Hello! I'm new. I'll get to to. I have a new setup I'm testing. My new users default is set by the register_user.plugin.
NEW USER registers and I have it set in ADMIN to be DefaultRights of DefaultAlbum,Upload,Comments.. So that Ideally they can register, verify, then Upload right away. But instead, the New User will verify, then login, but the default album is NOT VISIBLE.
I goto ADMIN and have to physcially check the boxes for Upload and Comments. In the ManagedAlbums display, it will NOT show their FOLDER Upload Checkbox until I save the changes on Upload and Comments, then the FOLDER will allow me to check the Upload box.
After all this, the New User is good to go.
But I need it to work automatically.

I did try out the user_groups.plugin - but disabled when I could not get that working correctly. After i disabled it, is there a chance that the settings I left it with are influencing the register_user.plugin? It's the next troubleshootng that I can think to look?

I also notice that when I delete a USER and their Default Album, when I do another test I should be able to use the same user info to create the new user, but when I do, Zenphoto ADMIN shows that the user is managing 2 Albums, even though 1 is showing and only 1 is on the server.

I am not sure I fully understand. If you want a newly self registered user to manage an album by default you have to use the option for the personal user album to be created on registering.

If you want them to manage any other existing album you have to assign that manually.

Also please review the user rights if you haven't yet as some rights depend on others:
https://www.zenphoto.org/news/user-rights/

Also we would appreciate att this point to test 1.6.6b the current support build planned to become the next release soon.

Directly... the issue is that the Default Rights as set in the register_user plugin admin... does not apply. I have the setting correct. Upload is Checked. But when a new user registers, they can not upload.

To upload to an album a user needs managment rights to an album. There is no "general upload" right as the docs and the tooltip mention. So to get that working you need to check the "User album" option, too. Otherwise you have to assign an album to upload to afterwards manually.

I have quickly checked and it seems in 1.6.6b there might something indeed not be working correctly. We'll look into that.