Patrick
Admin/Webmaster
Joined: 11 May 2001
Posts: 17279
Location: Harbinger, NC, U.S.A.
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 Posted: June 18th 2008, 6:24 pm Post subject: Hack and Style Authors: Submit New Stuff and Win Big Prizes! |
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Announcing: phpBBHacks.com phpBB 3 Hacks and Styles Idol
With Big Prizes Sponsored By...
Chitika, W3 Markup, SitePoint and Others (See Below)
We've got a big announcement for all of the hack and style authors out there. In order to encourage further development and customization of phpBB 3, today we are launching a competition with big prizes - just for you. Or, more specifically, two competitions. One for phpBB 3 hack authors and one for phpBB 3 style authors.
Super Short Version: Submit phpBB 3 hacks and phpBB 3 styles that have never been in our database before and you can win some awesome prizes! These can be brand new ones or ones you have finished that you haven't yet submitted to phpBBHacks.com. Whether it's a simple hack/style or a complex one, it doesn't matter, as (to users) there is value in both. The deadline for submissions is July 12 at 8:00 PM ET.
Longer Version: If you are familiar with the American Idol television show, you may already have an idea of what we are doing. Starting right now, through July 12 at 8:00 PM ET, all new phpBB 3 hack and style submissions will be eligible for inclusion in this competition. No update submissions of phpBB 3 downloads already in our database are eligible. Only downloads that have never, at any point in time, been in our database and are submitted during this period of time.
This can mean that you write a new hack or style and submit it or, maybe you have a hack or style that you have finished but have not yet submitted. Both are acceptable and this is the time to get them in! Also, if you have multiple works, don't just submit one! Multiple submissions of different hacks and styles can give you a better chance to win. Need some ideas for hacks? Please check out this thread or the phpBB 3 Hack Requests forum.
Once the deadline has passed, the hacks and styles will be broken down into a tournament format where they will face off, head to head, against other hacks and styles, through polls in our forums voted on by members, until there is only one of each remaining. If you would like to read more about how the tournament will progress and/or what rules we have for the contest, please scroll down farther down in this post.
Now, to the exciting part. What do we have for you to win? In addition to being honored and featured on the site, you'll get (first the hacks author package, scroll down for the styles author one - they are very similar, but with some unique stuff):
phpBBHacks.com phpBB 3 Hacks Idol Grand Prize Package
From Chitika:
Your Choice of One of the Following:
Xbox 360 with 20 GB Hard Drive ($349.99 on Amazon.com)
PlayStation 3 40 GB ($399.99)
Asus Eee PC 4G Surf (Pure White) (7" Screen, 800 MHz Intel Celeron Processor, 512 MB RAM, 4 GB Hard Drive, Linux Preloaded) ($344.99)
Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player ($375.64)
Apple iPod Touch (16 GB) ($379.00)
Amazon Kindle ($359.99)
"The PHP Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks" (Second Edition) by Ben Balbo, Davey Shafik, Harry Fuecks, Ligaya Turmelle and Matthew Weier O'Phinney ($26.37)
"The Ultimate CSS Reference" by Tommy Olsson and Paul O’Brien ($29.67)
"The Art & Science of JavaScript: Inspirational, Cutting-Edge JavaScript From the World's Best" by Cameron Adams, James Edwards, Christian Heilmann, Michael Mahemoff, Ara Pehlivanian, Dan Webb and Simon Willison ($26.37)
"The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks" by Scott Allen, Jeff Atwood, Jon Galloway, Wyatt Barnett and Phil Haack ($26.37)
$100 Worth of Credits in the SitePoint Marketplace
2 eBooks of the Your Choice From the SitePoint Library ($59.90)
1 Full Access Pass to the Blog World & New Media Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 20 and 21 ($300.00)
This covers the conference pass, only. You will be responsible for travel and accommodations.
"Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards" by Patrick O'Keefe ($16.32)
"Go Google: 20 Ways to Reach More Customers and Build Revenue with Google Business Tools" by Greg Holden ($12.19)
"Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing" by Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper ($16.47)
"MySQL in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference" (Second Edition) by Russell Dyer ($23.09)
"Ajax: The Definitive Guide" by Anthony T. Holdener III ($31.49)
"Essential SQLAlchemy: Mapping Python to Databases" by Rick Copeland ($23.09)
"Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress" by Robert T. Douglass, Mike Little and Jared W. Smith (Your Choice of Physical or eBook) ($31.49)
"Pro PHP: Patterns, Frameworks, Testing and More" by Kevin McArthur (Your Choice of Physical or eBook) ($31.49)
"Building Online Communities with phpBB: A Practical Guide to Creating and Maintaining Your Own Online Discussion Forums with the Free, Open Source phpBB Bulletin Board Package" by Stoyan Stefanov, Jeremy Rogers and Mike Lothar ($35.99)
"Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management: Increase Your MySQL Productivity and Control by Discovering the Real Power of phpMyAdmin 2.11" by Marc Delisle ($25.19)
Hacks Idol Grand Prize Total: Up to $1,215.48
phpBBHacks.com phpBB 3 Styles Idol Grand Prize Package
From W3 Markup:
Your Choice of One of the Following:
Xbox 360 with 20 GB Hard Drive ($349.99 on Amazon.com)
PlayStation 3 40 GB ($399.99)
Asus Eee PC 4G Surf (Pure White) (7" Screen, 800 MHz Intel Celeron Processor, 512 MB RAM, 4 GB Hard Drive, Linux Preloaded) ($344.99)
Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player ($375.64)
Apple iPod Touch (16 GB) ($379.00)
Amazon Kindle ($359.99)
"The Ultimate CSS Reference" by Tommy Olsson and Paul O’Brien ($29.67)
"The Principles of Beautiful Web Design: Design Beautiful Web Sites Using This Simple Step-by-Step Guide" by Jason Beaird ($26.37)
"The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks" (Second Edition) by Rachel Andrew ($26.37)
"The Art & Science of CSS: Create Inspirational Standards-Based Web Designs" by Cameron Adams, Jina Bolton, David Johnson, Steve Smith and Jonathan Snook ($26.37)
$100 Worth of Credits in the SitePoint Marketplace
2 eBooks of the Your Choice From the SitePoint Library ($59.90)
1 Full Access Pass to the Blog World & New Media Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 20 and 21 ($300.00)
This covers the conference pass, only. You will be responsible for travel and accommodations.
"Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards" by Patrick O'Keefe ($16.32)
"Go Google: 20 Ways to Reach More Customers and Build Revenue with Google Business Tools" by Greg Holden ($12.19)
"Managing Brand You: 7 Steps to Creating Your Most Successful Self" by Jerry S. Wilson and Ira Blumenthal ($14.93)
"Photoshop CS3 Accelerated" by Blues Kim ($16.49)
"Photoshop CS3 RAW: Transform Your RAW Images Into Works of Art" by Mikkel Aaland ($23.09)
"Google Apps: The Missing Manual" by Nancy Cooper ($26.39)
"Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress" by Robert T. Douglass, Mike Little and Jared W. Smith (Your Choice of Physical or eBook) ($31.49)
"Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional" by W. Jason Gilmore (Your Choice of Physical or eBook) ($31.01)
"Building Online Communities with phpBB: A Practical Guide to Creating and Maintaining Your Own Online Discussion Forums with the Free, Open Source phpBB Bulletin Board Package" by Stoyan Stefanov, Jeremy Rogers and Mike Lothar ($35.99)
"Mobile Web Development: Building Mobile Websites, SMS and MMS Messaging, Mobile Payments, and Automated Voice Call Systems with XHTML MP, WCSS, and Mobile AJAX" by Nirav Mehta ($44.99)
Styles Idol Grand Prize Total: Up to $1,221.56
More Detailed Information About the Tournament Format
Once the deadline has passed, depending on the number of submissions that we receive, they will be broken up into a tournament style bracket of either 16 or 32 (16 or 32 hacks and 16 or 32 styles). As an example, if we have 16 different authors submit hacks, all 16 authors will be featured in the tournament. If we receive under 32 submissions, but have 19 authors, then 16 authors would be randomly selected to participate and 3 would not participate. The same for the styles tournament.
You are encouraged to make multiple submissions because it might allow you to have multiple bracket positions. Let's say we receive 45 submissions from 20 authors. In a 32 entry bracket, each of the authors is guaranteed one slot. But, that leaves 12 spots remaining. So, let's then say that we had 9 authors who submitted 2 hacks or more. All 9 authors would be given a second slot. And then we'd have 3 remaining. So, then we'd look at authors who submitted 3 hacks or more. Let's say we have 5 people that that fits. We'd randomly draw 3 of the 5 to fill those remaining spots.
Once we have the bracket set up, we will graduate into rounds of voting through polls in these forums. Hacks or styles will be randomly selected to face off against one another, head to head, in a poll thread in our forums. Ties will be determined by coin flip through Random.org. The winner advances to the next round - the loser is retired from the tournament. With a 32 entry tournament, we'd have 5 rounds of voting. In a 16 entry tournament, we'd have 4. So, from 32 to 16 to 8 to 4 to 2 and, finally, to 1. That goes for both hacks and styles as they will each have their own tournament.
If you are selected to be in the tournament, I'll contact you before we start voting and ask you what hack(s) or style(s) you'd like to represent you, if you have submitted more than one. You will be given 48 hours to respond. After that period, one will be randomly selected for you and entered into the tournament. Please ensure that you have a good e-mail address on file with us - not only for this, but so that you can be notified if you win!  If you do win, you'll have to be willing to provide a real name, mailing address and e-mailing address that we can share with the prize sponsors so that they can have the prizes delivered to you.
Some Rules
All hacks and styles must meet with the guidelines posted on the submission pages. Once we reach the voting rounds, please do not attempt to artificially inflate our vote totals in any way. This includes but is not limited to trading votes, encouraging people to vote indiscriminately (publicly or privately), mass mailing/posting and any other behavior that could lead to results being artificially skewed. You are welcome to mention on your own site or elsewhere that you are nominated, but please do not encourage anyone to engage in any devious practices or inflate our voting totals in an unnatural way. Please do not make any submissions under more than one alias. Please ensure the same author name is used on all of your submissions and that you are the actual author of the work. Do not submit works that are not your own. Individuals found to be participating in any of these activities will be disqualified from winning either prize and will be completely removed from the tournament.
If you are selected as a winner, you will be e-mailed and must reply within 14 days to claim your prize. Failure to reply will result in forfeiture of the prize. Winners are fully responsible for any taxes associated with prize collection. Substitutions for prizes may not be requested. However, if a prize becomes unavailable and is not able to be supplied, we may substitute a similar prize of like value. Sponsors are responsible for the delivery of all prizes. phpBBHacks.com staff members are eligible to participate, though Patrick is not.
You are only able to win one of the two prize packages, either the phpBBHacks.com phpBB 3 Hacks Idol or the phpBBHacks.com phpBB 3 Styles Idol, but not both. In the event that one person wins both, they will be given the opportunity to choose the package that they want. The other package will go to the second place author in the tournament that they did not choose. So, if you choose the Hacks prize package, then the second place author in the Styles tournament will collect the Styles prize package. But, if you choose the Styles prize package, then the second place author in the Hacks tournament will win the Hacks prize package. In the event of extended or unforeseen ties, we reserve the right to settle ties and award prizes at our sole discretion.
If we receive less than 16 submissions, we reserve the right to adjust the tournament format or cancel the competition altogether. This isn't going to happen, but I figured it should be included, anyway.
Finally
I would like to say that one of my favorite things about phpBBHacks.com is the relationships we maintain with download authors. At phpBBHacks.com, there are two groups we really care about: phpBB users and phpBB download authors. That has been our focus since the very beginning and that is the focus to this day. All of the great authors we've had are worthy of praise and prizes and whatever, but of course, that's not always possible.
We really see this competition as an opportunity to encourage phpBB 3 development and to reward a couple of authors with some really cool prizes. Ideally, we'd reward everyone who has ever submitted a download (I realize that's corny), but that's not possible. So, even though we can't do that, I've always expressed my sincere appreciation to all download authors out there that have submitted to phpBBHacks.com and I'd like to take this opportunity to do it once again. Thank you for your awesome contributions.
Thank you to Chitika, W3 Markup, SitePoint, Blog World Expo & New Media Expo, AMACOM, O'Reilly, Apress and Packt for agreeing to sponsor this event.
Thank you for reading and for your interest in the competition. I look forward the entire process. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Sincerely,
Patrick
_________________
Patrick O'Keefe - phpBBHacks.com Administrator - Feedback? Questions? Please Contact Me!
User Guidelines - Featured phpBB - Featured Author - phpBBHacks.com Awards - Supported Sites - About Us
Author, Managing Online Forums - A Practical Guide to Community Management
phpBB 3 Tutorials: Add Hacks | Clear Your Cache | Fix Missing Images | phpBB 3 Permissions Guide
Last edited by Patrick on July 8th 2008, 7:24 pm; edited 10 times in total |
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