I would very much like this feature.

Tadjio describes one sensible way to calculate the album date. I would also like a very simple option, using the date the album was created.

Here is my rationale - this would support an entirely different user interface model, by using date sorting *together with* album pagination. My idea is that with pagination, you don't necessarily need to organize albums hierarchically. You can just keep adding new albums, and use tags to associate albums into groups (tags being more flexible than a hierarchy).

Sorting by reverse date (newest first) works well with that approach. As you add new albums, the front page shows you what's recently been posted -- like a feed. Ideally I'd like various views -- recently added albums, recently viewed albums, recently edited. Along with those views, tags provide a way to explore more conceptually rather than chronologically.

IMO this model would be useful and appropriate for some applications. I like it because I find it impossible to organize images into a single hierarchy -- I'd rather just have a whole bunch of albums and organize by tags.

Perhaps it's too late to support this in 2.5 - I wish I had tested sooner, I've been looking forward to having the pagination feature, and hoping to follow the approach I describe.

* One problem: this approach assumes you can have as many albums as you like without "breaking" the UI. Pagination makes that possible ... but some themes also have a list of albums in the sidebar, and that would become too long.

Marq, thanks for the comment, that is true. The drawback is that the smart albums each must be defined individually, which is a lot of extra work. What I had in mind is to define albums through the normal mechanisms (my preference is to upload files via sftp) and the album sorting would happen automatically - so not a property of the album per se, but rather the sort order of summary "list" views, like the home page.

Again, I'm thinking of a somewhat different UI model. No hierarchy, just lots of albums. And the home page is like a feed with the recent albums.

I am just doing so!
With my limited test data it seems to work great, thanks.