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[Joachim Müller]

The previous releases of Coppermine came with a default theme named "Classic", which looks a bit old-fashioned by today's design standards. That's why the Coppermine developer team would like to ship the new, upcoming release of cpg1.5.x with a new default theme that matches modern web design criteria. We decided to hold a competition for theme designers in which you're welcome to participate. Interested? Read on:

[Joachim Müller]

• The theme must be specifically designed for this contest
• It cannot be posted anywhere online before we post it in the competition gallery
• It can't just be an alteration of the stylesheet of an existing theme
• The theme must be designed for Coppermine 1.4.x and up – see "theming for cpg1.5.x"
• No use of copyrighted material (images, trademarks). No use of resources other than GNU GPL compatible
• Preferably not based on a theme someone else designed (no port of a theme designed for another application)
• All themes must be released under a GPL compatible license (if a license is not specified, you agree that you are releasing the theme under the GPL license by submitting it to the competition). Only GNU GPL -licensed themes can become the new default theme
• You can submit as many themes as you like
• Competition entries must be sent to theme-competition@coppermine-gallery.net before January 18th February 1st, 2009

[Joachim Müller]

• should work with all resolutions
• The theme must work on all modern browsers/platforms (Firefox, IE6+, Opera, Safari)
• Not dependent on particular config settings (like narrow intermediate size images or small thumbs)
• All formatting done by one CSS file
• No overriding of config settings
• Should work with all optional tokens in template.html enabled
• Standards compliance
• Moderate resources consumption
• We can't accept nudity (even mild, artistic nudity) nor any other non-worksafe content, and of course the file-size should be small

[Joachim Müller]

The theming engine for cpg1.5.x hasn't changed dramatically (seen from cpg1.4.x). There are however some additional placeholder tokens in template.html that need to be taken into account. Additionally, there are some extra CSS classes in cpg1.5.x that didn't exist in prior versions. That's why it makes sense to use cpg1.5.x to design a theme for that version. You can create your new theme meant to enter the competition using cpg1.4.x as well if you're reluctant to get a copy of the preliminary cpg1.5.x code and perform a local install. However, if you can, you should go for your local copy of cpg1.5.x.
You can get your copy comparatively easy: although there is no pre-made package ready for release yet, you can perform a SVN checkout as suggested in Preliminary documentation for cpg1.5.x -> Developer documentation -> Subversion -> Is there no single package that I could download instead?

[Joachim Müller]

• The dev team will select and publish 8 themes maximum that may enter the competition gallery round after the submit stage has ended
• Public voting will end on February 15th 2009 and the winner will be announced on February 22nd 2009

edit: There were not enough submissions to have a proper theme contest, so the dev team is considering what to do next.  Voting has been put on hold indefinitely.

If you have any questions about the theme contest, there is a topic for that:
Theme Contest Discussion

[Joachim Müller]

These are the current prizes to win:
Be sure to check back, as they will be updated!

Winner:

• 1 year Business hosting plan valued at $179.80 sponsored by HostGator.com
  (unlimited disk space & bandwidth w/ free SSL)

1st runner up:

• 1 year Baby hosting plan valued at $119.40 sponsored by HostGator.com
  (unlimited disk space & bandwidth)

2nd runner up:

• 1 year Baby hosting plan valued at $119.40 sponsored by HostGator.com
  (unlimited disk space & bandwidth)

We currently can't yet offer any kind of reward or compensation except a lot of page impressions and your name and site being mentioned. We're currently looking for potential sponsors for prizes to make the competition more fun. So, if you're not actually a theme artist, but a potential sponsor, please read the section "sponsorship" for details. For those of you who would like to figure out what prizes will be available, please re-visit this thread - we'll update it if there are any news.
Additionally, the winner will receive an exclusive T-Shirt with Coppermine logo.
Finally, contributing your theme design is a nice contribution and a good way to give something back to the community for the app.

[Joachim Müller]

On behalf of the Coppermine group, we would like to invite companies to sponsor the Coppermine Theme Contest, to be held till 1st of February, 2009.

Coppermine Photo Gallery is a web picture gallery script written in PHP with a MySQL backend. It is a free and open source project, with over 4,500,000 downloads, aiming to be the best in online multimedia galleries. The Theme Contest is organized to find a new and refreshing theme to fit the release of our upcoming new version (v1.5.x). It is the first time this Contest is held.

As a theme design contest, you will find that the contestants are most likely to be the target audience of companies that offer graphic or web software or services.

We are currently seeking sponsorship to be used as prizes. This could be a license of your app or a voucher. Companies offering their support will receive recognition on the contest page on a website which has hundreds of visitors a day.

If you have any questions or require further information about sponsorship or other aspects of the Coppermine Theme Contest, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are looking forward to speaking with you in the near future.