Probably you should use FTP to check your site. If this ia a "real" album you need to change its name.

Also note that the version of Zenphoto you are using is hopelessly old. What you are seeing may well be a bug in that version.

dbanghart

Thank you wise people. I use FrontPage. I deleted the files you mentioned and everything is fine. I will also upgrade. Thanks again

LilPeck

I know this is an old thread, but I ran into a similar problem and wanted to add another tip and ask for advice.

As it seems that sooner or later, when you use FrontPage or ExpressionWeb on your site, zenphoto is going to dynamically pick up the _vti_cnf folders created by FrontPage and insert them into the database--

You can prevent those "albums" from appearing in your public zenphoto pages by "UNpublishing" them through the admin interface.

For now, I am going to write a little PHP script that will automatically UNpublish albums that have _vti_cnf in their names, because although I installed zenphoto, someone else who is less tech savvy will be the administrator.

I know this is a common issue, because I googled for zenphoto _vti_cnf and got lots of links to sites where those folders remain published.

We really need a module added to zenphoto to automatically block some album names from the database. I will be willing to try to do that if someone will steer me to the correct files. Being unfamiliar with zenphoto underlying code, it will take me a long time to find the right parts to modify.

Thanks!

acrylian

I am not sure why you need Frontpage at all when you are using Zenphoto... If you need it to design the website.

Generally Zenphoto being filesystem based treats all folders found within the /albums folders as albums without exceptions. This is why you can upload via FTP so easily.

If you upload and/or create albums via the backend this should really be no issue (recommend for users less technically savy). And if you upload via FTP make sure you upload plain folders.

If you really need such a filter review the plugin architecture entry on our user guide.

LilPeck

I understand how FB use puzzles purists. Nonetheless, this is a common enough issue that I think it will be fun to create a plugin to accomodate it.

Thank you for the info.

sbillard

check out the unsupported plugin "filter-file_search". It needs updating to the current version of Zenphoto, but probably does what you wish. If not it is a good starting point.

I'll see about getting the download updated to work on 1.4.x

LilPeck

Thank you. If we could choose to exclude folders from the database that have "_vti_cnf" in their names, that would be very helpful.

Another question: which php file does the automatic insertion of new folder names into the db whenever viewers load zenphoto in their browsers? Specifically, which file has the sql that sets the "show" column to "1"? If that column could be set to 0 instead, that would help. I changed the default in the db to 0 but that doesn't help, so it must be designated as 1 somewhere in the code.

For now, I think I might just stick in a little query somewhere that changes any album record that has vti_cnf in the folder column to 0 in the show column.

sbillard

Well, class_album.php handes all album instantiation, so I guess that is the file you are asking for. However it does not set the "show" column to 1. That setting is infact a an option. (More specifically, there is a default setting for "show" which is changable by the schedule_content utility.)

LilPeck

@sbillard, thank you for your patience. Zenphoto is very elegant and easy to use, but has enough features that it takes a little practice for the new user to learn where all the bells and whistles are.

For someone else who might be searching for the same things I am:
The schedule_content.php is accessed via the admin area by going to the menu on the page right of the overview tab > publish content.

That option makes it so that new folders (and images) are not automatically, dynamically made public (published). This is a good option for FrontPage/ExpressionWeb users.