.. it also means that any changes have to be coded rather than picking up some off-the-shelf addon to do what you want. Meaning that the level of effort for maintenance is high.

Bret

Maybe because I'm interested in security and integrity?

How many updates have been published for vB in the last few weeks / months / years? Where are most holes now found? In applications. Why has flash been updated twice over the last month or so? Security holes.

I don't care about individual or not - the one I administer looks individual as someone took time out to make it look that way and function nicely. I agree, standard vB skins are boring.

Bespoke code explains a lot. And it also exposes even more. Functionality is top of the list, yes, but security should be right next to it and old code does not necessarily fit. New clients certainly don't, and the future - as someone told me again this morning - belongs to the non-PC segment. Miss that boat and you've missed your audience and hence your (advertising) revenue.

Bret

vB is not free, and I have heard very very bad things about vB 4, which is one of the reasons at least one big forum I know of recently moved to ipBoard. IPBoard has all the CMS and mobile and RSS stuff added in already and appears to have taken on a *lot* of the vB3 addins, so it's pretty damned good.

Now I can run a 64-bit debian on my VMWare, I'll probably install it or something similar to test. We use a lot of hacks and plugins and need a similar level of functionality or our users will be unhappy.

Bret

UPS would charge £11.

The gamble isn't one, any more; the likelihood is >80% IME that a package from outside the EU is stopped.

Bret

... vB also requires attribution unless you pay them. The layout is also nothing like I would expect and index.html redirects as expected to index.php.
Some things - like thread titles as links - are only just coming up with add-ins to vB, so I'm wondering then why the "comment" boxes are still in the dark ages.

Bret

oh, I take it back, the last major change was in 2007. it also doesn't look very much like it uses php at all, but runs on javascript. Which is strange in itself. I'll hunt some more when / if I have time.

Bret

I'm 99% sure it's *not* vB. I administer a vB site.

I have users screaming for iPhone functionality and our PHP guy has essentially said "get me a client and I will do it"; the members refused at the AGM to authorize the expenditure.

Looking at it, the smilies are from phpBB (or they use the same ones) and the rest of the code is positively ancient, with parts of it being around since 2006.

Bret

yeah well... where's the "alert mod" button? there's a "comment" - which it isn't, it's a post, not a comment, and it's a thread, not a topic - and yes, it does make a difference - and if it's spam, I can't do anything.
I don't know who mods where (are there any delineations), I don't know who is a mod and I don't know how I should contact them. The "Alert moderator" button solves all of these...

Oh yes, while we're at it: can I have WYSIWYG editor please? Or at least strikethrough, different colours and sizes of text (don't need multiple fonts), bullets and numbered lists?

Now to light the blue touchpaper: is there an iphone-capable version of the site? You know, like IPBoard offers or Tapatalk addins are capable of?

Bret

I must get back out to Radiomäki with a 300 and do some more like this myself. Nice set.

Bret

After reading about PSE... well, I figure a thread dedicated to GIMP tips, tricks and usage would be useful. As - to be honest - it gets a long way towards the functionality of Potatochop but at a significantly better price for the user.

Tip 1 from me:
- UFRAW, as mentioned elsewhere, is a great batch converter. BUT: I can't get it to accept whitebalance any more with version 0.17.
It will correct lenses and all sorts of other stuff, but it can't sharpen. Used with a command line it will process maybe 10 RAWs per minute on my Dell E6400 (dualcore Win7 x64, 4GB RAM, 2.53GHz). And then I can run 2, one per core.
I process through, then check the pics, note the ones I want to spend time on and then open them.

Tip 1a: Windows 7 will not allow you to edit more than say 10 files at once. OTOH, if you select 9 and hit enter, and then the next 9 and hit enter... you'll get an awful lot of UFRAWs opening. One drawback: you will always have the same settings, so if they are wrong on one, they're wrong on all.
This way of working hits RAM hard but not processor as the processor is only needed when opening and closing. So you can work on 3-4 pics almost simultaneously (I find 2-3 is normally "enough").

Tip 2: Dave's Batch Processor
Here: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbp.html
Nice, simple, functional (mostly) for large numbers of shots. It's not perfect, but it can sometimes help enormously.

Tip 3: Bamboo
If it wasn't plugged in when you started GIMP, it won't work. Restart with it plugged in....and per default, opacity is set on pen pressure. I don't like this and haven't found a way to turn it off yet.

Tip 4: Learn your shortcut keys
C is to clone
Shift-C is to crop
R rectangle select
H heal
Ctrl-Shift-V Paste as new
ctrl-shift-s save as
o to pick a colour

shift with a tool means straight lines ONLY
ctrl-shift with a tool that accepts it (i.e. not clone, as ctrl and click sets the source) means only 90 degree angles.

Anyone else for any more? I'll add in teh complex sharpening algorithm later.

Bret