Screen shots for theme choices

[JTynes]

Okay,

I've got my board up and everything seems to be functiong well. I went through the available themes and they are okay but I'd like some other choices. I've seen a list of maybe 20++ available for download.

I just want to know is there anywhere I can go to see screen shots of these themes so I can pick the ones I want and pull them down.

I also found that the themes uploaded initially are available as a bundle, making them easier to work with. Are any of the extra themes available bundled?

Thanks for your input. I'm looking forward to using this fantastic program.

~J

[Casper]

Go to the demo (link above) and use the theme selector to view each theme available in real life, no screenshots.

[Joachim Müller]

I also found that the themes uploaded initially are available as a bundle, making them easier to work with. Are any of the extra themes available bundled?

Bundle: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/coppermine/cpg1.3.0_themespack_damysterious.zip?download

Joachim

[donnoman]

Joachim, there are getting to be a fair number of themes available on the demo site, takes a while to go through.

Perhaps you can allow some of the theme creators to post thier screenies into a "Theme Screenshots" Album on the Demo Site.

Users could weed out the ones they definately aren't interested in; then take a closer look at any theme by switching thier theme to it.

I wouldn't mind taking some time to build Screenshots for everything currently available on the demo site.

[kiig]

I think it's easy enough to go through the 'demo', - just my 2 cents.

Though, - at one time, - I experimented with different themes in the Paypal shop 'edition', - and I did make screenshots of every available theme, - so I've been there. :-)

The ones I made can be seen here : http://igel.it/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=34 if you want. The Filename reveils which theme it is.

Kim Igel.

[donnoman]

On the other hand, if we did have an album we could be rating them.

Use the most viewed, top rated, etc.

This could then be used to cull stagnant themes from the distribution, and perhaps include a theme that everybody seems to love.

What if we could add comments to the themes in the albums? It seems to me that using Coppermine for this functionality isn't that big of a leap and would be an excellent demonstration of its abilities.  

Why should the dev team be saddled with cleaning up old historic themes if nobody cares about them?  How would they know?

Ratings on themes, and a quick way to browse them, particularly as the number of themes grow, I think its a no brainer.

[Joachim Müller]

The idea of screenshots for the themes has been brought up before, but has never been done because of these reasons:

• limited webspace on sf.net: the project total mustn't be higher than 100MB. We'd be reaching this limit in no time if we actually used hires screenshots of all major screens of all themes
  
• bandwidth reasons
  
• maintenance: who's going to take care of all those screenshots, update them etc.
  
• old php and gd version: currently the demo is running on very old hardware and software (with GD1) - creating nice, quality pics is quite hard. Our webhost is currently upgrading - if the webspace has moved to newer servers, we'll have to reconsider this
  

The bottom line is: maybe we'll need to host the demo somewhere else. We'd be needing free webspace with enough control over it on machines that can stand the load and bandwidth, with a webhost who is ready to provide this webspace for a longer term (as we wouldn't want to move every now and then).
We should discuss this further, webhosts who would like to sponsor / promote the project are most welcome to post here *hint*  .

Joachim

[chtito]

My two cents: i like the idea of donnoman. It would be nice to have an album with the screenshot of the themes. Besides, i take it that he is volunteering to maintain the screenshots.

Then, there is the problem of the space. But i think that we can ask the sourceforge team if we want more space. We shouldn't need more  than 10Mb for the whole album.

Bandwidth: that's a problem with sourceforge...

Just my two cents.

[donnoman]

What about if ALL of the demo was just screenshots of Coppermine Themes instead of the demo graphics that are out there now.  Imagine a couple categories, themes sorted by some criteria put into different albums.

We certainly could set limits on the quality of the stored screenshots and thier resolution. As far as bandwidth and resources I would gather that someone cycling through a bunch of thumbnails is going to be nicer on the system than someone methodically switching theme after theme and going down the list.

I also don't think the screenshots of the theme's are going to attract a larger audience than what was already going to come to the demo and poke around, and switch a few themes around.

The screenshot doesn't have to be 1600x1024. If they want a close up look at the theme they can switch their theme to it, it just has to be good enough to give the flavor of the theme.

I bet the average user looking for a new theme could discard most theme choices by thier thumbnail. One's that interest them, they could look at the intermediate, and the full size, and for the one or two they really like they can try them on for size.

I think that would be cool, and yes, I was offering to do it.  I do respect Joachim's points however, and I also think putting this off until SF has finished the upgrades would be wise.