Hi, I recently wanted to research about Zenphoto so looked it up on wikipedia. However, the article was deleted some time ago. I have requested and admins have restored it. However, I'm quite new to the program and so not in a position to improve the article all that much to prevent it being deleted again. Seeing as wikipedia has a lot of influence I think it would be good if some people who knew more about it than I do to put in a few minutes and fix up the article so it isn't deleted again. In particular they needed more links from websites that were not this one.
Cheers,
rusl
In a nutshell, I'd suggest the following updates :
[b]Summary Box at the top[/b]
Operating System : should it be Apache or Unix/Apache?
Platform : Does it support other databases apart from MySQL?
[b]History[/b]
Update a bit the history and remove the last 2 paragraphs.
[b]Technical description[/b]
Not sure of what is "unique" or "most unusual", but I would highlight the following:
– flexible upload protocols
– ability to create albums automatically from documents uploaded in the albums folder
– resized photos and vignettes created automatically from the original photos using GD or Imagick (or ImageMagick?)
– dynamic albums
– besides p?oto gallery, two types (?) of content : news and pages
– multi-lingual gallery and administrative interface (depending on themes)
– various levels of controlled access
– functional customization with supplied and external plugins (easy to install: drop them in and they are installed)
– high level of visual customization via supplied and 3rd party themes. Themes may be customized without touching the program itself (knowledge of CSS and basic PHP/HTML required). (Sample galleries available)
If anyone thinks of features to add to the list (or things to remove), please post them below. [i]As Rusl said, please also provide any link to outside, 3rd party references or discussions you might think of.[/i]
Unless someone else wants to volunteer, I'll think of something and could update the entry in a week or so.
As I said, I have the account and can do it...
which is why I asked for suggestions as to what I forgot to talk about.
[i]But outside references would be most useful.[/i] So anyone who has links to outside sources, links, articles, etc. that talk about Zenphoto would be helpful. It is one "easy" way to demonstrate that it is not an advertisement.
P.S. That being said, I looked at other descriptions of photo-gallery software (I had tried a few of them beforehand) and many "approved" descriptions look like paid advertising. The main difference with their pages is that they have a few outside links as well.
Ok, thanks, misunderstood that you plan to create an account for that specifially.
I think the reason it got delete is that it sounded like a description by us (not sure who created it first). I personally would like to see specifically hightlighted that we are not just a gallery (we often appear in lists with simple jquery galleries!) but a media focussed CMS with images, mutlimedia, news/blog and pages. Also the object model framework should be highlighted as that allow to leave the "standard" theme way.
We tried to highlight the main features on the download page slideshow (a longer one is to be found on the user guide article "features).
Quote:– resized photos and vignettes created automatically from the original photos using GD or Imagick (or ImageMagick?)
GD or Imagick (ImageMagick is related but different).
Quote:– functional customization with supplied and external plugins (easy to install: drop them in and they are installed)
Not exactly true for many plugins. If a theme has not already built in support, you have to add at least an function (Zenpage of course is more complicated).
As of links to add: I had collected a few nice articles about us here:
http://www.zenphoto.org/pages/testimonials
Thanks for the additions.
With regard to plugins and themes, I had other bad experiences with systems where one not only needs to upload them in a specific folder (like the Themes folder), but also to "inform" the system that a new plugin or theme has been installed. With all the obvious problems if one makes a typo during the process...
Ok, if you look at it this way you are right. However people might misunderstand that a plugin is ready to use by just enabling. THat is not exactly the case. Anyway, no one should start using a system like Zenphoto by just reading a Wikipedia article, I guess..:-)
I assume you already edited the article? The main intro text is still quite inappropiate limiting it to ""a simpler web photo album." Btw, seems we and a lot of other tools got thrown out of the photo gallery comparison article as well.
Got another link: http://www.zenbien.com/infos/
That is a French forum about Zenphoto. Our own user vincent seems to be active there.
There is also a page with install info in French etc:
http://www.zenbien.com/category/zenphoto
Somebody else did (Rusl, I think). I have started to write a skeleton, but it still is on my own hard disk. I don't think I'll have time to write something substantial before Tuesday or Wednesday. Thanks for the link.
Another resource I just found is this:
http://www.publishyourarticles.org/home/technology/zenphoto-guide-everything-about-zenphoto.html
It is a bit outdated, but the list of links is well organized to make a great tutorial.
As a result of that work, I'll probably come with a better set of instructions for the Zenphoto website. Right now, I find them well-suited for the technically inclined but not for the lambda user. If I succeed in making my instruction set simple enough for my parish priest, my member of parliament and my 98-year-old grandmother, then we'll have something great.
I have updated the entry on the comparison page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_photo_gallery_software
I think that one is fairly complete, although – by definition – limited to the "photo" part of Zenphoto.
It raises the question as to whether it should be part of other wikipedia pages such as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems
... and I haven't found a page like that for film and music galleries.
The link is sadly quite outdated regading its info. But sure include what you think fits and whenever you have time for that. Really no hurry.
You mean the installation instructions? IMHO you need to have some webtechnique knowledge to install an application on a server. Otherwise issues are always pre programmed. As you know this webstuff is a lot more complicated at times than the "casual" users thinks. Sometimes they are better off with either a one-click install or getting someone to help them. (btw, I am coming from design/illustration, so I am not a programmer by default.).
But we appreaciate any input to make any of our documentation better (so far not people much did want to help). So feel free to make suggestions.
Actually we also do want technically inclined users that do custom stuff with Zenphoto as well...:-) As you might have noticed the plugin and theme development of 3rd parties is not that active compared with other projects and those of course don't come from the "lambda" users.
Thanks for the comparison page update. That table could use a extra column for notable extras generally. But sadly most still see ZP as a gallery.
I see no other gallery system there. We of course are aware that we probably can't compete with the bigger CMS like Typo3, Drupal, Joonla and WP both in usages and community but an addition there would probably not bad if possible (even a pure gallery system manages content..;-))
Another link for the Wiki page:
http://www.opensourcecms.com/scripts/details.php?name=Zenphoto&scriptid=150
It provides a backend demo. They are usually a little behind the current release (no wonder with all that other tools listed!) but mostly just one version.
Btw, when you add it please update the logo as well. Also "Announced in April 2012. A Sponsorship program [4] will add advertising to zenphoto." is not correct. There are no ads in Zenphoto itself of course, just on the website. That should be edited as well.
Good News!
I have updated the Wikipedia page.
So, please check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenphoto and comment.
P.S. I have yet to find the way to update the logo, so that hasn't been changed (yet).
Still, from comments listed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Zenphoto#Zenphoto
outside links are [b]most welcome[/b].
Thanks.
Looks good, especially the part on Zenpage. Thanks for your work!
Things you could add:
- Zenpage supports nested categories. ([i]"Pages are classified by category."[/i] is wrong, news articles are - also articles and pages can be commented)
- (partly) metadata support for multimedia items
- .m4v/m4a (technically .mp4 but specified if video or audio) are supported
- the mutli user management capabilities (maybe better than the sentence you have maybe)
- multilingual support (not only for descriptions actually
- MySQL 5.5 is recommended like php 5.3 is, it works with mysql 5+(I have only that on my live server, too).
"Administrative interface available in 13 languages"
Sadly that is not really true. Some languages are quite outdated and not maintained. Actively maintained are currently Dutch, French, Spanish, Japanese, German, Slowak, Italian and naturally English.
Btw, the showcase gallery now has the items tagged by usage of Zenphoto and/or Zenpage, so you could get more example.
What else Links do they need? (The CMSresource one is really outdated, not sure if it makes sense to have such old ones? But probably does not matter if the Wiki guys are satisfied..
There are still some links missing from (I also did some older ones):
http://www.zenphoto.org/pages/testimonials
I will probably move those to a separate user-guide entry a la "Articles about Zenphoto" some time. The testimonials site is not really maintained so we probably should create a sticky forum thread for this...)
You could also link to the youtube etc videos we have in http://www.zenphoto.org/screenshots/screencasts/
I did a couple of quick updates.
Question:
"the mutli user management capabilities (maybe better than the sentence you have maybe)"
–> What sentence(s) should I change? It didn't seem clear to me.
[b]Sample Galleries[/b]
My choice is highly subjective, but I tried to highlight sites where "pages" were more than a basic contact page. A few entries of the Showcase, such as Vincent Bourganel's gallery, need to be updated.
In the part that highlights galleries integrated in a non-Zenphoto website, I have added the new one I'm developing for our parish at http://stjamestheapostle.ca/photos I haven't submitted it for showcase because I still want to add a few features, but the shell is there.
[b]Outside Links[/b]
I'm not part of the Wikipedia team, so I cannot tell you exactly what is needed for outside links. I think the following would be greatly appreciated:
– reviews in magazine (web or paper) or in a commercial platform such as ZDnet;
– other tutorials on outside websites.
For example, I note that "Piwigo" links to two articles in Linux Magazine, and "Gallery Project" has links to three Google Summer of Code projects, an article in PC Magazine, and that their documentation and showcase are on two "independent" websites (i.e. 2 different domain names).
I'll post ideas about [i]this[/i] website in a separate thread.
Regarding user rights this one "Users may have different rights for each gallery (upload, view, download, comment, etc.)."
I would suggest something "management of multiple users with different rights. Also note the terms "gallery" means in ZP terms the Zenphoto install or at leasat all albums. Rights are applied to "albums". (we have a glossary on our site)
Regarding sample galleries. There are a lot of sites that use a full feature Zenpage theme with news and pages. Those are actually the sites we like to focus on. But of course the article should not be an ad as we said before.
I have no knowledge about any articles about Zenphoto in "offline" magazines or such.
Updated.
As I said, my selection of galleries is entirely subjective. I did not check all 150-or-so showcase galleries, but I noticed that most galleries that use Zenpage use it fairly minimally: for contacts, bio and such, usually without images. I thought it would be more appropriate to highlight galleries that made fuller use of Zenpage possibilities, that go beyond a series of albums with one or two basic pages.
As usual, thanks for the feedback.
OK, good points and I/we leave it to your choices. I think pages and news are mostly not that much used with images, important is the fact that full sites are done using Zenphoto and Zenpage I think. Don't think only about the pure functionality but also about the layout/design as people compare visually.
I think we need to do a "cleanup" effort on the plugins. Probably ones that we (or at least I) have created will be either updated to work or removed. The former will probably end up in the "development tools" repository so that they are easy to keep current. [I have current versions, but they are not necessarily uploaded to the site. Putting them in the repository makes that all automatic, but a little more effort for people wanting them.]
The dates/release stuff for Zenphoto plugins will be removed as these are always current.
I do note that there is a significant number of third party plugins that are either obsolete or no longer needed. Not sure what we should do with them, though. Of course if they no longer work that is an issue. But for many I have no means to test even if I had the time. We would have to rely on our forum members for feedback here.
I think we could keep older plugins as they might still act as a starting point for someone who needs that. Even if it does not work with ZP correctly anymore the other stuff might help so someone needing that feature could adapt, take over and maintain it.