Now that I'm successfully logged into ZP's admin, I can't get it to show thumbs or images. Similar to some recent threads:
http://www.zenphoto.org/support/topic.php?id=699
and
http://www.zenphoto.org/support/topic.php?id=688

I uploaded OK, my albums and cache folders are at 777, but no picts:
http://www.jim-site.com/zenphoto/

Should other items be set to 777 too?

well, atleast I have some company. this was getting extremely frustrating.

Jim, can't offer too much help at this time, except to suggest that a mod-rewrite true helps to some degree. Do you have any thumbs in ur cache folder ?

I do Not have thumbs in the cache folder.

I thought the ZP machine generated them, but there's nothing in the admin section about this. I did see something about Thumb sizes toward the bottom of zp-config.php, but I don't know what to make of it...

jimhere,
by the looks of your site.. it doesnt look like mod-rewrite is enabled. Are you using wamp server also?

trivialpursuits,
after fudging around with wamp for a while and realizing that there is no shuch thing as chmod777 or whatever you want to call it on WAMP server.. that shouldnt make any difference.. what i found was that WAMP did not have the php_gd extension enabled by default.. once I enabled this.. everything started working as it should with mod-rewrite on or off. before I found this out.. I was having the same results you were having

I'm not sure what a wamp server is, but I did install "test.php" as suggested, so here's the server info:
http://www.jim-site.com/zenphoto/zen/test.php

Also, in my config file is:
$conf['mod_rewrite'] = true;

As far as the comment:
MAKE SURE TO EDIT THE .htaccess FILE with your path information.
how in the world do I do that? I did find my server's htaccess file, but it's empty.

the .htaccess file you need to edit will be in the root zenphoto directory. If that one is empty. re-download the zenphoto package and pull it out of there. modify the rewrite base to say /zenphoto

According to your config, you do have mod-rewrite but there is definatly a problem with .htaccess file.

Try changing $conf['mod_rewrite'] = true; to $conf['mod_rewrite'] = false; and then try to access your gallery.

If that helps, you know that the problems is with the rewriting. I had the same problem, and what did it for me was a look in the apache2-config, and making sure that you don't have a AllowOverride None in effect for the file scope in question.

MrNeoplex, that totally worked!

When Chilifrei64 said "it doesnt look like mod-rewrite is enabled" I thought that meant it was supposed to be enabled (true). But "false" did it. Someday I'll understand the database side of php.

But now on to skinning!

I guess I should of been more clear.

For mod rewrite to work with zenphoto, it has to be enabled in 2 spots.

1. The server has to have it enabled.

2. if it is enabled and you want zenphoto to use it then the zp-config.php has to have it set to true.

now, jimhere.. according to your test.php.. modrewrite is enabled but it is not necessary. If you got it working i would just leave it but if you wanted clean url's maybe look into it more.