I'm over-paranoid this time out. I'd like to be able to "save/download" the descriptions I'm adding to all the images so if anything goes wrong, I have a backup -- of everything. The images are easy to upload again, but re-adding over 200 descriptions, some that are lengthy would be next to impossible.

If your site will not be multilingual we would recommend to embed the descriptions into the image's meta data (Exif/IPTC).

Otherwise it is possible to export meta data into XMP files via an included plugin. And there is a database backup plugin "auto_backup" included you can use.

Note that Zenphoto is file system based so re-applying backups must follow these "moving installations" instructions:https://www.zenphoto.org/news/installation-and-upgrading/#--moving-existing-installations
In short albums on the file system first, then the database.

Thanks. I'm using Zenphoto again because it's been around for all the years I've had my galleries. However, each time I try again, I start with a clean install. Especially this time since there's so many years past. Will investigate the Exif (doing English-only sites) and the XMP files.

On what release version is/was your old site? If your site is technically a plain simple gallery site (without much custom stuff or not yet included official themes or plugins) the chances may still quite good that you are able to update to the current release or at least in some steps. There might be a bit works that should be noted in the logs.

Complicated sites (like our own site that except the forum and docs is also ZP) will likely cause more problems.

I did successfully update old sites from 1.0.x to 1.4.x. But that of course might just have been luck ;-)

Perhaps worth a try maybe since the mentioned backup tool and XMP does not exist in very old releases but of course backup first ;-)

I re-created the first of my old sites on a new server and current release of Zenphoto. I just tried to access the previous URL where Zenphoto is installed but get errors. I don't recall what version it is so don't want to "add" missing files.Is there a file that will give me a clue as to the version?

Zenphoto Error
MySQL Error: The PHP MySQL extentions have not been installed. Please ask your administrator to add MySQL support to your PHP installation.

Backtrace:
in db_connect (functions-db.php [65])
in query (functions-db.php [121])
in query_full_array (functions.php [101])
in getOption (functions.php [35])
in require_once (functions-db.php [5])
in require_once (auth_zp.php [3])
in require_once (classes.php [6])
in require_once (template-functions.php [10])
in require_once (index.php [8])

> Is there a file that will give me a clue as to the version?
Starting with version 1.1.7 (July 1th, 2008) there is a file `version.php` in the zp-core folder that contains the version number.

I assume your new server already runs on PHP 7+ as the error you noted indicates. The native PHP extension MySQL does not exist anymore in PHP 7+.

If your install is really an old version like 1.1.7 you will not get that working on PHP 7 as such old release do not support the alternatives like MySQLi odr PDO. You need at least 1.4.13 (from 2016) for PHP 7+.