Hello André,
Do you want to display the users' choice publicly to other users? If not, I don't get the difference to the Favorites meta album.
I think the plug-in should be a tool for that the registered user promotes those pictures most important for him, from his own personal gallery, showing these pictures in the index of his personal gallery.
Otherwise, the plug-in can be used as a tool to show the pictures than more likes the user registered (in whole gallery) and these images are displayed in the index of his personal gallery.
Two cases with different purposes.
For the administrator, the plug-in should be a tool that promotes those most important pictures of the gallery in general and these pictures will be displayed on the main index coppermine.
Favorites meta album is a private album, no one can see the pictures, only the owner (I see this so).
Actually there are no limits for (meta) albums.
The limit pictures to display is determined, if for example, we configure (hotpics,3) and (thumbcols = 3) then are displayed 9 pictures.
If we activate more pictures of this number, these no longer displayed.
My idea was to show a message that says something like "maximum pictures to activate (or to display): 9".
Please describe more detailed.
The strange behavior, I think it's because the user admin menu (edit, delete ... etc) is displayed to the user along with the buttons on the plug-in, for all the pictures in the gallery, even those pictures that user not is owner.
And if the user activates as Hot picture a picture that does is not his own, all user admin buttons for this picture, are not shown within the Hotpics meta album.
I think the buttons on the plug-in should only be displayed to the user in their own pictures.
And it being so, then the plugin can be a tool to promote the pictures that a user wants to promote from his personal gallery and these images are displayed in the index of the user's personal gallery.
Regards.