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skinbydragonfly

Member Since 17 Apr 2007
Offline Last Active Jan 18 2011 05:24 PM

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About Me

Hello there!

Thanks for stopping by my Profile! Let me tell you a little about myself, I live in a gorgeous part of Australia, close to some of the nicest beaches in the world, and I am happily married to the love of my life the irrepressible Jethro (Jeff) - bizarrely we have put up with each other for 21 years now! We are blessed to have one beautiful early teen son, and two crazy Jack Russell terrier dogs (although those two might be a mixed blessing at times!!!!)

My love of Art started at a very young age.. probably about the time when I was 2 and I painted a huge section of the side of the house with bright red oil based paint (that never came off)!!! LOL I guess I wanted to make a mark early in life! I worked a number of sales and marketing jobs as a young person, and went to University to study Business.. as a result I didn't really reconnect with the Art world until I was pregnant with my son, and in the early years of his life whilst I was a stay at home Mom, I was a flurry of artistic endeavour! I paint, watercolour, acrylic and oil paintings.. and have been commissioned many times. I also am a Ceramic Artist, and trained as a Hobby Ceramic Teacher, but once I discovered digital art.. that was it I was hooked!

Skinning for Invision started for me back in 2003, We had recently converted our vBulletin sites, and whilst I had skinned those, it wasn't until I discovered what lay behind the doors of IPB that I really fell in love with skinning and truly "got" it!!! The Skining engine was just so much better, a true thing of beauty by comparison.. so I jumped right on in! Seems I must have been pretty good at it too... because not long after I started doing custom skins, and then was fortunately enough to be chosen to work for Invision on a contract basis doing Custom skins, Wow! that was fun! lol I learnt a huge amount during that time, and made some great friends!

About the same time, I opened IBUnique and we grew that business to be one of the most active and best Skinning shops for IPB out there! I was immensely proud of the level of customer service, quality offerings and loyal customers we had there. In May 2005 tragedy struck my family in the form of my baby brother being killed in Australia's worst Plane crash in 40 years. This event was a major trauma and dealt my whole family a devastating blow, especially to me, as we were very close, it's still almost unbelievable, and even now 4 years later I have tears in my eyes writing about it. I gave up skinning (and just about everything else) for a while.

Skin by Dragonfly opened in Feb 2006 and we have grown steadily and enjoy tremendous support from our loyal customers and from my wonderful Staff.. we have been through a lot together, and I love them dearly! Jethro has 2 University degrees, and is an IT professional within the Legal System with 25 years of experience. Logan is a legend, a marvellous help to me, the site, and our customers! Shady is a doll and has been with us from pretty much the beginning! Scott is a senior QA manager, and brings professional testing experience to our skins... Dee works very hard to help out with Graphics requests, and Magicone has been a godsend with Tech support on the iTab range!

The release of the IPB 3.0 series has totally reinvigorated me! I am bursting with creative energy right now! At SbyD we are in a very exciting growth stage, having just taken on a new member of the Skin Team, and expanding our product offerings! We are very excited about it all, and very much looking forward to a bright and shiny future!

SbyD is a friendly family oriented place, and we foster a really warm helpful feeling there... we go out of our way for our Customers, and if these are things that are important to you... I would love to see you there!

Regards,

Kim Ritchie (dragonfly)

If it's quality handmade style, backed by years of experience, and the best support around, all wrapped up in a fun, friendly and professional atmosphere... then please, drop by and see us today!

Skin by Dragonfly

Here are just a small selection of our skins... oh and btw.. I can assure you they are all my own unique graphics, created by me.. pixel by pixel, I don't ever purchase clip art or pre-made graphics either... on rare occassion I do use royalty free stock photos, with permission of course...I make all the cute Characters, and cartoons myself, along with every graphic you see on my skins.

Posted Image

Community Stats

Group +Clients
Active Posts 586
Profile Views 22,344
Member Title Skin Designer
Age Age Unknown
Birthday April 9
Gender
Female
Location
Sydney, Australia
Interests
Graphic Design, Web Design, Skinning IPB, Art, Cooking, Having fun with my beautiful family.

Contact Information

Skype SbyD_Dragonfly

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#2026214 Vbulletin or IPB

Posted Mike54 on 05 October 2010 - 01:08 PM

S.F., I used vBulletin for five years (OK, OK, 4 years and 9 months) before converting four sites to IPB, 11 months ago. I have opened one more site since, also on IPB. I have no regrets, whatsoever. None.

The people associated with Invision are super, top to bottom. The software performance is solid as a rock. The community is extremely friendly and always willing to help. Any one of those makes my Invision licensing costs a true bargain. Put together? It's an unbeatable combination. You could not pay me to switch back to vBulletin (Or to switch to any other forum software, for that matter). I have found some of Invision's strongest selling points have to be experienced, to be fully appreciated. How can I adequately describe what it means when IPB developers and tech personnel go out of their way to help make my sites the best they can be? Better yet, how can I put a price on that level of customer service?

My sites run faster, present less load on the server, experience more traffic and produce more revenue than they ever did on vBulletin. It doubtless gives Charles cold chills :lol:

, but I'm not budging off Invision, as long as I own forum sites.

#2025733 Vbulletin or IPB

Posted A Walk in Faith on 04 October 2010 - 10:06 AM

Well as someone that isn't part of the staff, developers or cheering section but has ran both systems...  I will say without a doubt IPB.

For me, it's more, much more than the software itself.  It's the community that is behind it and supports it.   If it were JUST about the script, then you can get them for free, but with those there is no support, or lacking in support.

With IPB I can safely know my site will be up and running and if there is a problem I will have help fixing it.   Since January when I downloaded the script I have used these forum and ticket support for a lot of things and each one of them has been answered.   I have been only with IPB since April and I love it, my members love it and my SEO ranking loves it.

Weigh all that with the cost to run this system vs vB can it's easily to see, that without a doubt, without a second thought IPB wins over the others hands down.

Jamie
ok, so maybe I am part of the cheering section...

#2025650 Vbulletin or IPB

Posted Jaggi on 04 October 2010 - 08:17 AM

My unbiased view is IPB is better... what... oh this ipb hat, tshirt i'm wearing and flag i'm waving... erm :ph34r:

#2025619 Vbulletin or IPB

Posted Michael on 04 October 2010 - 07:14 AM

Since this is an IP.Board forum, you're probably not going to get many people telling you vBulletin is better. If you want unbiased reviews of software, it's best to go someplace that doesn't focus one of the brands of software you're wanting to compare. If you have specific questions about what IP.Board can do, you can ask them in the pre sales forum, this forum is not for discussion of IPS's products.

#2027367 Any plans to improve the UI ?

Posted Mike54 on 08 October 2010 - 08:32 AM

Speaking entirely for myself, I am really hoping to see the IPB devs continuing to move forward with what they have been doing all along and not trying to make IPB look/act/feel like xenForo or any other forum package. Bells and whistles do not equal innovation.

If I wanted xenForo, I would purchase xenForo. The fact remains, IPB does what I want and the sneak peeks we occasionally get of what the devs are working on have me even more enthused about the future. If you listen closely to how Matt describes the reasons for coding the IPB Suite as it has been, it's easy to get excited. I hope everyone at IPS continues to dance with the one what brung 'em, because it's really going to get better and better.

#2026838 Any plans to improve the UI ?

Posted Anthony. on 06 October 2010 - 09:04 PM

Dan, on 24 September 2010 - 08:02 AM, said:

As you'll have probably noticed with IP.Nexus, and the teaser images of IP.Gallery 4.0, we are introducing better/cleaner UIs as we work our way through the apps. So yes, there are plans to do so, but it'll be more of an ongoing process of improvement.

The big problem we face with this task is that we have a lot of history that forces certain design choices upon us, be it because our customers prefer a certain style or IP.Board options/settings/features that require certain elements to be present. It's a lot easier for an application like XenForo to have a clean interface, because a) it's new, and b) to be frank, it has a vastly smaller feature set.

Dan everything you said is true ... XF does not just have a clean interface, it has an ADDICTIVE interface ...

everybody wants to be liked in this world and the red hot likes play into this ...

people love to collect, move up, master and grow etc ... the xenforo Trophy system plays into this ...

it would be great if IPB would have both features in the next release (optional via acp if anything). :wub:

#2017018 Long time vb users looking to convert to Ipb

Posted DanielV on 08 September 2010 - 10:38 AM

coder2010, on 08 September 2010 - 10:27 AM, said:

They seem to have been answered but in the reality the answer to my question has not been provided. What I asked it was for a type hello world hook file so I could study it and understand how to create them for my self.

For example, can some create a simple hook file which hides the signatures for those members who have less than 5 posts? I understand that time is money and I will make a generous donation to anyone who would do it. It is not like I am asking for free.

Because this is the only hold back for me to convert to Ipb but much as I want to if I can't understand the ipb hook process I would prefer to remain with vb that I know very well.

If someone would help me understand it, I would convert 6 license to Ipb and the cms. Plus I would purchase 2 more license for my new forums that I plan to start soon.

I am in the process of moving my licenses from vb 3.8 to IPB...I'm not a developer, but if there is something that I can provide to help you, I will gladly provide it. IPB is leaps and bounds ahead of vb, but it does require a little bit of patience and learning...I am still learning this fact every day..I wish it had something that vb had, but then I realize, it one-ups vb on most everything.

A lot of things that you are asking for are do-able by default through permission sets for specific groups. I'm not quite sure that I understand the need to re-invent the wheel on this...without looking through the actual back-end, how can you tell what you can/can't do?

You really should setup a trial demo if you haven't already, and play with "all" of the settings...I think that you will find that a LOT of the things that you needed plugins for in vb are in IPB by default.

If I am missing the mark here let me know and I'll do my best to help.

#2007500 Single column preview in 2.2?

Posted ichadwick on 17 August 2010 - 01:18 PM

fuyukochan, on 26 July 2010 - 11:55 PM, said:

I don't expect this to be something that's edited in the ACP, but rather the user CP.

I disagree. I think it should be the admin who selects how his or her board should look. I don't mind having the choice of columns as sysop, but I really abhor having this sort of crude design foisted on me as administrator, and without warning.

Sad to relate, but I discovered from the "downgrade" I installed today (ver. 2.2.2) undid the hacks I had made to restore a clean one-column preview have been wiped out and the newest version is again amateurish and cluttered. Now I have to go backwards and find a way to undo the visual damage.

I've offered to send links and articles on graphic design to IPS, but no one has taken me up on it yet.

#1982049 Single column preview in 2.2?

Posted ichadwick on 04 July 2010 - 03:58 PM

bfarber, on 08 June 2010 - 08:33 AM, said:

Generally speaking, we cannot accommodate for everyone's personal tastes and preferences.

It was a developer's personal taste that was dumped on IPB users without any consultation or options to accept or reject that style. The two-column display looks simply awful - it violates every design rule I was taught about display, content and whitespace. But what do 500 years of disgners know about layout, eh?

The blog 2-column preview looks like a design by a school kid. Sorry, but it's true. Very amateurish look compared to Wordpress, Blogger and a dozen other pro blog sites. I won't renew my blog package when it comes time for renewal simply because it's a downgrade from what I have paid for all these years. There are free sites out there that look 1000% more professional than this.

#1965140 Single column preview in 2.2?

Posted ichadwick on 05 June 2010 - 08:43 AM

Has blog 2.2 provided users the option to switch from the cluttered two-clumn preview to a more professional and cleaner one-column preview? Or do we have to hack the code to fix it like in the last version?

Has the code-parser bug been fixed so that the number of characters displayed in the preview isn't truncated whenever a close tag is encountered? Or is it still broken?

#2013405 Thank you for.. everything

Posted miikerocks on 30 August 2010 - 04:25 PM

I just wanted to thank you for such an amazing line of products. I've been with IPS for just under two years now, and I've seen good, great, awesome, and some drama; that really, never needed to happen from specific community members. I've just grown to love this platform and the developers for it, more and more every day. For instance, I decided to shut my old community down, and 3 weeks ago, opened up a new one to the public. After over a year and 3/4 of having my old community up, I had 8922 posts, and 369 members. Now, my new community, grew rapidly after I first mentioned it to the public when making a comment on a Halo: Reach developer blog.

My new community, after 2 weeks and 6 days, has been exploding. 5954 posts, 238 members, and an almost constant stream of guests, usually 19+ at a time. My community's online record already hit 80, and it's future is extremely bright. Everybody loves the status update system, and all the features of the community. I'm making short segment videos to explain features, so that the community will easily know how to do a certain thing, such as profile customization. It's really cool, because the members that join, instead of leaving, are staying. I'm a really nice guy, and I ensure that equality amongst everyone is the main goal to keep. But, because of the new status update system, among with notifications, this is so much more simple to do. I've gotten to know each member, by commenting on their statuses, replying when they comment on mine, and so on, and so forth. Members are calling it the "Facebook for the Halo community, only better."

It is because of you, IPS, and your openness to suggestions, your willingness for implementations, and your positiveness towards any member, their thoughts, and their opinions. You have created a line of products that can help me realize one of my dreams, and aid me in accomplishing a successful community. Already on the right path, striking down any stray drama that appears, and becoming friends with everyone; I can encourage reinforcing discussions, and see it pay off. Thank you for everything you have done, for your hard work, and any bumps in the road that you have encountered. Any company experiences this if they've reached true success, and you have taken it in the best way for your company, and the people associated with it. I now already have 250 YouTube subscribers in a week, and it seems that on this path, I will soon be a YouTube Partner, making money from Adsense without distracting ads on my forum. Through the many services you've allowed us to integrate with IPB, I am able to continue, and have a social community that is unlike any other. For this I am not only grateful, I am heartfelt at the insurmountable feeling I get whenever I use this amazing piece of software. You, and your team are golden.

With Best Regards,
-Michael Paton

#2000642 Close to Moving Back to Vbulletin

Posted bfarber on 05 August 2010 - 08:45 AM

dsimms, on 04 August 2010 - 08:57 PM, said:

If IPB really wants to compete start with VB options.
just do not overkill like vb has done, no need to
make their mistakes again.

Please keep in mind there are dozens of features in IPB that are not in vb.

We are not, and never will be, a vb clone. We are not out to copy what another software has done. We have our own vision that is shaped by the community here based on feedback and suggestions, and this works well for us, allowing us to deliver what our customers want, rather than what another software package might have that our customers have no need for.

Just because something is in vb does not make it an automatic or good candidate for inclusion in IPB.

#1999007 Close to Moving Back to Vbulletin

Posted NeilC on 02 August 2010 - 02:30 PM

Michael, on 02 August 2010 - 02:26 PM, said:

What more specifically do you need?

Better members, by the sounds of things, if he's having to constantly warn them!

#2009505 Why IPC is failing

Posted Booth on 21 August 2010 - 07:41 AM

The way I look at IP.Content is that it's like those flatpack wardrobes that you can get at superstores. It looks great on the box, but when you get it home you realize you have to be some DIY expert to get it moving.

The problem I have with this is that DIY experts will probably just make their own wardrobe from scratch anyway so would have no use for a flatpacked product. And those that aren't end up with either something cobbled together, the doors falling off, or they get fed up and don't ever use it.

I've had to hire someone to make sense of IP.Content and even they are tearing their hair out. And they have a long history of working with IP Board.

#2009245 Why IPC is failing

Posted rastaX on 20 August 2010 - 05:06 PM

bfarber, on 20 August 2010 - 12:01 PM, said:

Well, I think this illustrates an important point, myself. Your starting point should be to define what you want to do exactly. Opening up the ACP, clicking around, and trying to figure out where to start from seems like a confusing way to work, to me at least. I would first start by saying "What is it I want to do?". "I want to make a new page with a list of the latest topics on it". Then, from there, you know what you need to accomplish, and figuring out where to start should become much easier (in this case, make a feed block to pull the topics, then you make a page to embed the block on, and that's about it).

Aha! That's what I've suspected all along.

You see, I am not a web designer. I need to see what the software can do, then try to make something with it. You are thinking everyone already has a clear idea and direction with the knowledge to create something. A blank canvas and the ability to paint a masterpiece. In fact I am looking for a paint by numbers, LOL.

I need some set parameters. I don't know what will display properly in a browser. I don't know what to do, or what not to do.

What I need is a software with predefined elements. Stuff that a web designer already knows will work for the majority of people who will be viewing the finished page.

Click ~ Select ~ See WTF it looks like.

That's how I roll. Not a planner, not a list guy. >_<

I start with "What is it this software can do?" You see, I'm a visual guy. I know what I like when I see it. I'm not familiar enough with web design to be able to visualize much ahead of time. But let me start throwing stuff on a page and sooner or later I'm gonna figure out what I want/need.

Brandon, there's really no way you can put yourself in my shoes. You designed and launched a successful website while in your teens. You obviously had a talent for coding and were able to pick things up easily. You pretty much excel at this stuff. You are a natural.

I on the other hand didn't touch a mouse until I was 42.( I am 54 now) I started my forum 6 years ago. If I had any inclination for coding, I would have realized it by now. I frequently forget to close tags and then have a great amount of difficulty in figuring out where the error is. That's just bbcode. HTML makes no sense to me whatsoever. I can google small snippets and cobble together a widget, but it's easier if can find something ready to copy and paste, that's how I code. :lol:

: Forget php. I'm just not an if/then kinda guy. Code for me is what gauge wire you need for a 20 amp circuit. Databases are an abstarct entity to me. I can take a pile of stones and create a natural looking waterfall. That's where my talent lies.

I'm still gonna give this thing my best shot this weekend. That's the only way to give it an evaluation from my perspective. I want to see this product expand so that even a guy who spends his days laboring in the hot Florida sun can turn out useful pages for his brand new Garden forum. :shifty: