Hello -

My name is Amy, and I am the owner of domesticat.net. It was recently suggested to me that I pay close attention to one of the tutorials that you have posted on intensified.org.

I took a look at this page (intensified.org/tuts/skinningindex.php) and was a bit concerned about what I saw there. While I do not claim to have any kind of copyright on the *process* of skinning, I *do* claim copyright on the code that I have written.

Let's compare:

----- mine -----
<?php include("/path/to/your/site/html/cookiecheck.php"); ?>

<?php
$headervar = "/path/to/your/site/html/nav/header";
$extension = ".php";
include ($headervar.$skin.$extension);
?>

<?php
if (isset($newskin)) {
$newskin=(int)$newskin;
if ($newskin<1) $newskin=1;
if ($newskin>14) $newskin=1;
} elseif (isset($skin)) {
$newskin=(int)$skin;
if ($skin<1) $newskin=1;
if ($skin>14) $newskin=1;
} else {
$newskin=1;
}
$skin=$newskin;

?>

<?php
$footervar = "/path/to/your/site/html/nav/footer";
$extension = ".php";
include ($footervar.$skin.$extension);
?>
----- end mine -----
(taken from these pages: domesticat.net/skins/tutorial/begin_with_php.php and domesticat.net/skins/tutorial/the_cookiecheck.php )

----- yours -----

<?php include("/home/NAME/public_html/skins/cookiecheck.php"); ?>

<?php
$headervar = "/home/NAME/public_html/skins/header";
$extension = ".inc";
include ($headervar.$skin.$extension);
?>

<?php
if (isset($newskin)) {
$newskin=(int)$newskin;
if ($newskin<1) $newskin=11;
if ($newskin>11) $newskin=11;
} elseif (isset($skin)) {
$newskin=(int)$skin;
if ($skin<1) $newskin=11;
if ($skin>11) $newskin=11;
} else {
$newskin=11;
}
$skin=$newskin;
setcookie ('skin', "", time() - 3600);
setcookie('skin',$newskin,time()+(86400*365),'/');
setcookie('skin',$newskin,time()+(86400*365),'/','.kiss-my-kitty.com');
$skin=$newskin;
?>

<?php
$footervar = "/home/NAME/public_html/skins/footer";
$extension = ".inc";
include ($footervar.$skin.$extension);
?>
----- end yours -----

My skinning tutorial has been available on the web since September 9, 2001 (see this entry announcing it: domesticat.net/node/374 or confer with Christine, formerly of blahblahblog.com, whose questions I used to create the tutorial). The cookiecheck code was actually written by Gareth Watts, my siteadmin.

I have trouble suspending my disbelief that recently, on your own, you have crafted an almost exact duplicate skinning method that I use, down to the very same cookiecheck and header/footer include code. I think it far more likely that, in fact, you've borrowed my code and cut down the tutorial to your taste.

Just because I make my code available for others to use does not mean that I am willing to allow other people to claim that they created it when they, in fact, did not.

In that case, I will ask for one of two things. If your tutorial is to remain up and will continue to contain my code, I ask for acknowledgement on the page that the code is mine, and a link back to my tutorial. Otherwise, please take it down. That's pretty excruciatingly fair, in my opinion.

If you claim that you wrote this code and that the copyright is yours, I'd appreciate seeing some kind of proof. Be aware - in addition to my written notes, I have the archived emails back and forth with Christine, as well as emails and instant message archives with my sysadmin about how best to lock down the cookiecheck code.

Amy
(owner, domesticat.net)
-----------------------------------------------------------
" 'I dust a bit,' Ignatius told the policeman. 'In addition,
I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our
century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary
labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.' "
- John Kennedy Toole, _Confederacy of Dunces_
domesticat.net: Much ado about the usual nothing.
nautilus-blue.net: Less ado. Still nothing.
-----------------------------------------------------------

and blast, I forgot to include in this section of code from my site as well, because it was on yet another page:

$skin=$newskin;
setcookie ('skin', "", time() - 3600);
setcookie('skin',$newskin,time()+(86400*365),'/');
setcookie('skin',$newskin,time()+(86400*365),'/','.domesticat.net');
$skin=$newskin;

You know...someday, people are going to figure out that while I may seem like a scatterbrained dingbat, I actually keep pretty detailed copies of my activities online - emails, IMs, code, designs, etc.

Next addendum: here's her reply.

Amy,

I understand your concern and rather misplaced aggravation, but I have no intention of taking down my skinning tutorial nor giving you credit, and this is why:

Sarah from http://www.onestarrynight.com taught me how to skin (way back in June 2002), and I took HER instructions and turned them into a tutorial.

I have never even been to your site.

Take care,

Jennifer

...and my response.

Jennifer -

I've contacted Sarah to find out how she found out about the code, but that's pretty much irrelevant at this point. What *does* matter is that the code you are posting is an exact match to what I've had on my site for well over a year - code that I do maintain copyright on.

While I'm sorry that you were unaware of it, a very quick search on Google would have turned this information up for you at any point in time. A search for virtually ANYthing along the lines of website themes / skins / skinning with PHP / etc. would have turned up the pages on my site, as well as many links to them from other websites. (Not to mention if you'd actually done searches on the code itself.) On those pages on my site would be the code that you have made available on your site without crediting.

While you may have been ignorant in the past that this code was of my creation, this is no longer the case. I'm *not* asking you to take the tutorial down; I'm asking for an acknowledging link on your page to the original tutorial on my site, because I wrote the code that you are providing to others. That's all.

This is not a difficult issue to resolve, and can be very quickly remedied on your part.

Amy

For several months now I've been toying with the idea of making geek-chick.net skinnable. To skin it with the required amount of flexibility was going to require more effort than what originally went into the skinning of domesticat.net—about an order of magnitude, actually.I haven't really wanted to do it. I hate saying that, but it's the truth. I knew firsthand what kind of work it would take to make the site skinnable, and having recently finished up domesticat, I wasn't terribly keen on going through all that again.

Jeff was right, though, and I knew it. There were some users who weren't happy because of the (fairly) simple tables-based layout that g-c had, but there were users who weren't happy because even that simple layout didn't display well under older versions of Netscape.

There wasn't a way to make everyone happy unless the site was skinned. So I put the misgivings aside and started working out a schematic for skinning the site. I figured out how many templates were needed, and what kind of variables I'd need to pull from greymatter.

It was difficult and obfuscated, but I could make it work. About a month ago I went through and started cleaning up the code over at g-c, to help ease the transition into a multi-skinned site. This week, with the move to the new server complete, I decided it was time to swallow my pride and just get to work.

Truth be told, I haven't had much sleep since that decision. I've stayed up until hours I don't want to acknowledge, fitting the pieces together. Today was mostly cleanup work—making the HTML and templates work together in the way I intended. I'd say that right now it's about 90% complete, with the exception of files in a particular folder that I've not worked on yet.

I keep waiting for the sense of pride and purpose to come to me. Maybe I'm still too tired. Maybe I won't feel it until I can freely swap skins back and forth; I don't know. At this point I'm heartily sick of the process, and would more than anything like to just take the damn code and chunk it out the nearest window.

(But Edmund is standing between me and the window, and I have quite a few friends who are going to kill me if I stop after getting this far with the code.)

Some of the frustration comes from knowing that as soon as I'm done getting the skin code up, I need to turn around and figure out how to churn out a particular PHP script that I'm pretty sure is beyond my mastery of the language.

Too many hours staring at this code, I think. I probably should just give up on it for the night and resume tomorrow—but I know my workaholic tendencies, and I know that I'll probably stay up tonight until that last ten percent is finished.

Until it does, I think that I probably won't have too much to say here. After spending hours making code work right, sometimes the last thing you want to face is more time in front of a computer screen.

With that stated, I think it's time to get back to the code.

It can be found here.

Comments, questions, problems, and kudos can be directed to commentsdomesticat [dot] net..