Hello!

I have a VPS and I am trying to get my install to run on my VPS, however the setup can't seem to make files and folders, so I can't use it nicely.

Is there anyone else with a Host1Free VPS that has got this to work?

EDIT: Or is there a specific list of Apache settings etc. that I need to set?

If setup cannot make files and folders then you have an issue with user-ids and file/folder permissions. Sounds like you are self hosting? If so you will need to learn how to configure your server.

Sorry, but that is not our expertise and really has nothing to do with Zenphoto. Maybe someone else on the forum can give you details.

It is most likely the common issue that the ftp user you upload with is a different one than the one that runs the scripts.

I had recently had to install a site on a host over here that has the same weird configuration. You have to change the user on their backend so the script (in this case WP) runs correctly.
If you need to modify files via FTP you again have to check it. Their FAQ tell it is releated to php running directly under Apache instead of php as fastcgi. But like sbillard I am no server admin.

I think this will help me, I will report back later...

http://serverfault.com/questions/184548/ftp-and-apache-permission-issues

That helped dramatically, got the admin panel working. A major problem though...

1. Blank page on public site.

Another permissions error or not?

Blank pages are almost always associated with PHP script errors. So please locate all your error logs and see what they are telling us. Might be permissions, but who knows without the supporting data.

Found in my PHP error log that suddenly the KeyboardNav plugin is having an unexpected } out of the blue... Switched it off and a beautiful page lies before me!

I am really confused at to why the image (cache) rendering is taking so long (giving up on most images and taking ages to do one thumb on one page).

I have 128mb ram (not full while caching), php 128mb limit, 256mb virtual limit (not full ever) and 1 3.4GHz core.

I have also set the caching limit to 60 in the images tab in admin?

EDIT: I have also set the executing time to 300 secs to no avail. Also, this happens using Imagick or GD

Any ideas?

As always it depends on the dimensions of the images (see the user guide). If you have 4MP fine data images that would not really wonder. Or alternatively your server is not configured properly.

URG... I really wish it wouldn't cost a fortune all the time to host a website...

Do you know of any places that I could ask for help regarding hosting plans that other ZenPhoto people use?

That's why I personally have a normal standard shared hosting as I can't manage a server as well. The hosts I know will not be of help for you as they are all German ones.

Unless you have a huge site with huge traffic a normal shared hosting plan for around 2-10 Euros is actually fine for a Zenphoto site. But that actually is not different for any other kind of website. (zenphoto.org is therefore on its own server).

A quick word about the time it takes to see the page. As Acrylian said, the weight of the original photos make a difference. So if you have one of those new cameras that makes 10 Mb, 6000x4000 photos, the processor will take a long time to process them. But there is hope.

1. When the gallery is displayed for the first time, photos are processed and the result is put in the cache. So if you load the same page 1 or 2 days later, Zenphoto will use the cached photos and therefore process the page much more quickly. Which brings up this tip:

2. After you have loaded a bunch of photos, go through the new albums – especially the thumbs view – so that you will be the one suffering from processing delays.

3. If you don't allow people to download full-resolution photos (called original image or full image), you might use a utility like Irfanview to preprocess photos to a more reasonable 1200 x 800 or so, i.e. large enough to allow for full-screen view and decent size printing. That way, you will have photos @ 2-3 Mb, which will save you upload time and hosting space.

Or alternatively 2b. Setup your site for the cache_manager to precache them without having to visit them manually.

Yeah, I did try that, but I think it is just overloaded as it is, the cache_manager only succeeds with about 2 image sized per run, so 5 sizes with 131 images would take years.

I will just have to get paying for my service and not using a Free VPS

Thanks for that info about hosting plans

There is an option that you can use to limit the number of simultaneous image processors. Set this to a low number and maybe things will complete. (Of course it will take longer.)