IMO, you could have choosen a more relevant title.
Until now, I hadn't heard of anybody who had problems navigating through coppermine.
The approach the devs took to create the interface is the one that was most obvious to most people. If you don't like it, then change the code to what ever you want.
The visitor cannot magically know that the small heading "User galleries," in the box titled, Category, is a link that needs to be clicked.
The web is a place common to have links to other pages, people who use the web will know that and try to look for those links if they are interested.
when a registered user decides to upload files, and logs in and clicks on the "Upload file" link, at that point an error message is given stating: Sorry there is no album where you are allowed to upload files.
You can change the error message in the language file if you want, maybe tell them they have to create an album first?
We might implement a check if users can create albums and there's no album they can upload in yet, give them another message telling the to create an album.
And Coppermine needs a start page not with a bunch of random photos, but merely with links to the actual albums available. Administrators should have the option to turn off anything but the display of albums on the start page.
If you read the docs, then you'll see this is possible.
Quite a few years ago I learned in Business Communication that if the average person doesn't understand a memo I've written or directions I've given, it's my fault as the communicator, not the fault of the message recipient. The basic principle for communications is "Keep it simple stupid!" In brief, the average user isn't a dumbass for misinterpreting or not comprehending communication/directions; the communicator is a dumbass for not being able to communicate on a level that the average user can clearly and easily understand.
We try to create an extensible piece of software, what I mean by this is that cpg administrators should be able to do as much as possible with a great backend.
They should be able to change whatever they want in as less edits as possible.
It is up to the administrators to create layout/navigation they think fits best to their users.
As this is no valid feature request and we have a strict 'one issue per thread' policy, I'm marking this as invalid.