It looks like I might have a way to get the function that I was looking for using the Personal Plugin. I found that if I created a specific user permission for that user's own user album with the create subalbums and recursive options on it did more or less what I was thinking about.

However, it would be nice if I didn't have to manually create the permission for each user. So I created a function that responds to the register user trigger, uses community_get_user_album() to get the user album ID and then some code I borrowed from admin_permission.php in the community plugin to register the permission. In initial testing it seems to work.

I set a low number of photos which I seem to be able to raise later by assigning the user to a group that has "user album only" permissions but a higher upload allowance. The subalbum permissions appeared to remain functional.

It would be wonderful if I could somehow connect this idea with a user being assigned to or removed from a particular group but I couldn't find a trigger that would do that.

add_event_handler('register_user', 'personal_add_special_community_permissions', EVENT_HANDLER_PRIORITY_NEUTRAL);
function personal_add_special_community_permissions($user)
{
  $category = community_get_user_album($user['id']);
  $insert = array(
    'type' => 'user',
    'group_id' => null,
    'user_id' => $user['id'],
    'category_id' => $category,
    'user_album' => boolean_to_string(-1 == $category),
    '`recursive`' => 'true',
    'create_subcategories' => 'true',
    'moderated' => true,
    'nb_photos' => 5,
    'storage' => -1
  );  
  mass_inserts(
    COMMUNITY_PERMISSIONS_TABLE,
    array_keys($insert),
    array($insert)
  );
}

Environment
Piwigo 16.0.0RC2 Check for upgrade
Installed on 6 November 2025, 6 days ago
Operating system: Linux
PHP: 8.4.11 (Show info) [2025-11-12 23:33:02]
MySQL: 11.8.3-MariaDB-0+deb13u1 from Debian [2025-11-12 17:33:02]
Graphics Library: External ImageMagick 7.1.1-43
Cache size 14.93 Mo   calculated 2 days ago Refresh

Activated plugin list
Add Users Notes
Additional Pages
Admin Tools
Community
Copyrights
Custom Registration Form
Extended Description
LocalFiles Editor
Perso Footer
Personal Plugin
Photo added by
Protect Notification
Upload 1 menu
Write Metadata

I need to do some additional testing but it looks like the triggers are a workable solution. There are some things that seem to be behaving oddly that I need to track down yet but when using the database triggers associating or disassociating a user from a group does actually add or remove the permissions from the community permissions table.

I put together a plugin to manage this for my installation which allows me to add or remove the following triggers and specify which group should trigger the changes. The plugin also retains a function attached to the register_user trigger that calls community_get_user_album() because I wasn't sure where in the process the user album was actually created. Since that album is referenced in the trigger (through a SELECT on the categories table) that gets created on the database I wanted to make sure the user album was available.

Insert trigger

    $query = '
CREATE TRIGGER `community_extended_user_create_user_album_permission`
  AFTER INSERT ON `'. USER_GROUP_TABLE .'`
  FOR EACH ROW
  BEGIN
    IF (NEW.`group_id` = '. $config['trigger_group_id'] .') 
    THEN 
      DELETE FROM `'. COMMUNITY_PERMISSIONS_TABLE .'`
        WHERE user_id=NEW.`user_id`
        AND category_id=( SELECT id FROM `'. CATEGORIES_TABLE .'` WHERE community_user=NEW.`user_id` ); 
      INSERT INTO `'. COMMUNITY_PERMISSIONS_TABLE .'`
        (type, user_id, category_id, create_subcategories)
        VALUES (
          "user",
          NEW.`user_id`,
          ( SELECT id FROM `'. CATEGORIES_TABLE .'` where community_user=NEW.`user_id` ),
          "true"
        );
    END IF;
  END
;';
    pwg_query($query);

Delete trigger

$query = '
CREATE TRIGGER `community_extended_user_destroy_user_album_permission`
  AFTER DELETE ON `'. USER_GROUP_TABLE .'`
  FOR EACH ROW 
  BEGIN
    IF (OLD.`group_id` = '. $config['trigger_group_id'] .') 
    THEN
      DELETE FROM `'. COMMUNITY_PERMISSIONS_TABLE .'`
        WHERE user_id=OLD.`user_id`
        AND category_id=( SELECT id FROM `'. CATEGORIES_TABLE .'` WHERE community_user=OLD.`user_id` );
    END IF;
  END
;';
    pwg_query($query);