Hi,
do you know if there is a way to ftp a folder and have the album unpublished by default?

Also, is there any documentation on dynamic albums which can help me understand better how I can use it. So far, I understand that I run a search and create the album from the search result. Few questions:
Do I need to have a seach page in my theme?
If I don't expose any search box, is there any alternative way to run this search (instead of switching them)? I tried on my theme and it complained about the lack of the landing page (I guess).
What exactly is "searchable"? I tried to search some tags but it didn't return much.
Sometimes also, I get albums. Can I search only pictures?

Last question, is there a way to expose metadata to local applications? I would like to keep in sync the local folder and the server folder (metadata and folder structure). Do you know if there is quick way? Alternative is upload the files all the time and avoid tagging files on the server.

Basically, what I'm trying to achieve is to have one folder where I keep all my pictures in a "timeline fashion" (all in daily folders and synchronised with my local copy so that "it's my online backup", if it makes sense) and create separate folders where I "pull" specific pictures from those folders (mobile blog, B&W, etc).
* Is that possible?

[i]do you know if there is a way to ftp a folder and have the album unpublished by default?[/i]
No, you will have to upload via the admin interface if you want to have the option to do that.

[i]Also, is there any documentation on dynamic albums which can help me understand better how I can use it. So far, I understand that I run a search and create the album from the search result. [/i]
Correct.

[i]Do I need to have a seach page in my theme?[/i]
Without searchpage no search and no dynamic albums...

[i]If I don't expose any search box, is there any alternative way to run this search (instead of switching them)? I tried on my theme and it complained about the lack of the landing page (I guess).[/i]
No, but you could hide it for normal user by placing the search box code between ` if (!checkForPassword()) { <searchboxcode>}`then only you see it if logged in.

[i]What exactly is "searchable"? I tried to search some tags but it didn't return much. Sometimes also, I get albums. Can I search only pictures?[/i]
All textfields of Images and albums are searchable. If you don't find anything, you probably have set the options on the searchfields wrong.

[i]Last question, is there a way to expose metadata to local applications?[/i]
No, zenphoto does not add to the metadata, it is only able to read it and put it into the db. We recommend that you use an programm like Adobe Bridge or whatever to add the metadata to the images itself if you need that. Otherwise all added data goes into the db.

[i]Basically, what I'm trying to achieve is to have one folder where I keep all my pictures in a "timeline fashion" [/i]
As suggested above, do it viceversa, edit and organize the images on your computer and upload the folder via ftp.

There is no way to make the album unpublished by default. You will have to go directly to the admin edit page to change that once you have created the folder. But, if you are uploading to the "timeline" folder all the time, just mark it unpublished.

There is no documentation currently about dynamic albums other than the announcement http://www.zenphoto.org/2008/02/version-115-announcement/. You will need to expose the search box somewhere. It could be just on the search page in your theme which you can reach be entering <yourdomain>/zenphoto/page/search.

You create a dynamic album by executing a search, then on the result page click on the admin toolbox link then the create album link. You can search on most any of the fields but generally tags work best for dynamic albums.

See the admin gallery options tab for a list of which fields may be searched. (You can also eliminate searching the fields by unchecking the boxes). You would need to uncheck everything but tags if you want to limit searches to just the tags. (You can also do that in the interface for creating the dynamic album.

I don't know what you mean by "expose metadata to local applications." Zenphoto stores its information in a database which could be accessed by other WEB applications. If you store all the metadata in the images themselves that would make things easier. Zenphoto gets its metadata from the image if the image has metadata.

You can certainly do what you suggest. You might want to be more refined on the "timeline" album--maybe an album with a subalbum for each month/week/day depending on how many pictures you take at a time.

Then you can tag each picture based on the viewing organization you want.

Thank you all for the quick response

I'm using the build from 05/04 and changing the title of a dynamic album gives the following:

Warning: array_search(): Wrong datatype for second argument in /hsphere/local/home/redaelkh/reda-ek.com/gallery/zp-core/admin-functions.php on line 897

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /hsphere/local/home/redaelkh/reda-ek.com/gallery/zp-core/admin-functions.php:897) in /hsphere/local/home/redaelkh/reda-ek.com/gallery/zp-core/admin.php on line 292

Also, creating an album in a subalbum instead of root seems to give some errors (I forgot to copy and paste the error sorry, I just created in root)

actually it seems that everytime I try to modify a tag I now get:

Warning: array_search(): Wrong datatype for second argument in /hsphere/local/home/redaelkh/reda-ek.com/gallery/zp-core/admin.php on line 253

Warning: array_search(): Wrong datatype for second argument in /hsphere/local/home/redaelkh/reda-ek.com/gallery/zp-core/admin.php on line 253

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /hsphere/local/home/redaelkh/reda-ek.com/gallery/zp-core/admin.php:253) in /hsphere/local/home/redaelkh/reda-ek.com/gallery/zp-core/admin.php on line 292

How do I remove a tag then and do you know why I cannot add any tag?

There are currently some bugs in dynamic albums in the current nightly.

ok, thanks

Sorry for another question, don't want to overload you with silly questions but just wanted to understand future development. with dynamic albums, the album page seems ok and in image.php the "next" and "prev" links point to the correct image. However, in image page all other links point to the original album so if I click on album link (generated by getAlbumLinkURL) I'll go to the original album not the dynamic. I'm not asking for any feature, but do you know if these details are going to be addressed by future development please?
Thanks in advance.
-Reda

removing a tag is done by (on a PC) ctrl-click on the tag. ctrl-click toggles the selection of an item without changing any of the others.

Can you post an url for your questions of the links. I am not sure I am following. Describe exactly which links your are talking about.

The tag saving bugs will be corrected in tonight's build.

hi,
thanks in advance for the fix the bugs.
Regarding the links, here's the album link: http://reda-ek.com/gallery/B-AND-W.alb/

The url for my example is [i]B-AND-W.alb[/i]. If I then click on a picture, I end up in http://reda-ek.com/gallery/Photography/TiltShift-Test9.jpg.php which is not B-AND-W.alb but [i]Photography[/i] album. Thanks

Just a comment on tags. it's a good solution -although I didn't get it the first time :-). However, one small comment is that if you have a list of 100 tags it's very difficult to see what is on and what is off. Again, not trying to complain about the current solution but perhaps having a separate listbox that only shows what is on would be more userfriendly. E.g.

listbox_________________listbox
current tags____________picture tags
current tags____>>____picture tags
current tags
current tags____<<
current tags
....

Just a small comment, what do you think? ;-)

Yeah, I agree.