Piwigo and Zenphoto; a Comparative Review

Open Source Software for web-based photo galleries has been around for a very long time. Web based photo galleries mean different things for different people. The casual user feels no compulsion to go Open Source and host his or her own photo gallery, thanks to Flickr®, Picassa®, Photobucket® and Facebook®. But apart from  privacy and ownership issues, these services are fairly limited when it comes to integration with blogging platforms. For example, Photobucket® only allows its users to post a slide show of their photos in a blog post. A clickable thumbnail gallery cannot be inserted into a blog post as of now. And Photobucket® has the annoying tendency to automatically resize images to save bandwidth (at the expense of quality). For example, a 1.5 MB DSLR image will end up becoming a 70KB image once its uploaded to Photobucket®.

For me, experimenting with Open Source web-based photo galleries began when I began to realise the limitations of WordPress when it comes to photoblogging.

When WordPress started off, photos were more or less an afterthought. Photos on WordPress were given some advanced functionality by plugins. The best I could find was the nextGEN gallery by Alex Rabe of Germany, which seems to be partly inspired by oldtime photoblogging favourite, Coppermine.

Everything was great with nextGen gallery, until I wanted to add just a little more content to photo descriptions. I discovered that it was impossible to add a hyperlink into the image description field (unless I was willing to hack some components).

Even WordPress admits its helplessness when it comes to photos, suggesting that users change their site theme to a photoblog theme, or use a WordPress plugin that is compatible with an outside web-based photo gallery.

Since I am an occassional photoblogger, changing the site’s theme to a photoblog theme was not an option. Therefore I started on my quest to find an ideal Open Source web-based photo gallery. I had some very specific criteria.

  1. Maximum compatibility with WordPress, especially when it came to inserting image galleries into a blog post.
  2. The ability to add HTML content to a photo’s description.
  3. The ability to add Copyright info to a photo’s description.

With these criteria in mind, I found Wikipedia very helpful in narrowing down on Piwigo and Zenphoto. Apparently, these two Open Source web-based photo galleries have the most features. A close third would probably be Coppermine.

Please note that my comparative review is based on Piwigo 2.3.2 and Zenphoto 1.4.1.6. Things are changing fast in this area and this comparative review should be considered outdated in a few months.

It is interesting to note that while WordPress development has diverged from photoblogging, Open Source web-based photo galleries now draw cues from Wordpress’s famous “five minute install” and theme/plugin architecture.

Piwigo and Zenphoto; History

Both Piwigo and Zenphoto have been around for more than five years. Zenphoto is relatively newer (they don’t have a Wikipedia page). Zenphoto developers appear to be based in America while Piwigo developers appear to be clustered in France. It appears that Zenphoto is more small scale than Piwigo, in terms of code volume. This is quite surprising because I found it more feature-rich and more sophisticated. Both Zenphoto and Piwigo have had security vulnerabilities in the past (all appropriately patched). But Zenphoto appears to have had more than its share of bad press.

Piwigo also offers full fledged photo hosting service (in the fashion of WordPress.com).

Piwigo and Zenphoto;  Installation

I ran into installation issues related to PHP on my host server and file permission settings with both Piwigo and Zenphoto.

Preinstall Screen of Zenphoto

Zenphoto gives a thorough preinstall analysis

In the case of Piwigo, I had to shoot in the dark because there were no preinstall checks. In the case of Zenphoto, a preinstall screen pretty much summed up all of my issues, giving me specific pointers on troubleshooting.

Newbie Tip: Never Install Piwigo or Zenphoto onto your existing WordPress database. Create a new database. And better yet, install on a subdomain instead of your WordPress domain.

Piwigo and Zenphoto; Support

I consider support for Open Source software as a courtesy and therefore my expectations were low.

But within a day of posting my problems on Piwigo and Zenphoto support forums, I recieved direction from their support staff.

Zenphoto appeared to have some (non-impacting) technical issues with their forums. They also have a system of moderating newbie posts.

Piwigo and Zenphoto; Features

Both Piwigo and Zenphoto were able to superbly meet requirements 1 & 2 (adding html content to individual images). But I found Zenphoto to be more sophisticated and advanced (detractors may use the word “dizzying”). There is the ability to fine tune everything. For example, Zenphoto has the option of enabling secure logins, (provided the server supports OpenID) whereas Piwigo does not. In addition, the bundled themes that come with Zenphoto are very clean and sophisticated. Zenphoto even has special themes that can replicate your original WordPress blog themes!

When uploading image files via FTP, Piwigo requires that thumbnails be also created and uploaded to a subfolder with the prefix TN-. This requires batch processing of image files by a local image editor such as Adobe Photoshop Essentials. The alternative is to avoid uploading images via FTP and instead use a special upload program (Ploader) created by Piwigo. Zenphoto has no such requirements.

Piwigo and Zenphoto; WordPress Integration

Zenphoto initially appeared promising when it came to WordPress integration. After all, there were four WordPress plugins for Zenphoto, compared to just one for Piwigo.

But the first Zenphoto plugin for WordPress is no longer under active development. Another one “may” support Zenphoto later on. One plugin (ZenphotoPress) that appeared promising works as intended, but only if zenphoto is hosted on the same site as the wordpress blog. Another plugin allows Zenphoto integration on another blog by reading the public RSS feed of the Zenphoto gallery (provided that it is enabled). But it does’nt appear compatible with the latest release of Zen photo.

Piwigo Button in WordPress TinyMCE

PiwigoMEDIA WordPress plugin allows easy insertion of images in a Piwigo Gallery, as well as entire thumbnailed albums.

This left me with no way to go but Piwigo. The Piwigomedia Plugin utilizes the TinyMCE interface and works exactly as intended. It does not duplicate images in the Piwigo gallery. A demonstration can be found at the bottom of this page. While the link still works, the gallery is now a standard WordPress one, not a Piwigo one.

Conclusion

While Zenphoto clearly has sophistication and features, Piwigo has best managed to achieve WordPress Integration while offering an impressive, yet not dizzying array of features.

Update (December 2014)

Ever since I wrote this review, my requirements have changed, and WordPress has grown up as well. All I needed was some advanced gallery management to supplement my WordPress blog. Thankfully, WordPress now allows insertion of multiple galleries by default, without any other plugins. While the gallery formats are simple (tiles and slideshows), the images open up into container pages that allow advanced HTML descriptions, links, as well as the Akismet comment form. Whats more, users of the WordPress Jetpack plugin can avail image hosting through the WordPress Content Delivery Network (saving bandwidth), and they can also create flash-like Mosaic galleries. To top it all, My Piwigo installation died when I tried a recent upgrade (2.7.2). This was related to the limitations of being in a shared hosting environment, and I doubt that typical Piwigo users will encounter the same difficulties. While I no longer use Piwigo, It still continues to be my choice when it comes standalone image galleries.

What web-based PhotoGallery software do you prefer?

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22 Responses

  1. I’m Piwigo founder.

    Nice reading. I won’t lie: I think ZenPhoto does a very good job. I admit I didn’t expect your conclusion since in my mind Piwigo has much more features than ZenPhoto (considering core and plugins).

    > When uploading image files via FTP, Piwigo
    > requires that thumbnails be also created
    > and uploaded to a subfolder with the prefix
    > TN-. This requires batch processing of image
    > files by a local image editor such as Adobe
    > Photoshop Essentials. The alternative is
    > to avoid uploading images via FTP and
    > instead use a special upload program
    > (Ploader) created by Piwigo.

    In the future version 2.4, this prerequisite will disappear.

    I don’t exactly know for ZenPhoto, but Piwigo has a “web API”: a list of methods that can be called from remote applications to fetch data from Piwigo or send data to Piwigo. This is why the WordPress plugin “PiwigoMedia” was “simple” to code (with methods such as pwg.categories.getList or pwg.categories.getImages) and why we have so many remote softwares that can add photos to Piwigo: pLoader, Shotwell, Digikam, Lightroom, iPhoto, iPhone/iPad, android…

    But anyway, zenPhoto does a very good job and when someone says me Piwigo doesn’t fit his needs, I recommend testing zenPhoto.

    • Robert Johnson says:

      Piwigo failed miserably for me. WSOD during synchronise due to php timeout and no error reporting, unable to handle apostrophe in filename due to unescaped SQL query, but the dealbreaker was that some perfectly acceptable jpeg’s failed to display.

  2. Hamad Subani says:

    >Piwigo has much more features

    I got some hints about that when I compared the volume of code on ohloh.net. Clearly there was a “lot” piwigo was built on. I now understand why it was so easy to get the Piwigo WordPress plugin up and working whereas plugins for other photoblogs rely on convoluted methods (such as pulling images from a public RSS feed of the photoblog).But again, the features such as “web API,” as advanced as they may be and as much potential as they may have, are of little consequence to the average code-illiterate user. For example Drupal is much more sophisticated than WordPress. But from an end user perspective, WordPress is the choice.

    Maybe you could educate users on “under the hood” things such as web API on your site, and how they make Piwigo different.

  3. Fernando says:

    I have a photogallery running on Coppermine, but I’m trying new systems. I found Piwigo and liked it, although being weird on importing galleries from folders. But I haven’t found any Zenphoto demo gallery or snapshots to have an opinion about it. But after this little review I decided to try a Zenphoto install. Thanks.

  4. Wayne Lilley says:

    ❓ I’m adding photo gallery to a php-based website for a large private community. We will restrict photo access to our members. When a member is already logged into our site, can we pre-authenticate them for the piwigo module so they do not have to login again?

    Thanks!

    Wayne Lilley

  5. Hi,

    I like Piwigo. And specially Charles content which support uploading and playing of FLV video files.

    Thanks

    Keep it up.

  6. georgefan says:

    I had installed both zenphoto & piwigo on my server(win7+iis+mysql)
    I like piwigo more than zenphoto.
    zenphoto looks too sophisticated.

  7. Jamie says:

    Anyone fancy doing an up-to-date comparison?

    I realise this review is only 9 months old but, as stated in the review, “things are changing fast in this area and this comparative review should be considered outdated in a few months.”

    • Hamad Subani says:

      Hello Jamie,

      I did this review when I was hunting for a photo CMS, and I decided to share the details of my quest. Now that I have settled down with Piwigo, there is no point in re-installing Zenphoto just for an evaluation. It s a lot of work.

  8. Can piwigo apply bwith multiuser to upload their photos?

    Because I want all member can upload their photos to the website, so the website become a community website.

    please answer my question: redblogsos@gmail.com

  9. Jess says:

    I’m coming from a slightly different point of view, as I needed a proofing gallery for clients. I installed both this past weekend to compare. I really, really wanted to like ZenPhoto. It was so sleek and professional looking, plus using it was very intuitive.. In the end, however, it was all packaging and not quite enough substance for what I needed it for. There was no way to set it up as client proofing (user logs in to only their album, not seeing others in the process) without hacking ZenPhoto’s code. While I don’t have a problem direct editing and debugging coding, I also really don’t have the time to do so. Not to mention the very first post on Zen’s forum that I found regarding this issue got a pretty nasty response from support staff.

    It took me 5 minutes to set up client logins on Piwigo. Piwigo won on that alone. Throw in its easy connections with WordPress, and Paypal integration, and it really becomes a powerful tool for photographers.

    That said, their look could absolutely use some work. If Piwigo could take a note from Zen’s books as far as aesthetics go, they’d be very, very heavily in the lead.

    • Christian says:

      Hi Jess, thanks for your post. I’m also looking for a professional photo shareing software for my clients. You post saved me time to try with ZenPhoto. I’ll start with Piwigo. Regards Christian

  10. I personally love ZenPhoto and find it very easy to adjust to my needs.

    ZenPhoto is highly recommended.

  11. Kilroy says:

    I am a Zenphoto user and am fed up with its complexity.
    If you want to create elaborate themes, it is just a wild ride. I just checked it and there are 13 different functions to manage breadcrums. In another CMS I use, there is just one, which seems perfectly sound.

    So, I installed Piwigo without any plugin to give it a try.

    It does not populate title, description, keywords from IPTC data.
    URLs are not rewritten.

    We are in 2014 and these features should be available and enabled out of the box. They are in Zenphoto… except that they are not properly implemented for the latter.

  12. Keith Till says:

    I have had sites on piwigo for four years now and have not had any problems. I have always had a response from them to my queries within hours of posting. One of my sites – http://maltabuses.piwigo.com/ is currently receiving over 10,000 page hits per day with many compliments on the easy use of the site from visitors. I have also recommended Piwigo to many colleagues all have reported back that they are delighted with same.

  13. Do either of them have an android upload app?
    Which is easiest to integrate with blogger? I just want to take photos with my phone and blog about them.

    I used flickr till recently but flickr is a bit more strict regarding copyright than I want to be (I want to take photos of newspaper clips and blog about them) and I don’t want to loose all my 5000 plus flickr photostream, so I want to host myself.

  14. Aubrey says:

    Thanks for writing up this review. Quite informative for a newbie

  1. April 3, 2012

    […] via Piwigo and Zenphoto; a Comparative Review | techtangerine. […]

  2. October 4, 2012

    […] 但相簿軟體好像沒有blog軟體好找,討論也不多(多是國外),因此著實花了很多時間研究(英文不好)。那時看到這一篇<Piwigo and Zenphoto; a Comparative Review>對我幫助很大,而他的使用歷程也跟我相近,因此感觸很大。而文章中的Wikipedia連結是十分有用的資料(全部都是英文資料,英文果然是重要的)。 […]

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