Customizing themes

MedusaMagic

Hello,

I am new to Zenphoto (as well as Wordpress). I had a site I had originally easily built with an online builder, later transferred to new host and then managed it through CPanel where I could add more content and change things directly. This was very easy and there were never updates needed, crashes, etc. (other than server or host-related issues). Because my site was deleted by host I am now with a new one and he had recommended WP. I got started with it but have not been able to get it looking the way way I want since it still looks too much like a blog which is not my main purpose. Meanwhile, I need quite a few photos on the site, so decided to try Zenphoto based on all the gorgeous sites in the showcase here (with the idea maybe I'd even use it as the sole CMS if I got it looking good). Although I haven't messed with it a whole lot yet, I did get it installed and already I'm hitting a learning curve. I see all these example sites with plenty of text, nice home pages, different backgrounds etc. but I cannot figure out how to do any of that. Some of the themes don't seem to offer any color changes, the ones that do are a set few options. I'm sure I'm missing something here as obviously these customizations can be done but can someone give me an idea? Does it all have to be done through CSS and changing code or is there some way to get to a menu that allows you to input more choices. The showcase does not even tell you which theme is being used by each site which would be helpful in determining whether there are some themes that are easier to change than others. I'm feeling like I should just learn to build a site from scratch but there has to be some middle ground between that and the very easy program I used before.

I can't even get one of the three photos I uploaded which is on the main page in the big box that said 'Zenphoto' initially to display properly...

Thanks in advance and happy new year to all!

acrylian

First, you need quite some knowledge in common standard web techniques like (X)HTML, CSS and best a bit understanding of PHP to customize themes. To what extend depends on what you wish to do. If you only worked with a "website builder" you will have to learn quite a few things we can't teach you here. There are other places like this one: http://www.w3schools.com/

To learn how Zenphoto themes itself work please read the theming tutorial on our user guide. Also you need a server to even build a theme for Zenphoto as it like all CMS is a software installed on your server. A CMS is not a webdesign program.

Second, the showcase sites some times use Zenphoto alone but sometimes together with other systems (like Wordpress or else). Sites using pre-existing themes from our themes section can never enter the showcase. Being obviously custom designed (even if based on a pre-existing theme) is the basic requirement for the showcase.

MedusaMagic

Thank you so much for the reply. Yes, I have a server- I have already started using Wordpress as my CMS, just haven't gotten the site anywhere near done or looking as I want it to. It is not meant to be a blog for the most part so I am trying to customize that theme to take the blog look away. Then I uploaded Zenphoto to my server. The regular site is at elviza.com The Zenphoto gallery is elviza.com/experience. As you can see, I uploaded three photos. The first one automatically filled in that larger 'header' square that used to say Zenphoto, and immediately below it shows a smaller version with the same bad cropping. I couldn't figure out how to fix/change either of those. I did crop the thumbnail for that same photo and it appears on the cover of the album just fine. I also didn't ask for that elviza.com up top, and when I did try to make the link that goes back to my site it didn't work anyway so I got rid of it.

If I cannot change the background, then I will switch to a theme that offers black or dark grey, but my intention had been to somewhat match it with the main site. Whatever the case I'm just frustrated because I'm usually pretty good at figuring stuff out and yet at every turn it seems even the simplest things are causing me to have to go searching around for how to do it. I don't mind researching and learning, but so far the number of hours I've spent relative to the current end result is not good at all. I mean, what I have up is better than nothing, I guess, but I've probably spent more time on it than my old site and that's including all the updates over the years. I had my choice of background, font size and color, photos and videos, multiple pages, etc. and I was much less tech-savvy when I put that together so I'm feeling kind of dumb right now.

I had started off this time around with a program called Sitespinner which had some great reviews, and before I'd gotten very far in learning it my web host said he didn't recommend those site builders and I should try Wordpress or Joomla, so I was taking his experienced advice, especially after seeing some great sites that use WP (including in the Zenphoto showcase), not realizing that many of these examples necessitated writing your own code or knowing it well enough to make a bunch of changes. I know some html, but probably not to the extent needed to write my own site. Anyway, sorry for rambling- I will look further into the theming tutorials, just want to make some progress sometime soon as I really need to get a professional-looking site back online again.

Thanks again for the help!

erika_conn

I know just how you feel. I'm somewhat in the same boat. The theme I liked was zpgalleriffic but, after having updated zenphoto, which I was told should be done because of security issues, etc., I found that theme no longer works properly because the galleriffic needs to be updated, as well. I can't tell you how frustrated I am. The folks at zp are real nice but just don't have the time or whatever to spend with me.