Our first user submitted theme! 

Thanks to Stephanie Layne for taking the Pink Simplicity theme and changing it into something less feminine, but still with the graphic font and corner elements. 

Simply Pink is a theme designed to be used when a more feminine look is needed.  The background is a light pink with slightly darker accent images.  All text is dark red.

Screen Shots

Changing the Font

Several of the headers are graphics built on the fly from a GPL licensed true type font called Penguin Attack.  If you would like to change the font you just need to upload your TTF file to the /font/ folder under the theme directory and name the file font.ttf. 

Be sure that it’s allowed to use the font for commercial purposes.  I had a very hard time finding a font that fit the style I was looking for that was free for all uses.

More about the font

There is a script called drawfont.php in the /images/ folder of this theme that handles building the graphic files.  It is something I’m working on as a plugin for a future version of ProofBuddy so it is included in this theme more as a test than anything.  But this theme just wouldn’t look right with boring sans serif fonts.

Download

This theme is available in the Theme Browser or you can download it below. 

A new theme is available for download named 18% Gray.  It has a dark gray background with red accents.  It also has an example of a custom page opening in a popup.

Screen Shots

Full image page

Shopping cart page

Editing the custom page

After your client logs in to this theme there will be a link titled About Us across the top right.  You will want to edit the about_us.tpl file that’s included in the download so that the page has the information you want it to have.

You can also change the text of the link from About Us by editing the theme language file.

If you don’t want the About Us page at all you can just delete the about_us.tpl file from the theme directory and the link will not show.

Thanks

I want to thank Richard May of Richard May Photography for sending me a screen shot of the theme he created.  It was the screen shot below that inspired 18% Gray.

Download

A new version of the Daily News theme is available for download.  It includes several changes that have been requested by users, and rather than overwriting the current version I decided to have both available for download.

Changes

• Each item in the add to cart section is now wrapped in CSS classes to make it easier to customize.
• An example custom page is included. The example is for a list of package contents, but it can be easily edited to display whatever you would like.
• The color, grayscale, and sepia links; which were left out of the previous version; are included.

Looking to upgrade to ProofBuddy Pro?  Want a discount?  Well, we’ve got some great news for you.  From now until March 15th, 2008, we are offering a group buy.

What’s the deal?
If 5 people sign up for the group buy we’ll drop the price for this group buy to $90, or 10% off.  If 10 or more people sign up the group buy price will be $75, or 25% off.

What if I don’t have a web site?
For those that don’t currently have web hosting we also offer a hosted plan.  Normally $14.95 a month or $129.95 a year, if 10 or more people sign up the group buy price will be either $9.95 a month or $99.95 a year for as long as you stay a client.

Great! How do I sign up?
Simply fill out a comment below with your name and company name.  Be sure to enter your email address into the field.  It won’t be published, but we will need it to be able to send you instructions for getting your discount.

What’s next?
If you’re not already using ProofBuddy Lite on your server, now would be a good time to head over to the download page and setting it up on your server.  If you need help we have a support forum setup for any questions you may have. 

ProofBuddy 1.0.2 is now available for download.  This is primarily a bug fix release for the version 1.0 series.

Fixes / updates include

• [#457] Literal line feed characters showing in order emails sent to the company email address.  These characters were never included in the client emails, but several users reported them in the emails they received.
• [#436] Clients can now view their proofs without cookies enabled.  You must still have cookies enabled to access the administrative section.
• [#456] Servers running IIS and certain versions of PHP would trip a bug when an email was sent using the standard format Email Recipient <address@server.com>.  There is now a hidden setting called iis_email_bug that will allow you to force ProofBuddy to use only the email address which does not trip the bug on IIS.
• [#451] Meta robot tags are now included in the help pages so that they are not indexed by search engines.
• [#448] Apostrophes and quotes in item descriptions was causing an error when the item was added to a cart.
• [#431] Invalid order number when trying to view the status of an order on the client side.
• [#433] Coupons used on an active, but unsubmitted cart are now listed when you view that cart from the admin side.  You can add and remove coupons from the cart.
• [#446] Last update not being updated for orders on certain versions of MySQL.
• [#437] The order submit form on the admin side is now two columns to shorten the page.
• The <!–logo–> and <!–logo_link–> variables will now look for logo.gif, logo.png, or logo.jpg files in the /images/ subfolder of the theme as well as the /images/ folder off of the ProofBuddy root. 

One important note for those of you using either the basic white or basic black theme or using either the <!–logo–> or <!–logo_link–> variable in your theme.  ProofBuddy now checks in the /images/ subfolder under the theme for a logo.png, logo.gif, or logo.jpg file as well as the /images/ subfolder underneath the ProofBuddy root.  If you have uploaded your logo to the /images/ folder under the ProofBuddy root the file from the theme/images/ folder will have priority.  By default that file is a ProofBuddy logo which I assume isn’t what you want your clients to see so you’ll need to upload your logo file to the theme/images/ folder as well.  You can do this either with FTP or through the Options -> Theme tab in the admin interface.

There have been a few reports of emails not being sent from ProofBuddy on Yahoo hosting.  What I’ve found is that the company email address set under the Options -> Company tab has to be at the same domain as the Yahoo account.  So if you’re company is using example.com as the domain name, you can’t use bob123@yahoo.com for the company email address.  You’ll have to setup bob@example.com and use that instead. 

If you’re using Yahoo for hosting and this doesn’t help you can also look at the mail error log file.  To do this login to your account with a FTP program and open the /tmp/ folder.  You’ll see a file called mailError.log.  Open this file and it will list any errors that occurred while trying to send mail.

One important thing to keep in mind is that Yahoo limits the number of emails that can be sent through a script like this to 250 recipients per day.  This shouldn’t be an issue for most people, but if you’re running a mailing list program or you have a lot of activity on your ProofBuddy site you could come up against this limit.  It looks like any emails that are attempted after the 250 limit will be ignored.

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.

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

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.