Dear cryopad,
thanks for the clarification, I wasn't sure if this was a programmed behavior or a configuration error.

I tried "AutoFileRenamer" and all the other plugins to rename the files, as well as to extend character compatibility to spaces, and every other plugin possible, without success. Furthermore, I have iOS and Android, which rename photos differently, and the plugin you recommended only supports one naming pattern.

Anyway, after days of testing and a reinstallation, I had to turn off Piwigo because there's no way it could import the large image library I already have.

I got every possible error, and I just let it go, until (after initial tests) I finally tried to import all my photos, and the import plugins started creating thousands of albums, naming them with the file names (both the native plugins and the community plugins that break the upload process into multiple parts). I had to stop, deeply discouraged, unable to invest any more time in software that, after over 24 years of development, still can't manage tens of thousands of photos.

I liked Piwigo, and it met all my and my family's needs, but the inability to import old albums and name new files by upload date made me give up. I'm disappointed, though.

In any case, thanks for the information.

Best regards,
Simone

Dear cryopad,
thanks for the clarification.

I copied the files directly into the Galleries folder after removing all characters Piwigo doesn't allow, except for spaces. Then I used the Admin / Tools function and clicked the Synchronise button, and it was at this point that the thousands of albums appeared at the root level with the file names (various years, so clearly coming from files read in subfolders and brought to the root level).

However, I discovered this when I re-entered Admin / Tools, because during the scans I consistently received an Nginx error despite having overridden the PHP time limit of 300 seconds (Docker piwigo/piwigo 16.4 on Container Manager 'Project' on Synology).

In any case, it doesn't seem possible to handle the import of nearly 100,000 items in one go without creating a stable and consistent work queue.

In fact, the first attempts with the entire library resulted in crashes and eventually slowdowns, so much so that the Piwigo site became extremely slow to load, perhaps due to the sheer volume of data being imported.

I'd like to point out that none of the imports extended to files; I had only selected "folders" (the middle option) and had deselected all the metadata options. Basically, everything happens just by reading the folder tree. Hence my discouragement in continuing.

I'm not a Piwigo expert, but I certainly tried to follow best practices, so much so that for the initial tests (the first 8,000 files or so), everything ran smoothly, albeit slowly.

Perhaps it's not the effort that was lacking, but rather a few more options for managing such large directories.

Thanks anyway for the tips.

Kind regards,
Simone