I became involved in Zenphoto when it was in its early stages. It was a great idea with a lot of potential. It was the software model I felt best for my use in displaying my works.

I was a software engineer in my working career and find programming enjoyable. My philosophy has always been to implement what I want but in a way that others can use it. So I began contributing to Zenphoto.

I believe I have made significant contributions to the project. It is a far cry from its early days. But unfortunately every good thing must come to an end.

I do things because they are fun. When the cease to be fun I stop. Recent personal disagreements with the creator and owner of Zenphoto have made things not fun for me.

Therefore I am resigning as Chief Developer and will no longer be contributing to the support of development of Zenphoto.

All I can do is ask you to reconsider. Hopefully we can resolve this minor disagreement.

In any case, you have been a huge asset to the project, and I and the community thank you for all you've done. I really do hope you'll reconsider!

I'm very sorry about that. Your contribution to the project I've always appreciated.
Your contribution is surely immeasurable.

If something can change your opinion, and return to this project I vote for it.

I wish you all the best.

maybe a little news for humans but really bad news for zenphoto

sbillard you have done a tremendous job on the software and the community of zenphoto will be orphan.
I do not know what were the disagreements with trisweb (projects for zenphoto, software architecture, how to work with the team and the community,...), but I would have preferred they be discussed on the forum, and that something constructive can come out.

I confess that I have not always agreed with your choices, and how you chat with users (it takes a lot to argue to convince you, and often unsuccessfully).

I confess that since always, I think it is sorely lacking a community of themes developers (to create free themes and premium themes also) because it is very important for it to be adopted by users.

but the software has evolved considerably in recent years, and you're there for many, thank you for that.

given the very small number of contributors (this is another zenphoto problem), I wonder how zenphoto will survive, and I'm very sad.

Vincent, thanks for the reply. sbillard has given his reasons above. We had a disagreement that escalated, but I hope it can be forgiven.

Firstly, hopefully sbillard returns, but even if not I'm confident that we can find new people to help build the team and continue development, including myself. The project is in a great stable position and we should be able to continue and make sure it survives. I don't plan to abandon it and though we will miss sbillard and his contributions, losing him does not mean that the project will be abandoned, that I can promise.

Thanks again for your continued support everyone.

I would like to add that I second what trisweb said.

@vincent:

I confess that since always, I think it is sorely lacking a community of themes developers (to create free themes and premium themes also) because it is very important for it to be adopted by users.

Yes, we were always lacking good themes. But you cannot force anyone to do some. As you know from yours it is a bit work to make a good and general usable theme. I have several ideas but sadly also never got around to start. This is on my list explicitly.

Regarding so called premium themes, you can do that if you wish (it is even noted on our contributor guidelines). But of course they have to apply the licence inheritance limits of the GPL licence. But that doesn't keep anyone from doing such themes for WordPress for example where the same applies.

Darn, sorry to see you go, sbillard! I remember you from wayyyy back. Hope to see you around and thanks for all the contributions and support along the way

First of all, thank you for all the work you have done. As a relatively late comer in the project, I can't say who did and does what, but I consider that you have been instrumental in making Zenphoto what it is.

So sorry to see you go... and hope you will reconsider.

Although new around here, I've had a bit of experience in development in my past years and can say with confidence that ZenPhoto was developed by gifted coders.

As far as themes, ZenPhoto needs better documentation because altering/developing a theme is NOT for the faint of heart. In fact, it has been so modularized that it is difficult to work with. I've poked around in current themes to try and get an idea of how things work, but since this is a 'for fun' project I am working on I am not spending more time digging. My photo page is close, but had I known a couple weeks ago what I know now I would have chosen a different CMS. ZenPhoto needs much work to make it usable the those of us with mediocre skills.

Thanks,
Dave in Texas.

@DaveINTX:
Let's say it clear: Zenphoto is not dead! Also we are always open to suggestions and contributions regarding better documentation.

Zenphoto themes leave you great freedom in what you do how especially in terms of html and css. The standard way is really quite simple I think (and surely not that much more complicated than e.g. a WordPress theme).

You also find a commented demo theme here: https://github.com/zenphoto/DevTools/tree/master/demo_plugin-and-theme
It is linked from the theming tutorial but needs to be better integrated (and will be) but we didn't get to yet.

I prefer the zenphoto way of theming over other frameworks that make you use template files. For those frameworks you need to learn their specific way of doing things, so if you use 3 frameworks you need to learn 3 different syntaxes, but with zenphoto you get to use normal PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript code so it's much easier IMO.

For those of you who do not get the announcements. Effective today with the release of Zenphoto 1.4.6 I am no longer developing for Zenphoto.org.

You can find me on GitHub at ZenPhoto20

Stephen, you're kidding ?
Now who's gonna tell me to read the f... manual or to simply apply what you just said ?

Who's gonna try to understand my spanish cow english written ?!

This is quite a surprise to me... Stephen, you're welcome to continue developing here and pushing your changes to the main repository, as far as I'm concerned there's not a conflict?

I apologize I haven't done much after starting the project, but I do keep the server up. If it's me you have a problem with, then you don't have to deal with me in the future. It is up to you, but I hope we can come to some agreement. I'm really willing to do anything to support you, even if that means promoting your fork, but I think there's probably an easier way.