Ok here we go...

Uploaded the tarball via ftp to www/gallery, unpacked via SSH and when I go to mydropzone.net/gallery the web install doesn't initiate. I'm not sure what I'm missing.

update:

well I got passed that hurdle but now am at another.

now I'm here http://mydropzone.net/zenphoto/zp-core/setup.php

and have made changes as prompted to by the wizard type setup. It does however get stuck on

"connect to MySQL

Could not connect to the MySQL server. Check the user, password, and database host in your zp-config.php file and try again. "

now I have checked, double checked and checked again on the credentials.

$conf['mysql_user'] = "mydropzo_admin";
$conf['mysql_pass'] = "XXXXXXXXXXX";
$conf['mysql_host'] = "localhost"; // Won't need to change this 90% of the time.
$conf['mysql_database'] = "mydropzo_zenphoto";

// If this is a new Zenphoto install, change the following to from 'false' to 'true'
$conf['UTF-8'] = true;

my host (site5) adds the mydropzo prefix automatically when creating users and DB's

not sure where to go from here to get this set up. Thoughts?

Are you sure about the mysql host being "localhost"? The host I know have often a separate server for the database that is not "localhost".

no I'm not sure actually, how can I find that out?

just ask your hoster's support .. they (should) know ;=)

ok I've confirmed with my host that "localhost" is correct. I deleted everything and started over, deleted, DB and users, recreated them and reuploaded the files but now I cannot get the setup page to come up. Ugh I'm at my wits end here. If I create a temp FTP account can someone check it out?

2panther,

I've installed ZP a few times - maybe I can help.

1. Make sure you have created a mysql user that has permission to access your 'zenphoto' database. My host has this as a second step.
2. Make sure that your database is the same as the zenphoto folder name. In my case both are 'gallery'.

My email is phauxshow@phauxshow.com if you'd like me to take a look.