# Intro
Apologies for a lengthy post. It's not an issue or problem with ZenPhoto, I realise I'm using it *way* outside its parameters for a purpose it was never designed for. But others with more experience may be able to suggest plugins or other options which will go at least some way to achieving what I think I need. Thank you (in advance) for reading.

## Background
My Father died two years ago - he left around 50,000 35mm slides taken over a period of nearly 70 years - a wide variety of topics, family (Weddings, Graduations), transport history (his passion whether rail, boat, road, tram...) and astronomy (his other passion whether telescopes or sundials). There is some overlap; Mum riding on a historic tram, a railway crossing a river, my Brother's wedding on a canal boat. Dad left no notes - *He* knew what each slide was and didn't need to write it down; the knowledge died with him.

## Our Problem
We need to sort, identify and caption the images as much as possible. We've had interest from a UK museum in some. We've had offers of help. *But* (and it's quite a big "but") each require a degree of pre-sorting. The Canal experts don't want to trawl through hundreds of family photo's or pictures of telescopes. The astronomy experts don't want railway bridges.

So, a layered approach to sorting. Family can categorise images as "family", "Astronomy", "Transport" (with multiple options allowed). A transport person can look in *that* category and refine as "road", "Rail", "Tram", "Water" etc with possibly another layer refining the last one as "River", "Canal" …

And that's where I've kind of run out of ideas.

## Progress so far
We've had scanned around 22,000 images. I've "played" with some of my suggested options below. For those interested, it's at https://www.bagpuss-and-baxter.org.uk/zenphoto/

Now I'm stuck on the next bit - enlisting outside sorting help (which is half the point of putting it online, anyone, anywhere in the world, can potentially help)

## Options (I think)
1. *Comments*
PLUS - Anyone can add them
MINUS - Incredibly manual on (probably) me - to turn a comment into moving and tagging an image
2. *Tags*
PLUS - can quickly search (through the search box) or build dynamic albums "Bridge AND River"
MINUS - Need to have admin access to Albums to add / change Tags (and is not [nor is meant to be] an overly friendly interface)
3. *Favourites*
PLUS - Anyone (logged on) can quickly add, and support multiple selection
MINUS - Are *personal*; my favourites are not yours (and vice versa)

## The way ahead
Currently I've got two plans: -
* Short term - write a quick tool which searches the underlying DB for "Favourite = Family" (for any user) and sets "Tag = Family" - run either as a timed job or a (manual) function
* Longer term - dig out my "PHP For Dummies" and write a single plugin which allows logged in but non-admin users to manipulate Tags.

But I'm open to other suggestions.

Yes, Zenphoto is aimed to be managed with registered users via the backend.

You two plans are certainly possible. Zenphoto is quite flexible code wise, just nothing exists for this currently.

Favorites indeed are personal and not even global, so every user would have it's own "family" favorite. Perhaps also using a specific tag "familyfavorite" for this is the better and easier way long term as that coud also fill a dynamic album automatically.

It is certainly possible to add a frontend tagging functionality, just nothing exists for this currently. (Comments are not really the way to use for this btw.)

Another way is/woud have been to tag images via EXIF/IPTC meta data before uploading. Then Zenphoto would use those right away. But that is of course not really a collaborative effort.

There is nothing for Zenphoto at the moment, but I've seen such projects implemented for astronomy - collaborative efforts to categorise photos of objects from telescope (I think, it was types of galaxies they were sorting out), as it's very common for such projects - code might be opensource and could be adapted somehow?
See here: https://help.zooniverse.org (they have a github with some repositories)

If not: your best bet is using something like Lightroom with it's system of hierarchical keywords/tags, that can make tagging your slides easier.
Last year I undertook a massive project of tagging the whole lot of my photo library of 15 years with it, 100000 photos - and it took me a few months with very detailed tagging.
With a broader categories you will be done much sooner.

Thanks to both Acrylian and Kuzzma

I use Adobe Lightroom to tidy, crop, rotate / flip and reduce to a consistent size (3,000 on the long edge) before uploading but it's only owned by me and, apart from the odd obvious EXIF "This is our wedding on the banks of the Grand Junction Canal in May 1995" doesn't work well with 'later' updates.

The more I think, the more I'm tempted with writing my own plugin which can (initially) turn "Favourite, Family" (for any user) into "Tag = Note: Family" - it could also highlight Favourites (for any user) which *don't* match "Family" and, as it expands, match "Favourite, Rail" into "Tag = Mode: Rail"; "Favourite, Tram" into "Tag = Mode: Tram" etc - I can add instructions for more defined "experts" to explore a dynamic album which is "Mode: Tram AND NOT Note: Family" (might need some quotes, but you get the gist). I can probably code this to be part of "Admin Overview"... and if it only gets run every few days, it's not a disaster. Thanks again both

Recommended readings when trying to build a plugin:
- https://www.zenphoto.org/news/theming-tutorial/
- https://www.zenphoto.org/news/zenphotos-object-model-framework/
- https://www.zenphoto.org/news/zenphoto-plugin-architecture/
- https://www.zenphoto.org/news/zenphotos-global-variables/

As mentioned it would also be possible to create a tag frontend edit to use those directly. That might even be simpler than trying to use favorites.

"As mentioned, it would also be possible to create a tag frontend edit to use those directly. That might even be simpler than trying to use favourites"

Thanks - I'll have a read.

>Admin utilities
>This is a special type of plugin that actually exists only within the official release package as admin utilities are stored within /zp-core/utilities/. If you create third party plugins you should never add plugins there at all but use the filter way described in the demo plugin file linked above. This documentation is included for completeness

Do I read this as Admin utilities can't go in *Plugins*? I appreciate the logic that downloading (and installing) a third party utility and giving it Admin access is "unwise", but this is one I'm planning to write myself...

Yes, the actual "admin utilities" are a specia plugin type as they work as files basically directly.

But you can create "normal" plugins also do the same. The button then has to be created via a class method and registered via a filter. The utility page/backend page then is placed within the plugin's folder.

For example the core "search_statistics" plugin does use a utility button.

The only difference betwwen core extensions in /zp-core/zp-extensions and /plugins are the internal paths (and that core extensions may be required dependency internally sometimes).

I realize that your demo plugin misses a plain example for adding backend pages/utilities (the page is in both cases a backend page), we'll put extending it on our list.

I should have realised you can add admin plugins to "plugins" as I'd already added "bulk-captions"; my apologies...

No problem at all! All takes time to get into.

I admire your efforts to organize your father's slides. Writing a plugin for tagging is a great idea and could streamline the collaborative process. Best of luck with everything!