hi guys,

i'm sure there is a way to do it and i have searched the documentation & the support forum but i can't find what i need...

what i have is an album with no images in it, i am using it as a category. this album is called "Paintings". Within that album i have subalbums which are the artists names, such as "Jodie Smith" and "Sarah Webb" etc. So, when I go to the paintings gallery all I want to see is the thumbnails of the albums Jodie Smith & Sarah Webb, etc. I don't want subalbum names to show up or subalbum descriptions to show up. So the "Paintings" album works much like an index page type thing.

But then...when a person searches for an artist's name, ie Jodie Smith, I want them to be able to view her album with an album description & her thumbs.

Does that make sense? Is it possible?

I am using Zenphoto version 1.4.0.1 [6590] (Official Build)

Sorry, I have to admit I don't understand what you are trying to do. All standard themes show the album thumbnails of the sub albums if an album only contains subalbums.

I really suggest to read and understand the theming tutorial for the basics. For more extensive changes look at the object model.

basically...i am designing a website for an art gallery that sells paintings, prints & woven dilly bags. So...

i have 3 albums - paintings , prints & dilly-bags

within those 3 albums i have subalbums titled as the artists who have created those paintings, prints or dillybags.

my menu from the website (which is currently hosted on my website for testing - http://www.pennystewartdesigns.com/merrepen/html/main.html) is a dropdown menu when you look at the "gallery" link- so you can choose to view paintings, prints or dilly bags. then when someone clicks on the "paintings" link from the drop down menu i want them to be able to view ALL the paintings as thumb nails.

so, i have used 3 albums as "categories" - those 3 albums are called "paintings", "prints" and "dilly bags". these 3 albums do not contain photos, but they contain sub albums. these sub albums are titled as the artists name. so, when you view the "paintings" album, you view sub albums titled "jodie smith" for example.

Currently, when using the suggested coding from the theming tutorial, the album.php, it shows like:

album name (paintings)
album description (paintings by merrepen arts artists)

sub albums
1x thumbnail from sub album - (artists name/sub album title) jodie smith
1x thumbnail from sub album - (artists name/ sub album title) sarah webb

then you need to click on the artists name/sub album title to view their paintings.

i want it to show up like:

album name (paintings)
album description (paintings by merrepen arts artists)

*all thumb nails from all sub albums of parent album (paintings)*

is this possible? i am struggling to find out how to do this.

Please try to use the right terms: album thumbnails vs image thumbnails (see glossary on user guide) to avoid confusion.

So you want the thumbns of the image in the subalbums. Sure, putting a next_image loop with the the next_album loop should work or use the object model directly.

no. printing the album loop with the image loop displays as i said ...

it displays:

sub album name
1 x sub album thumb nail

then i re-read your post and you say to use the "next_image loop" and the "next_album loop" however the only image and album loops described in the theming tutorial are called "image loop" and "album loop" so can i assume you mean the same thing? i am not sure. it just feels so cryptic!

look. i have read the tutorial. to be honest, the theming tutorial is so confusing to people who first come in to zen photo, that it has taken me a week just to understand this: http://www.zenphoto.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/zenphoto-theme-diagram-10.png i mean, how much more of a confusing diagram do you want to give. i wanted to use zenpage as a cms for the website i am building but could not find enough user friendly documentation to assist me on creating one, so i went back to wordpress.

i love zenphoto, and i think it is a fantastic program, but there are some things that i just _don't_ understand.

i know it has a lot to do with my lack of knowledge on php but i build websites (using html) so really, i should understand this. but i just dont.

and constantly reffering people to view the documentation doesn't help all the time. i have spent hours viewing the documentation and that is why i am posting here. before i post here i search the forums for my query and i view all the documentation, just to avoid the embarrassment of "please read documentation" etc that might get put in a reply in the forum.

is there someone i can PAY that will understand zenphoto for me just to get me past this one little bit that i am stuck on, because i had a lovely working gallery before my client wanted different categories, and now i have completely stuffed it up putting in album loops and image loops just to simply display thumb nails. it is so frustrating.

before i had these extra albums (paintings, prints & dilly bags) that i used as categories, i just had albums as the artists name with their art works inside the albums, and my index.php page showed just the image thumnails from the albums, such as this code:

`
<?php while (next_album()): ?>
<?php while (next_image(false, $firstPageImages)): ?>

<div class="imagethumb">"><?php printImageThumb(getImageTitle()); ?>   

</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>
`
now that i have sub albums within albums i want to display the same type of thing that my index page showed. but for some reason i just cant figure it out. it's 2am here and i have been at this since 1pm yesterday.

perhaps ive been looking at it too long. i just need someone to really help me out, even if i have to pay - right now, i dont care.

Image loop/next_image loop etc are of course the same, as the functions are named like that. We don't get to picky, do we?..;-)

Using an CMS like Zenphoto for managing/creating websites is a little different from creating static HTML sites as you are used to. You need a little PHP knowledge if you want to do more sophisticated things naturally.

I admit that the theme diagram is a little confusing (I should probably rework or remove it sometime).

But really the basics of Zenphoto should really get clear if you look at one of the standard themes like default. The basic is always (the middle row with the big arrow in the diagram):
>Index page with album thumbs
>> album page with album thumbs
>>> album page with thumbs of images (or further albums)
>>>> image page with the sized image

Paid support is generally available of course. If you like contact me via the mail address on maltem.de

If I understand you initial posting, the solution should be simple.

For your main albums (paingings, etc.) you do not want anything but the subalbum thumbnails to show, but for the subalbums you want the full information.

To do this you will have to place some special code in the theme album.php script. First you will have to determin if the album being displayed is one of your prime albums or not. Set a boolean variable to the result. This should be done at the beginning of the script so it can be based on the $_zp_current_album variable as set when the script starts. For instance you could have somethng like:

`$paintngalbum = $_zp_current_album->getFolder()=='paintings';`

Then within the `next_album()` loop of the script you will have to condition the code that prints the title and descriptions of the thumbnails. Do not print if `$paintings`, do print if not.

thanks for your help.

i still don't get it...! haha. oh well.

acrylian i have sent you an email.

thanks!

penny