After an almost complete rewrite, ProofBuddy 2.0 is now available and ready for download.

What’s New?

Plugins

Plugins are the cause of the time delay between ProofBuddy 1.0 and 2.0. We went back and started almost from square one with ProofBuddy 2.0. The entire system had to be rewritten to support plugins, even though for 95% of the users it will look much the same.

Where the power of the plugin system comes in is that we, along with anyone who can program in PHP, can add additional tabs, menus, reports, etc, to ProofBuddy without having to touch the underlying code.

During testing we created a small handful of plugins to test the system which are available now. You can get to them through the Plugin Browser under the Options menu or through the Plugins link over to the right of this page. More plugins will be available as they are developed.

Theme & Plugin Browser

Following from the plugin system, we created a plugin browser that will allow you to connect to our site from within ProofBuddy and view the available plugins. Depending on the permissions set on your webserver you may also be able to directly download, all without leaving ProofBuddy. If your webserver doesn’t allow direct installs, you’re still able to download the plugin from within ProofBuddy. You’ll just need to upload it manually using an FTP program.

Ajax

Most of the admin pages now use Ajax scripts to make it easier to get your work done. For example, sorting of pricing items is now done with Ajax instead of clicking on arrows. Dragging a pricing item up puts it in the new order.

Pricing Categories

A very popular request, we’ve added pricing categories to the Pro version of ProofBuddy. Now you’ll be able to break your pricing down into categories like “Small Prints”, “Canvas Prints”, “Novelty Items”; or whatever works best for your business.

And you’ll be able to sort the categories as well as the individual pricing items within each category.

One note about pricing categories: if you are using a theme developed using ProofBuddy 1.0 you may need to upgrade the fullimage.tpl to support categories. The variable <!--addtocart--> needs to be replaced with <!--addToCartCategories-->. The themes that use a table instead of a drop down list will use <!--addToCartCategoriesTable-->. Our publically available themes are currently being updated to use the new variables.

Payment history

You can now attach payment history to an order. With this you’ll be able to see when and how they paid.

This allows for a new coupon type, the prepayment. With this you can accept payments prior to the order and create a prepayment coupon. When your client enters the code for the coupon the amount they’ve already paid will be automatically deducted.

Prepayment coupons also allow for a registry where family members can purchase prepayment coupons for your client. The ability to have a registry of sorts has been an often-requested feature.

Custom Fields

Following the lead of WordPress, custom data can now be added to almost anything. This will allow for you to add any type of information to just about anything in ProofBuddy. A few things that will be possible using custom fields:

• Adding paper type to items ordered
• Adding custom fields to the order checkout process
• Collecting additional information from your clients like postal codes instead of zip codes or adding a home number and work number field

Customization

Most of the admin pages can now be customized to fit the way you work. Sections can be rearranged and minimized so that the information that’s important to you is right where you want it. And these boxes are customizable using the plugin system. Plugin authors will be able to add boxes to admin pages with a little PHP coding.

Installing & Upgrading

If you are installing a ProofBuddy for the first time you only need to go through steps 2 and 3. Users upgrading from ProofBuddy 1.0 will go through all 5 steps.

1 - Backing up

The upgrade process was designed to be as easy and safe as possible. Unfortunately, there is nothing that’s 100% safe for everybody with all of the combinations of servers, web hosts, and operating systems. We do not know of any issues where data has been lost during the upgrade process, but it is always a better bet to be safe and make a backup first.

First, you will make a backup of your database. If you are using ProofBuddy 1.0 or later you should see a backup icon on the Admin -> Tools menu. Click this and you will be prompted to save a backup of your database as a SQL file. You can also do the same process through phpMyAdmin or something similar on your web host.

Next, as well as last, you will need to connect to your site with an FTP client like FileZilla and download your copy of ProofBuddy. Put it somewhere safe on your computer just in case something happens during the upgrade. This will give you a copy of all of the images that you’ve uploaded. Note that this may be a very large collection of files depending on how many images you have online.

2 - Downloading and unzipping ProofBuddy

Now you’ll need to download a copy of ProofBuddy 2.0 to your computer. You’ll also need to unzip the download file to a folder on your computer.

3 - Uploading ProofBuddy

Next you’ll take the files that you unzipped and upload them on top of the existing ProofBuddy folder on your server using your FTP program. Note that this will not affect any image files you’ve uploaded. The only possible customized files that may be affected is if you’ve edited files in either the basic_white or basic_black theme folders. If your theme is in a separate folder it is safe.

4 - Upgrading

And last you’ll need to visit your ProofBuddy site to complete the upgrade. The first time you visit ProofBuddy will catch that it needs to be upgraded and prompt for an admin login to continue. If you have more than one admin login, any will work.

Once you enter your login ProofBuddy will go through an upgrade process that updates the database and changes the file name format of the stored images. None of this will affect how ProofBuddy works or your existing data; although again we are recommending that you have a backup from before you started upgrading.

5 - Upgrading your theme

If you’ve customized your theme off of either the Basic White or Basic Black theme it should work with very little modification. There are two additional variables that may be useful to you if you’re using the Professional version of 2.0. The <--addtocart--> variable has been replaced by . This will allow you to display your pricing items in categories instead of a simple list. There is also a new variable that will create a link back to the main index when your visitor is in a child album.

Currently the only two themes that we have updated to be 100% compatible with ProofBuddy 2.0 are the Basic White and Basic Black. Our next step after this release is to go through and get each of the publically available themes updated and ready for 2.0. We’ll post to the news feed that you see on your admin dashboard as they’re updated. Registrations and Upgrades Like version 1.0, ProofBuddy 2.0 Lite continues to be free. We know that when you’re starting out with your photography business finances can be tight but you still need a professional option for online proofing. ProofBuddy Pro adds features to the Lite version, most notably packages and digital downloads, and is $149.95. Themes and plugins work with both versions. Users that have registered version 1.0 will be able to upgrade to 2.0 for $49.95 through March 15, 2010. After March 15 the upgrade will be $79.95. To upgrade fill out the form on the Register tab just like you were registering a new copy. Our server should pick up your domain name and tie it to your previous registration giving you the upgrade price. If it does not, please contact us and let us know.

Fixes and Updates

The following is only a partial list that contains fixes and updates between release candidate 2 and the final release of ProofBuddy 2.0. A full list of updates between 1.0 and 2.0 would be several pages long and honestly probably wouldn’t interest all that many of our users. The blog posts announcing each of the public pre-releases do list the individual issues fixed if you’re interested.

• 684 - paypal.php displaying error and not updating payment status of order
• 683 - ImageMagick path setting not saving in the correct location
• 682 - Error viewing favorites when logged into a user account when favorites are tagged from multiple albums
• 679 - Deprecated errors displaying on servers with PHP >=5.3
• 672 - Timezone error on servers with PHP >=5.3 and that are not correctly setup
• 670 - Digital downloads not functioning correctly
• 669 - Order status emails not listing correct number of items in packages
• 668 - Empty child albums don't show up in the view album page
• 681 - Comment script redirecting to wrong page
• 678 - Undefined error in the update check script
• 676 - Pricing items with quotes not adding to cart
• 674 - Wrong items in favorites
• 677 - Added option to customize the payment type list

Download

Click on the link below to download ProofBuddy 2.0