Contribute to osDate and earn $100

Send your new plugin or skin to: g8z@yahoo.com and please provide a brief description of what it does. Be sure to fully debug your plugin or skin! Buggy contributions will be quickly rejected.

You can become part of the development team (in a sense) by contributing skins and plugins. I will pay $100 for a good skin or plugin, with rights to sell your contribution for $5, or include in the core osDate distribution for the benefit of all users.

Please note the following terms for this offer. Read it carefully, because it's very strict:

1. I (Darren Gates) will determine whether or not to use your skin or plugin after evaluating it. Thus, creating the skin or plugin and sending it to me does not necessarily guarantee that it will be used. I will ONLY pay for skins or plugins that I decide to use on TUFaT.com
2. I will send $100 as a PayPal payment or personal check (to USA and Canadian addresses), and this payment will ONLY be sent IF your skin or plugin is used.
3. I must have complete access to your source code in order to evaluate it - i.e., viewing it on a remote server is insufficient.
4. I will determine whether to sell your code as an add-on/plugin, or give it away as part of the "core" distribution. Essentially, the $100 that you will receive is a "pay off" for unrestricted distribution and sale rights on TUFaT.com. This means that you will receive NOTHING beyond the $100 (no "profit sharing", even if your skin or plugin becomes extremely popular).
5. You may still retain your own rights to sell and distribute your plugin on your own terms. Thus, even though I will be distributing your code on TUFaT.com, you may still distribute your code elsewhere. The rights that you grant to me are therefore non-exclusive.

These terms can be summarized as: "I will decide whether to buy your code, and I will decide how to use it." I understand that this sort of arrangement is not suitable for all, but I'm fairly adamant about being the determinant of how code should be distributed on TUFaT.com.

Tips for good skin/plugin creation

To increase your chances that I'll accept your contribution, I recommend that you do the following:

1. When creating plugins, you MUST use a coding style and architecture similar to the existing plugins. In fact, you may want to start with an existing plugin, and then build off it.
2. Ensure that your plugins provide a significant "value" to users and/or administrators. "Admin-only" plugins are fine (like the auto-profile generator of osDate).
3. Plugins that are "advanced" versions of existing plugins are fine, as long as the advanced version provides significant, new functionality.
4. Check the existing system functionality to ensure that your plugin doesn't duplicate existing features (don't re-invent the wheel).
5. When creating skins, do not use copyrighted images, and ensure that it will work in all languages (do not "hard-code" text into the .tpl files).
6. Ensure that your skins work with the various options in the admin panel, and user control panel.
7. When creating skins for osDate, the email templates should use the same look and feel of the main template design. To accomplish this, you should make any necessary modifications to the "email.css" file so that the styles match those from "default.css". Both default.css and email.css should be available in the template directory. If you change the presentation style of any output display, you should document the changes in the changed .tpl file itself for better understanding when making upgrades to the .tpl file in the future. You can use {* ... *} smarty commenting to do this.
8. When creating skins, try to build the skin with as few files as possible. Skins use the files in "default-blue" (or "default") by default, so that you can build the new skin with as few files as possible. In other words, the fewer files that you have to change from default-blue to achieve your design, the better your skin will work (and the easier it will be to upgrade the skin).
9. When creating skins, I require the Photoshop sources (.PSD), or the sources for whatever image editing program you used. If you sliced the Photoshop file to create the skins, I require the .PSD file with slicing guidelines.

These tips can be summarized as: Create your skin or plugin in a manner consistent with existing architecture, and use good coding/design practices.

You may put your name in the source code credits. I reserve the right to change any part of your plugin or skin, but I will keep intact any credits that you happen to put in the source code. I do feel that coders should get recognition for their work.

Send your new plugin or skin to: g8z@yahoo.com

Thanks for being part of the team!

Darren