New Coppermine Theme Project Looking for Designers to Join the Team.

[rostros]

Im Looking to start a new Site, or a sub site dedicated to Developing Themes for mainly the Coppermine Gallery and using Different layout structues. Im sure the Code developers do not have much time to look into this area as Coding i presume takes a lot of time anyways, as Coppermine is a Open Source Development software I presume there would be no problem in dedicating a Theme Development Site/Sub Site for this. Everyone knows this is the Best Photo Gallery in the World and a very fast developing software aswell. As a personal user of Coppermine Gallery I am always faced to Intergrate and Develop my own theme to fit into my own site designs, and usually this takes a long time.

Im looking for Dedicated Volunteers to join this Development team, skills must lie in these areas

Photoshop / Paintshop Pro  / Any other Respected Graphics Application.
SSI Intergration (Coppermine)
Intermediate Knowledge of HTML and PHP espicially the understandings of Coppermines Themes and How they work etc.
Webdesign in General.

Please contact me at simon.rostron@gmail.com if you are interested in this.

With Permisisons from the Dev Team I would like to dedicated a external design forum ?

(All Coppermine Copyright Agreements on all designs will stay intact of course and all those other legal things aswell.)

[Tarique Sani]

Perhaps you would like to know that the Version 2 also known as Coppermine Next Generation (due in about a year) will have a different theme structure. There will be a need for developers willing to port the current themes to the cpgNG and also design new themes.

If you are interested in working for cpgNG - take a look at the cpgNG module in CVS (if this does not make sense then just ignore it )

[donnoman]

I would be interested in participating. I'm not sure how much time I would have to dedicate to working on any projects but I could participate in the forums.

Post the information here when you get it running.

I would suggest that the basis be a server with Coppermine Stable integrated with SMF so the look and feel would be similar to this site. You might also want to have the development install as well, as you will need to be preparing for the next set of themes.  1.4 themes could be posted as Joachim posts stable themes on the demo site.  

There are some sweeping changes in 1.4 themeing as fall back templates and functions have been implemented that makes 1.4 themes MUCH lighter and simpler IMO than the previous 1.3 themes.  (Which means theres a lot less code to go through to make themes XHTML compliant)

You should probably run a cpgNG install for the same reason. However cpgNG is a big departure from the 1.x themeing engine as it uses SMARTY as its template engine.  There has been some discussion about alternate template engines but I'd say 98% chance it will stay SMARTY.

I would definately do what was suggested in this thread http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=11926.0

[rostros]

Hi Tarique, Just been lookin at the cpgNG Themes, I belive SMARTY is going to be the final choice of the Template Engine ? , rather than stepping on peoples toes, I am going to create a Template Development forum in the next few weeks for external theme developers to join and discuss topics etc on various projects, mainly Coppermine. This is going to be a Third Party Contribution for cpg 1.3.x and then cpgNG when Launched.

Another question regarding payment ? Is it OK to recieve Donations or Payments for personal developments ? to support and pay for the hours gone into it ?

[Tarique Sani]

You can recieve payments - In fact it has always been one of my wishes that people can make money from Coppermine (remaining within the GPL license)

Yes it is almost certain the cpgNG will have SMARTY as the primary  template engine - however the code frame is such that alternative template engines can be supported ( though not simultaneously )

[rostros]

Good to Hear about the £££.

I will be Announcing the new Theme Develpment Site in a few weeks with hopefully have some samples etc
In the meantime i will be looking into the new cpgNG layouts and hopefully get some ideas. I will personally develop the site. I will keep in touch, if anyone has any ideas that can be used to help this project i would be greatfull.