I recently installed ZenPhoto to my LAMP server using Softaculous.

After logging in as an admin I'm able to do general things like click the Album tab create a gallery, or view the Options...

however I can't find where to upload pics! A quick Google search tells me there should be an Upload tab but I don't see one.

I feel like such a n00b. Please help!

(aside: The same thing happened to me when I was toying with the live demo, but I figured that uploading was disabled for the public demo and it would be present when I installed on my private server.)

First, we have no idea what installers like Softaculous do and we recommend installing manually (see the installation page).

If the upload tab is missing and you are not using a Zenphoto user account without upload rights, there must be something wrong. You should look into your server error log therefore. Softaculous could have done something wrong, the permissions could be wrong etc. Without error log knowledge we are guessing.

When you do a fresh install of zenphoto, the uploader plugins are disabled. So you need to enable at least one of them (uploader_http or uploader_jQuery)

Actually I think they should be enabled…

I think they used to be enabled by default but when I've installed it lately they've been disabled

Thank you acrylian and SubJunk for your responses!

As an admin I clicked the Plugins tab and went to the Uploader section. Both uploader_http and uploader_jQuery are unchecked.

So thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

I have a follow-up questions... which uploader should I use? What's the difference?

"First, we have no idea what installers like Softaculous do and we recommend installing manually (see the installation page)."

I originally found ZenPhoto was because it was listed in the options for image galleries in Softaculous. Is there something wrong with how Softaculous installs ZenPhoto? Will I run in to problems in the future if I don't uninstall and install manually?

The difference is the technique used to upload. http is a plain html upload with one file per form while the other is a jQuery based upload that allows several files at once and is more convenient. We have the plain html one in case it does not work in some (possibly older) browsers. So if you are on modern browser just the one you like best.

We cannot answer anything in regarding Softaculous or other install helpers. We don't know or use them. We recommend the manual install as that is what we test. Especially on upgrades they tend to cause various issues in the past. We have a note about that on our installation page.

Thanks for the details about the uploaders!

Regarding installations: If I've installed using Softaculous and use the gallery for awhile, then later when I go to update do I have the option of:

-backing up the DB
-deleting the Softaculous install
-manually installing the latest version
-restoring the DB

Will this work? Will the DB that was used with the Softaculous install be compatible with a fresh, manual install?

If you use the same database in the configuration and keep all albums in place I see no reason why that should not work.

Of course unless Softaculous does something else which we - as said - don't know.