i guess it will require each user that want to create a lightbox to register first, correct ?

Yes, true. if you don't want that you would in indeed have to use sessions.

also, is there a way to have on the admin panel the number of lightboxes currently in the table just like we have some info on how many images, comments, news (and so on) we have in the gallery.

i also keep in the table the date of creation of each lightbox with the idea to be able to delete old ones from the admin panel by setting an number of days and click a button to delete everything that is older than that.

thanks for your tips,
frank.

It is possible to add main admin tabs via a filter (like the menu manager or Zenpage do) but I think creating an admin overview page utility for that like the gallery statistics would be fitting as well. The main tabs get a little wide especially in languages that use longer terms than English.
How to do that is described on our user guide: http://www.zenphoto.org/2010/04/zenphoto-plugin-architecture/

You can set up user registration to be automatic if you want. (No intervention from you needed.) I do not understand why you would like the general public to be able to make changes to your site (create light boxes.) That would certainly be subject to hacking/spammer attack.

hi,

i've got my plugin to work. it may not be optimized as i am far from a real php developer but so far so good it does the basic things i wanted (add/remove images to/from the lightbox, save/clear the current lightbox, read a previoulsy created lightbox).

as i said i'd like to have a quick read of how many lightboxes exist in the admin overview page. is there a way to do that without editing and "hacking" the admin.php file ?

if not i guess i need to add an `if ( getOption('zp_plugin_zLiteBox') )` in the file and call a function that will return the number of lightboxes in the database. is this the way to go.

whatever the answer is it will be the same to add a "delete expired lightboxes" in the same overview page.

thanks for your answer.
frank.

No need for hacking any files. As I already said above you will have to provide a admin utility plugin, either as a separate file or within the main plugin file. See the plugin tutorial about that.

sorry about that. i guess i haven't looked in details how it was done. i'll go back to the tutorial and the examples.