In the principle I find the idea very good.

However, I believe create a competition is not the task from xoops.org. For competitions we can publish special sites with special situations.

I believe that many beginners and users without knowledges (there are a lot!) may lose her courage to compile their own themes or modules in the future and this is exactly that what I see as the task of Xoops.

Why not build up a "Theme Dev Forge"?

This is only an idea. I gladly place at disposal my cooperation for a new "Themes-Page".

Wow ! Is it that serious ?

Personnaly I don't care about wining money with this contest (and I would probably give it back to XOOPS donation) as I'm not doing themes for money.

Honestly, I know how to use CSS and theme templates (even though I still have lot of things to learn about this). What I wanted to stress is the fact that this contest shouldn't be too strict, or the amount of contestant would be counted on the fingers of your hand...

Oh boys, can't we just have a contest for the fun of it? Let people dare to try, and see what success this could have?

I would "support" those who say do not put to many limits into this. Reading the original first post in this thread again it sounds more like the original idea and i too believe it will increase the number of themes created.

If the winner then is suitable (by the design not the technology) to be distributed with the next XOOPS version i believe it wouldn´t be too hard to find someone from the technically advanced skinners if neccessary to give the theme the changes needed to hit the technical quality.

If you do it otherway round (limiting the number of entries by high standards) it could still be that a nice looking theme wins but it may not really fit to represent XOOPS as a standard skin ...

If you say in advance the first place will be the next "official" skin this will also influence and perhaps limit the judgement on the themes. Wouldn´t it?

Just my 0.02 cents

Hey solo71,

this is everything OK.

I do not say NO to the contest. On the contrary. I let only one old idea revive again.

I believe that the majority sees no occasion to earn money or something else. But I hope that there will not only participate a few experts but all who want to learn and have fun in it.

Excuse me that my English is not perfect.

I don't think money should be involved in something like this, but that is my opinion. If the winning themes were to be included as the XOOPS default themes then I tend to agree with Jmorris, there must be strict conditions for the winning themes, and they must be standards compliant. Either that or the winning entries will be modified so that they do met these conditions before being included with Xoops. The conditions that Jmorris put forward would only benefit XOOPS in the long run, but I also see the point it would be a deterent from aspiring theme developers from making an entry.

Maybe break the judging criteria up into a few different sections such as artistic presentation, standards compliance, theme performance, etc? Even perhaps have encouragement awards or soomething for those who don't meet all the criteria, but do quite well in one of them?

Quote:

See your point bender, but my fear of ignoring the performance/technical compitence factor of theme creation is that if these themes are then available for the general XOOPS public it *may* do us more harm than good. If you have a theme with 500k of images, and only looks good in certain browsers, but the graphic design side of things is really excellent, then those new to XOOPS might have the misconception that the poor performance/browser incompatability is somehow a reflection of the XOOPS CMS itself and move elsewhere.

I don't think we should make this too complex, but I do think we should categorise the judging criteria.

I would tend to agree with having scores for artistic impressions and score for technical accuracy. This would not punish either group and give all a level playing field. Great artist are not always great programmers, and vice versa.

As was mentionned the theme can always be corrected for programming. So I would put more emphasis to artistic endeavours since that part of the theme is harder to fix.

I 100% agree with Bender and any others saying that it should not be to strict. And I also do not believe there shouldn't be any appointed judges... let the people decide.

There are simply to many things that could go wrong with appointed judges when there is simply no need for them.

Also a suggestion and question. Suggestion someone simply pick up the ball and run with it. Does Top Sites PHP have a way of keeping single vote stats? I guess what I'm saying is somebody get this thing started and let's do it =) set up a stand alone site with no ads or anything for personal gain and then come back here and start a competition. It will either succeed or fail. Isn't that what this is all about anyway.

And I also think we should simply stop talking about MONEY all the time. Isn't the big pay off our stand alone egos anyway. COME ON ADMIT IT I DO =)

Also a theme forge is a great idea in my book.

Just my 2 cents
Xpider

I also agree that seperate categories would be a happy medium. I can code XHTML and CSS to meet standards quite well, but when it comes to graphics design, I'm quite lacking in skill. Perhaps this idea deserves further consideration.

Also, I agree that there should be "great effort" awards, or something similar. I do not wish to see anyone excluded, regardless of skill set. Beyond finding a new default XOOPS theme, I think this contest should be about helping aspiring designers realize their potential.

All in all, I think it's a great idea that will help further the XOOPS project. I respect that the core development team is more concerned with functionality, stability, and security than they are aesthetic appeal, but aesthetics must be addressed as well since that's what a lot of people judge first.

Ok, so you get a 2 cent tip as well

Theme Forge would be great, but the contest might be just the right thing to build critical mass before trying to split efforts into another Forge

Regarding judges, I'd like to suggest that we try to contact high profile people. You know that "manager mantra" , aim at the moon and everything (even a "no, I can't take part in it but as a quick advice" would be great ). So I'd like to suggest some names already (that come to my mind in no particular order, far from complete, etc.):

Eric Meyer: if you know CSS, you know him. If you like advanced WWW topics, you know him (exploring his site is strongly recommended)

Dan Edwards: check his stuff and you be amazed

Jesse Ruderman: Another guy that you have to know if you work with browsers, he eats Javascript, CSS and UI stuff in breakfast

Anne van Kesteren: Lots of HTML, CSS, and advanced usability topícs. I disagree with ([size=xx-small]is this the right preposition?[/size]) many things he says, but I'd nominate him as an "anything-IT" judge anyday.

Peter-Paul Koch: The guy behind QuirksMode.org. If you deal with CMSs and don't know that site yet, you should be really worried

Ian Lloyd and the Accessify crew: Even though accessibility isn't the main Theme issue, these guys could make great contributions. I'm ashamed because I only got to know Accessify.com very recently, it's impressive.

Arvid Axelsson: great graphical skills

Everaldo Coelho: Of Crystal fame, great designer, very OSS friendly.

Dave Shea The guy behing the CSS Zen Garden, has lots of experience in this area

So... uh, there a hundred other people I should mention, perhaps we could go with lots of judges whose vote equals more points than those of non-judges and we invite the judges but also let those interested and able to prove their related skills to jump in?

Also, the contest can be exaustive (each judge has to see every theme submitted) or more heuristic (1st popular then combined vote, people vote in how many entries they want or whatever), what do you think would be better?