A new theme is available for ProofBuddy called Daily News.  Daily News is based on news websites that have the content area surrounded by a drop shadow.

The Daily News theme also has an optional film strip below the fullsized image that displays thumbnails of all the images in your album.  But since it can slow down the page view on albums with many images it is disabled by default.  To enable the film strip you’ll need to change the language string show_filmstrip from 0 to 1.

You can download the Daily News theme through the theme browser or using the link below.

One of the most common support questions that I get is how to upload a lot of files at one time.  Not that I mind, but when I get the same question over and over it means that the documentation is lacking and I need to add it to the instructions.

There are two ways to upload files to ProofBuddy, by uploading using the Browse… buttons on the add images form and by uploading with FTP and importing. (more…)

The 1.0.1 release of ProofBuddy is available for download. 

Changes include

• [#436] - Clients can now visit your site with cookies disabled.  You will still need to have cookies enabled to view the admin side.
• [#433] - Coupons associated with an active cart are now listed on the Admin -> Carts page when you click on a specific cart.
• [#438] - Along with #433 above you can now add and remove coupons from active carts.
• [#437] - The submit order form where the admin can submit a cart is now split into two columns to make the page shorter.

There are also several bug fixes that were found after 1.0.0 was released. 

Note: This is the 1.0.2 release

For our clients who do not have their own web space or would rather not install ProofBuddy onto their own server we now offer a hosted option. 

With the hosted option you will have 1 gigabyte of storage space to keep your images, enough for around 50,000 images.  You will also always have the latest version of the Professional version of ProofBuddy.  We also take care of installation so all you have to do is sign up, upload your images, and start showing proofs to your clients. 

Hosting is available for $14.95 billed monthly or $99.95 yearly.

Please contact us for more information or to sign up.

After more than 2 years and over 50,000 lines of code version ProofBuddy version 1.0 is available for public download. Version 1.0 represents the first version that contains the features that we originally slated for ProofBuddy and is a significant upgrade over version 0.7, the previous public release.

Major Features in 1.0

Customization & Themes
ProofBuddy grew out of my frustration in finding an online proofing solution that I could customize to match my site. From the start the primary goal of ProofBuddy was to make it as customizable as possible and for that customization to be relatively easy. Previous versions used a series of variables that were inserted in theme files. While 1.0 still supports those variables the real power of the theme system is just now realized in version 1.0 with the addition of several data classes that you can access from your theme files using PHP code.

Customization starts with the theme system. You can edit your theme to match your site, or to look totally different. And you also have the option of installing multiple themes to your site and using different themes on different albums. This gives you the ability to use a different theme for different assignments. For example you can have different themes for your wedding clients, senior clients, and baby clients.

Starting with version 1.0 you will be able to edit the themes directly from within the administrative panels. Previously you would need to download each file via FTP, edit the file, and reupload. With version 1.0 you can edit the files directly without having to download first.

Also built in to version 1.0 is a theme browser. The theme browser connects to our server and allows you to browse any themes that we have available for download. As of this writing there is only the two basic themes that ship with ProofBuddy and a theme called White Glass. But the theme library will expand as we are able to add new designs. Our hope is that our users will also start sharing themes to give all of our users will have access to a growing collection of themes.

Packages
By far the most common feature request from users of previous versions of ProofBuddy, the Professional version of ProofBuddy 1.0 allows you to setup packages for your users.

To setup a package a new pricing item is added and marked as a package. You then add individual items under the package. When your visitors add a package any items that are added, or were previously added, will be filled into any package slots that they may fit.

Coupons
Coupons were available in previous versions, but 1.0 adds 2 new types. You can now add a coupon for a free item and for free shipping. Credit, Percentage, and Flat Value coupons were available in previous versions and are still available in version 1.0.

Also new in version 1.0 is the option to allow your clients to add multiple coupons to their cart.

Installation & Upgrading
If you are installing ProofBuddy for the first time, installation is fairly straightforward. Normally the most difficult part of installation is creating the database. We have several pages on our site to help you create the database, and our forums are available if you still need more help.

If you are upgrading from a previous version the process is almost the same as the fresh installation except that you do not need to create the database. Simply upload the new files over the old. Browse to your site and ProofBuddy will prompt you to upgrade your database if needed.

Download

Note that this is the 1.0.2 release which fixes a few issues that came up after release.

The Black Glass theme is an inversed version of the White Glass theme that’s been available for the past several months. 

The logo

Of course you don’t want your clients to see our logo so we have made it very easy to replace our logo with yours. 

1. Go to Options -> Themes and click on the edit button under the Black Glass theme. 
2. Next click on files. 
3. About half way down you will see a folder titled images. Click on the link to open the images folder. 
4. Click on the Upload button.  This will display a form to allow you to upload an image.
5. Click on the Browse button to select a file on your computer named logo.png that will replace our logo.  If your current logo is not in PNG format you can either convert it or edit the theme file header.tpl to reference a different file (see below).
6. Click Upload and it will prompt you to overwrite the current logo.png.  Click ok and your file will be uploaded overwriting our logo.

The other option is to edit header.tpl to reference your logo file.  Go through steps 1-5 above except that the file you upload does not need to be named logo.png.

1. On the top of the file list should be a link "Up to Previous Level".  Click that and you will see a series of .tpl files. 
2. Click on header.tpl and look for the following.

3. Replace both instances of logo.png with the name of the file you uploaded.

The sixth release candidate is available for download.  Primarily a bug fix, this version adds no new features but it does fix a problem that several users have reported with pricing options not working correctly along with several minor bug fixes.

One of the new features in 1.0 that I’m really excited about, but that hasn’t gotten much exposure, is custom pages.  With custom pages you’ll be able to add a page within your ProofBuddy site that stays within the same design as the rest of your site and has access to a series of data classes giving you access to information on the current album, image, cart, or user. 

Click here for more information on custom pages.

To see examples of custom pages take a look at the White Glass theme.  Custom pages are used in this theme for the comments, image notes, and album notes page.

The 4th public release candidate of ProofBuddy version 1.0 is now available for download.

Please note that this is still considered a pre release version and while we have done everything we can to assure its stability, it may contain bugs.

Upgrading from 1.0rc3
Simply upload the contained files over your current installation.  No database changes need to be made.

Upgrading from 0.7
Upload over your current installation.  The next time you go to your site you will be prompted to update the database to complete the upgrade.

Our website has been redesigned using Wordpress rather than the CMS package that we had been using.  The biggest change for our visitors is that you will be able to leave comments or questions on almost any page on our site.  This change should make it easier for you to get answers to your questions about ProofBuddy.