_________.__    .__                .__       ________  
         /   _____/|  |__ |__| _____   _____ |__| ____ \_____  \ 
         \_____  \ |  |  \|  |/     \ /     \|  |/ __ \ /  ____/ 
         /        \|   Y  \  |  Y Y  \  Y Y  \  \  ___//       \ 
        /_______  /|___|  /__|__|_|  /__|_|  /__|\___  >_______ \
                \/      \/         \/      \/        \/        \/

Shimmie 2.3 Beta
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This code is for people who want to write extensions compatible with the
next version of shimmie. You can run a production site with it if you're
feeling brave, but it's not recommended.

If there is a feature here, and not in the stable branch, that's probably
because the feature doesn't work yet :P


New since 2.2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For admins:
 o) Simplified installer, only one question
 o) Improved mass tag editor, allows searching and replacing multiple tags
 o) Automated installation
 o) Automatic detection of niceurl support
 o) Support for caching data, to lower database load
 o) Improved extension management, built-in documentation function
 o) Built-in documentation for extensions
 o) Better spam filtering

For users:
 o) New default theme
 o) Better BBCode support
 o) Image ratings, with eg. hiding of explicit images to anonymous users
 o) Theme improvements, new themes
 o) Better searching
 o) Cooliris support
 o) Search for images you've voted for (simple "favourites" system)

For developers:
 o) More sensible APIs
 o) Automated testing
 o) Preliminary SQLite & Postgres support, for people with very small and
    very large sites (Not all extensions are compatible yet though)


Requirements
~~~~~~~~~~~~
MySQL 4.1+
PHP 5.0+
GD or ImageMagick

There is no PHP4 support, because it lacks many useful features which make
shimmie development easier, faster, and less bug prone. PHP4 is officially
dead, if your host hasn't upgraded to at least 5, I would suggest switching
hosts. I'll even host galleries for free if you can't get hosting elsewhere
for whatever reason~


Installation
~~~~~~~~~~~~
1) Create a blank database
2) Unzip shimmie into a folder on the web host
3) Visit the folder with a web browser
4) Enter the location of the database
5) Click "install". Hopefully you'll end up at the welcome screen; if
   not, you should be given instructions on how to fix any errors~


Upgrade from 2.2.X
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Should be automatic, just unzip and copy across config.php, images and thumbs
folders from the old version. This includes automatically messing with the
database -- back it up first!


Contact
~~~~~~~
#shimmie on Freenode -- IRC
webmaster at shishnet.org -- email
http://redmine.shishnet.org/projects/show/shimmie2 -- bug tracker


Licence
~~~~~~~
All code is GPLv2 unless mentioned otherwise; ie, if you give shimmie to
someone else, you have to give them the source (which should be easy, as PHP
is an interpreted language...). If you want to add customisations to your own
site, then those customisations belong to you, and you can do what you want
with them.