I’ve been waiting for this for a pretty long while. Tristan has finally released his long awaited (at least for likes of Joen, Micheal, Mathias and me) Zenphoto. If you’re interested in a simple program that seems like it’s got a bright future amongst those people not really interested in hosting their photos on a server far far away, then Zenphoto deserves your attention. I’ve only been playing with it for a day now and already I know what I’m going to love using this application.

Setting Up Zenphoto on Dreamhost

Before I talk about the program, I’m going to talk a bit about the setting it up since I did have a bit of trouble with that. Not the program’s fault by ANY stretch of the imagination, just me being dim, and Dreamhost being a bit awkward. So this is a public service announcement for anyone on Dreamhost that wants to play around with this program but having a bit of trouble getting over the first hurdle.

Zenphoto ~ The Pros

I’ve not even been using it for 24 hours and yet I’m pretty impressed with the simplicity of everything. When you do something that’s not really prim and proper, like trying to create a folder without even a single image to upload you get these helpfully coloured system messages (we’re using these in Shuttle btw, Matt and co have been giving them some Ajax love as well).

Uploading images is a very simple process with several options available (JPEG, PNG, GIF and ZIP files, seriously what more do you need?). I like the fact that when you’re in the upload section you have 5 image slots where you can actually use, with the option to increase the number to as many as you want with the click of one button.

The colour scheme of the administration panel by Joen is very soft on the eyes and I’m really loving the thoughts behind the actual program coming through. Simple, yet functional.

Zenphoto ~ Improvements & Future Dev

Tristan has got a battle plan. The roadmap can be found here. Things that I’d like to be able to do from the program itself (not sure if it’s possible really).

Delete files - Currently there is no really way to delete images from the admin panel. You need to go via ftp or something. Also I’ve noticed that the number tally of the pictures the admin panel indicates are still in the folder does not update if a file is deleted. We’re still in Beta, so I’m sure little quirks like this will be ironed out for future releases.

Sizing images - It seems that whatever size the file is ZP will stretch it out to fit in the maximum specified width. While that’s pretty ok for anything larger than the desired width (so nothing looks out of whack) the problem then comes into play when you’ve got images lightly smaller than the default, so it would be nice to keep the smaller files at their size in the images section. It could come as a little check box next to when uploading the image?

Support and Documentation - Tristan and co were great trying to solve my problem, however I think (from personal experience) you can do the support thing for a while, because it’s fresh and you want to help people understand what you’re doing, however your enthusiasm will wane. The creator ideally should concentrate on making the program better etc. There are other who can contribute to an open source project in different ways, that are just as crucial and important as coding and bug squashing and theme creating, and that’s offering users support. Tristan’s got a couple of things in the pipeline to help the user out, which in my mind is as essential as files to the program itself.

Final Thought

Zenphoto is a joy to use, I know I’ll be using it for a good while to come. If you’re looking for something simple, functional and beautiful, go download it now.