ZenPhoto using StopDesign theme

KevinBarnettJr

I originally used the StopDesign photo gallery theme with MovableType 3.33 and it functioned very well. I have over 1100 photos on my site. Over a few years and a major MovableType update my gallery remains frozen. MT 4.21 and my photo gallery are not compatible.

I am very happy to have found ZenPhoto!
I would like to use ZenPhoto to recreate my photo gallery and add to it.
I have already setup ZenPhoto, created an album and uploaded a photo.

I have a few questions and I don't know whom to ask. I noticed that there where two StopDesign themes in the theme area. One said not compatible. I think the easiest way for me to ask my questions is to post links showing examples of what I mean. Basically I want to know if it is possible to make ZenPhoto look like my original site.

1. Index for photo gallery (show all Albums or Galleries)
a. My original: http://www.kevinbarnettjr.com/photos/
b. ZenPhoto: http://www.kevinbarnettjr.com/zenphoto/

2. Photo set or specific gallery title page.
a. My original(made in PS from template): http://www.kevinbarnettjr.com/photos/paris/
b. Zen Photo: appears to skip this page, but is it possible to add manually?

3. Visitor options for viewing photos.
a. My Original: http://www.kevinbarnettjr.com/photos/paris/gallery/
1. Options of left side of the page.
b. ZenPhoto: Obviously I haven't uploaded enough photos to test this.
http://www.kevinbarnettjr.com/zenphoto/phone-photos/

4. Specific Photo page
a. My original: http://www.kevinbarnettjr.com/photos/paris/gallery/paris_42.php
1. Previous and next.
2. Comments below photo
b. ZenPhoto: http://www.kevinbarnettjr.com/zenphoto/phone-photos/002.jpg.php
1. Option to download full size and ability to password protect this option (very cool!)
2. Image info very cool, but I don't use it for my application.

Over all it seems ZenPhoto is better designed for photo management than MovableType. I would love to start messing with ZenPhoto more, but need someone to look at these examples and specifically tell me if it is possible. I will help in whatever way I can to further advance the StopDesign themes. Thanks for reading and feel free to contact me for questions or discussions.
~Kevin

acrylian

In short bascially everything is possible with Zenphoto, even to skip the standard behaviour. It is all a matter of work and your knowledge. I suggest to look into the theming tutorial to understand how Zenphoto themes works. If you have some PHP knowledge also read the object model tutorial.

Over all it seems ZenPhoto is better designed for photo management than MovableTyp
That might be because Zenphoto is specialized (althought not limited) to that...;-)

KevinBarnettJr

Thanks for the reply! I was thinking that I can manually edit the index file to match some of the functionality of the current one on my site, but I was hoping someone was already messing around with that through ZenPhoto. I will definitely be playing around with ZenPhoto over the next few months. My web knowledge is limited, but I really want this to work. I will try to point others from the MT area to see this. Thanks acrylian. If anyone else reads this and has thoughts or links on ideas to achieve my goals please reply.

KevinBarnettJr

Wow! I'm really amazed at how awesome ZenPhoto is. The main thing that I can't seem to figure out is how to get the option to add comments. I see where the option is in ZenAdmin but it doesnt seem to activate in the gallery. Any thoughts

acrylian

We are glad you like it. To get comments you need to activate the comment_form plugin.

KevinBarnettJr

Wow! Thanks!!!!

KevinBarnettJr

Donated to ZenPhoto. Thanks for helping me do what I wanted to do with MT, but so much easier and faster. My gallery: http://www.kevinbarnettjr.com/zenphoto/ is still in the transfer process, but with ZenPhoto it is so much easier than MT.

KevinBarnettJr

Two questions to anyone:
1. Is it possible to change the post date for comments? In my case I'm transferring them from my other gallery and wanted them to reflect the original date posted on the original gallery.
2. Can I restrict the ability to view full size on a specific Album instead of all?

Thanks for any help!

sbillard

I really suggest you take a test ride of Zenphoto/Zenpage. The answer to both your questions is "yes". You could easily have saved time waiting for this response by just browsing the adminstrative pages of Zenphoto and the theming tutorial.