Attention Dolphin Developers! ShrinkTheWeb Integration Contest

Contest Begins: 11/09/2011
Contest Deadline: 01/29/2012*
1st Place Prize: $1,000 USD**
2nd & 3rd Place Prizes: $250 USD each**

Contest Goal: We are looking for an experienced Dolphin developer (or a team of developers who will split the prize) to design and implement a tighter integration that is also more future-proof, since we have some changes coming at the end of January that may “break” the current module for free users. We will continue to support all free users with the “Preview Verification Page” but also need to add support for upgraded accounts.

Eligibility / Judging Criteria:
In order to be considered and prize awarded, ALL of the following criteria must be met.
1.    The code MUST meet with full approval from the Boonex developers. Here are their exact words: “If this module (or rather a modification to our Sites module) is to be included into Dolphin core package, it would have to comply with our code convention and must integrate with Dolphin correctly. Factors like speed and security would be very important.”
2.    The code must support the new ShrinkTheWeb FREE method, read more here:
http://www.shrinktheweb.com/content/how-do-i-install-or-integrate-stw-preview-verification-code.html
3.    The code must support both the embedded <img src> method and the Advanced API request method for “optional” caching of screenshots locally.***
http://www.shrinktheweb.com/uploads/STW_API_Documentation.pdf
4.    The code must support all ShrinkTheWeb PRO Features, read more here:
http://www.shrinktheweb.com/uploads/PRO_Feature_Documentation.pdf


Tie-Breaker: If there are multiple submissions that meet all the criteria and are approved by the Boonex dev team, then we will release all the updates and ask the Dolphin community to vote for their top 3 favorites, picking out a single 1st place winner that will be used.

Submissions: Please submit (via link to demo) using the ShrinkTheWeb support system. That way, we can easily track your progress and communicate.

Contest Resources: For proper integration, you will need to have a ShrinkTheWeb account. You will then have access to our support portal and are free to open tickets to ask questions, clarify, or get pointers/feedback. During the contest period, you will also be allowed to ask for a fully upgraded “DEV” account to test with (we will make it free when you are testing PVP and upgrade when you are testing PRO features).

Quick Background: Thanks to a few helpful Dolphin users, Caltrade and ScottDB, we learned about Boonex’s integration of our service back in April of this year. It was brought to our attention that a number of Dolphin 7.x users were having issues using our service because of the “Lock to Account” feature we added. Unfortunately, many of those users were not receiving our emails and had no idea about the simple way to add their server IP addresses to their account.

Once that was sorted, all was “OK” but still not great. Over the following months, we have seen a lot of Dolphin users who want to show screenshots but when they use the SITES module, it seems to only work well when the web page is already captured in our cache. Otherwise, it “queues” in our system and never gets updated in Dolphin, except through some manual process (like hitting F5). We have discussed improvements with the Boonex development team but they have been working diligently on several other urgent updates/upgrades so we decided to launch a contest to try to get the best integration possible, as quickly as possible.


*The contest may end early, if the goals are reached and the module is submitted before the deadline.  The prize(s) will be awarded once the Boonex dev team approves the code for integration OR after a vote has been taken (totalled 30 days after release), in the case of a tie-breaker scenario

**payable via Paypal, escrow.com, or business check. We will consider alternatives.

***Proper result checking of the XML response is required to ensure that error images are not cached locally, that limits are honored, and that error codes are properly logged so they are not retried. Please request the latest latest BETA sample code when you get to the point of integrating the "Advanced Method" API. It may be helpful, but you are free to rewrite the sample code, if you know a better way ;)