I have been trying to add a contact page to a theme so just copied the index found in the theme's directory and took out the body and put in my contact details... and put a link in the index to the contact.php page.. just a blank page showed..so changed the contact page to a straight forward html one and the same... so moved it to my root directory and it works.. Any idea how I can link a contact page to the themes index and leave it in the themes directory?

Just an idea. but if you're using WordPress or some other blogging tool, you can also use that to create and maintain your static pages. Or in your case (just viewed your site), why not add a few 'old fashioned' html-pages?

The correct way to link to a "custom" page in a theme is a link like:

`<web path>/zenphoto/page/<page name>` (assuming you have mod_rewrite set. If mod_rewrite is not set use `<web path>/zenphoto/index.php?p=<page name>`)

`<page name>` will have `.php` appended to it to load that custom page. Naturally, this assumes that your install is in the `zenphoto` folder.

So, as an example, the "archive" pages of the standard themes are linked by
`.../page/archive` or `...index.php?p=archive`.

Hi - just uninstalled word press as I only want a couple of pages - decided to concentrate on images and not words! - before that I used another database system which was a bit over complicated really.. so I decided to simplify...my problem is that I can use html pages if I can think back that far...but they seem to have to be in the root directory and not the theme directory which could be a problem if I want to do anything else? and I don't understand why this is so...

Take a look at our theming tutorial and the part "custom pages".

Ok looked at everything and the index page is fine - see http://www.merrylegsfalabellas.com - and the 'contact' link is at the bottom - it shows the path http://www.merrylegsfalabellas.com/themes/default/contact.php - in the index.pho and the path is "themes/default/contact.php " so that's right but when I click on it I get a blank page with blank page source - not the contact page that should be there. I've basically take the index page and removed the album loop and the title... but can't get anything to display, not even a blank page with just the source.

Can anyone please help - unless I create this page in html with a brand new css style sheet then it doesn't want to show itself. other people seem to have taken the index page and used this as a basis so why can't I?

You didn't look at our theming tutorial as I recommended above, did you? You did everything right except for the url.
[i]Custom pages with the example of archive.php and slideshow.php
“Custom pages” are additional pages that do not display actual gallery stuff like albums or images. You can have multiple custom pages that are called with the url

zenphoto/index.php?p=pagetitle (non mod_rewrite)
or
zenphoto/page/pagetitle (mod_rewrite)[/i]
http://www.zenphoto.org/2008/05/theming-tutorial/#custom-pages

@acrylian, reading this thread prompts me to ask, how is the progress on your 'zenpage' plugin? I presume it will allow the content of the 'zenpages' to be administered from zenphoto admin?

I knew that this would happen...:-) Indeed it will allow that. Recent updates (like localization) to zenphoto made is necessary to rework a few things and since it will additionally feature a news section (a mini blog if you will) I need to intregrate the comments with Zenphoto's (to save myself from doubling code and maintaining too much separatly). Sadly some other things prevented me from working on it as much as I would like to. I hope to put it out next month. It will be announced in our news section (and it will have it's own project site with the yet to be written documentation). Thanks for your interesst and patience!

No I think I must be either extremely thick or its my age! - my path is /themes/default/contact.php so should I be putting "(mod_rewrite) after this or just /themes/default/contact.php(mod_rewrite) or the full url/themes/default/contact.php on its own - none of these seem to work anyway...

- you don't make it very clear ... my zenphoto is in fact in the root directory as I did install wordpress and it was advised to keep this seperate for updates etc... I do know that this issue of extra pages has been raised before but no-one has explained how to link fully...

I do like this software and would love to be able to just get one page with text on it.. but If I can't I will just have to buy one of those substandard template programs.

Just use `http://www.merrylegsfalabellas.com/page/contact`, if none mod rewrite this would be `http://www.merrylegsfalabellas.com/index.php?p=contact`. If you do this Zenphoto considers it as a "theme page", you don't need to link directly.

We actually recommend using zenphoto within a folder if using with another CMS like Wordpress. This is just to prevent .htaccess conflicts since both programms have their own.

Anyway I just tried it on your site with your contact test page. Both ways work.

acrylian, thanks for the latest on zenpage, it sounds brilliant. I (and I'm sure others too) appreciate the time and work going in to this plugin ( and of course to the whole zenphoto project), I think you are going to have a lot of users for zenpage and attract a lot of new users to zenphoto.

thanks:-)

phew - thanks so much for that - it really does work very well now!

Acrylian my favourite developer,

Is there any chance you could release a pre-beta version of this plugin? I'll be doing a website tomorrow that'll involve a few simple pages, and I'd love to have even a really buggy plugin handy, if at all possible.

You'll notice my current hack is quite ugly:

http://noscope.com/shop/pages/FAQ.gif/view

Note the "FAQ.gif" in the URL ;)

I am sorry, I know I am really really slow, but I won't release anything right now. But it will be not hard to add this later to your site and I really appreciate the interesst.

BTW maybe an ugly hack but an inventive one! Who looks at the url..:-) Another workaround I just got the idea of: You can have empty albums if that helps to skip the gif for now. Just upload an empty folder via ftp named FAQ for example and don't publish the album. Then you can directly link to it just containing the description.

Wow that's a really good idea, and quite a bit nicer than the one I'm currently employing. I'll put on my "patience" hat and try that hack. Thanks.

@naturalp: please see my question to you, new topic "even index.php page"