Zenphoto Review 2024
Gallery and Blog Solutions
I've used them all—well, almost all of them.
My journey through the various CMS systems began more than 10 years ago. Back then, I was driven by the desire to showcase my photos online and write about my experiences with them in a blog.
After testing various gallery solutions, I settled on Zenphoto relatively quickly. The advantages then, as now:
A great gallery solution and a blog all in one place.
Since I like to try new things, I ended up at Piwigo. But during my "CMS hopping," I always found myself coming back to Zenphoto sooner or later. Sometimes I’d even take a detour through WordPress.
And yes, at some point I stopped counting how many times I switched. As I said, eventually my path always led me back to Zenphoto. More details on that below.
WordPress
The mother of all blogs. Unfortunately, I realized fairly quickly that none of the gallery solutions—whether free or paid—could match what Piwigo and Zenphoto offer right out of the box. Sometimes they lack a comment feature; other times, they don’t display photos on a map. There was always something missing for me. Especially with the free versions, you quickly hit the limits when setting up a comprehensive gallery. The paid versions offer significantly better features—but they’re still not as polished as the solutions mentioned first.
Speaking of costs:
Especially if you’re running it as a hobby, the costs can quickly add up. Here’s the paid gallery, there’s the professional cookie plugin, and over there a caching plugin. Since almost all licenses are now annual, the costs can quickly add up to a tidy sum.
Be careful with updates, too: Not all plugins are compatible with the latest version of WordPress. Don’t underestimate the fact that WordPress is a prime target for attacks. You absolutely need a reliable security plugin, which will likely incur additional costs.
The main reason I started looking for alternatives was that the gallery solutions lacked the features I needed and were sometimes very slow. Speaking of speed: Without a caching plugin, WordPress is pretty much a slowpoke.
What’s really great about WordPress is that the selection of themes is virtually endless—a shortcoming that, in my opinion, both Piwigo and Zenphoto suffer from.
Piwigo
On my journey through CMS systems, I came across Piwigo. For me, alongside Zenphoto, it’s simply the gallery solution. But it’s just a gallery solution. While you can integrate a rudimentary blog function using plugins (Evil Blog or Additional Pages), in my opinion these are more suitable for an “About” page than for a full-fledged blog.
Unlike Zenphoto, Piwigo comes with only a handful of plugins—most plugins are developed by third parties. This can quickly become a drawback during an update. As nice as it is to update with a single click from the backend, there’s a good chance that some plugins aren’t (yet) compatible with the latest version. So it’s better to wait a bit and check whether the plugins are truly “ready” for the latest version.
Otherwise, there's not much I can fault Piwigo for as a pure gallery solution, especially since the system is fast—very fast.
Spoiler: But it's not any faster than Zenphoto.
But I didn't want to give up the blog either.
Bludit
Since I didn't want to use WordPress for my blog again, I looked for alternatives and came across flat-file systems. Because these are purely file-based and therefore don't require a database, they are inherently fast.
I quickly settled on Bludit. Bludit is simple, fast, and very easy to navigate. If I had to set up a new small- to medium-sized blog from scratch, I would definitely choose Bludit again.
I suddenly found myself having to manage two sites (a blog and a gallery), which became too much of a hassle in the long run.
So I started looking for alternatives here as well, and I quickly came across an old acquaintance.
Zenphoto
First, I thoroughly tested Zenphoto with a trial installation. And what does someone do when they realize that WordPress is a slowpoke without caching? Naturally, they run speed tests—specifically, a direct comparison with the existing Piwigo installation.
Depending on the theme, sometimes Piwigo and sometimes Zenphoto had a slight edge. So I marked the speed test with the note “Both are neck and neck in terms of speed.” After that, I ran a few more checks, which once again made me realize the following advantages:
- Manage your blog and gallery in one place
- Zenphoto works right out of the box
- The backend offers exceptional flexibility (code blocks, editing theme files) when you need it. In my opinion, this is far superior to what Piwigo offers.
- Search engine-friendly URLs are generated with just a few mouse clicks—a clear advantage (at least for me) over Piwigo.
- A large number of plugins are included in the Zenphoto installation—so I usually don't have to worry about whether they'll be compatible after an update.
- The support on the Support Forum couldn't be better—but the same goes for Piwigo :-)
- This flexibility provides plenty of room for "playfulness," such as displaying visitor numbers with just a few lines of code.
These features alone are enough for me to be satisfied with Zenphoto right now. If I could play "Make a Wish," the following items would be on my list:
- Updates from the backend—similar to Piwigo
- A slightly more visually appealing statistic in the backend
- More modern themes (also applies to Piwigo)
As mentioned above: If you're looking for a pure gallery solution and don't care about customization, you can't go wrong with Piwigo. But neither can you with Zenphoto.
Both are excellent solutions—and with Zenphoto, no one is forcing you to activate the Zenpage plugin for the blog :-)
What I found with all my installations, including WordPress:
It never worked exactly the way I wanted it to without making some adjustments to the core files. Most of the time, it was just minor things, like a hard-coded English term that I had to translate. Sometimes it was a lack of consent for data processing, as with the Piwigo contact form.
So there’s always a bit of manual work involved.
You can find more articles on CMS systems here.
Bernd: on 29.01.2024
Heidrun: on 28.12.2024