Hey everyone. I recently discovered ZenPhoto and am loving what I've seen so far. I'm working on getting a gallery together and ran into something I couldn't find info on or figure out myself.

When you get to the last photo in an album - or more specifically a subalbum - the navigation just shows the 'prev' link and no next link because there is no next photo in the album. I'm looking for a way to create a next link that points to the next subalbum once the user reaches the last photo in the current album.

Does that makes sense? I'd like to keep the user surfing through my photos as long as possible and rather than coming to the 'end' of a gallery and having to physically go back up a level to keep browsing the photos, I'd like them to get pushed to the next album (or subalbum) via a 'next' link that appears in place of the next photo link once they reach the last photo.

Is this possible?

Hi!

I do not suggest such a behaviour. Your users choose an album from your album list and they browse through the pictures of that selected album.
When the last picture of that selected album is presented, the "next" link is empty...

that is ok, clear

but now to bring the user to the next album is no good idea in my mind. It is not polite. It ignores the choice of the user.
The user wanted to see that album, not all albums!

So you could do that: when the last image is presented, why not modify the "next" link to "back to the album list" so the user can choose another album?

It's not your job to patronize your visitors, you offer them a choice of images and albums...

So think about a polite navigation, you have mature users ;=)

Besides that I agree with Connie from the point of usablity we have actually functions for the next and previous album (of the same level):
http://www.zenphoto.org/documentation/zenphoto/_template-functions.php.html#functiongetPrevAlbumURL
http://www.zenphoto.org/documentation/zenphoto/_template-functions.php.html#functiongetNextAlbumURL

No, I'm working on the assumption that my users will want to see the next album easily.
I break my photography into subjects, then specific topics under the subject. For example one album might be "Flowers" then under that I have subalbums of different kinds of flowers - Roses, Lillies, Tulips, etc. That way a user can get right to the kind of flower they want to see, but it becomes difficult if a user wants to browse all of the flower photos. In some cases I even break the topic down further - for example, under the "Roses" subalbum I might have more subalbums with White Roses, Red Roses, Yellow Roses, etc. I want it to be as easy a possible for the user to find the exact photo they're looking for, but still be able to browse easily through all of the photos. I'm trying to please everyone.

I'm familiar with the PrevAlbum and NextAlbum functions, but I only want the next or previous album link to appear when there is no next photo or previous photo - not all the time. Is that possible?

I've been doing my photo galleries by hand (each page) for the past few years and I've always set them up that way - you can find just the type of photo you're looking for or browse freely from any point, but my gallery is getting to large to continue doing by hand. I'm loving ZenPhoto so far, this is the first hiccup to doing things the old way. Perhaps I'll have to change my site a little to continue working with the wonderful ZenPhoto!

You can certainly make a theme that will work the way you want. You should review the functions guide on the zenphoto.org pages. Also look at the zenphoto themes for examples. You can test to see if you are on the last image in an album by using hasNextImage() you can find the next album in the gallery with getNextAlbum(). It may get a little complex if you start using subalbums, but what you want is achievable.

Excellent. Thank You!