For whoever is waiting for the "big" release, I figured I'd post some features here. The majority of the work has been done in the admin screen and in code itself. But there are a few very key features I can show you:

Symbiocard
Its like a digital business card that travels the network. Literally - it hitch-hikes the network based on human activity. Your symbiocard produces a nice author info sheet as shown here: http://www.clipartillustrations.com/author/leo-blanchette/
Its helpful for backlinks as well as human stuff. It will be shown on network lists and "other sites".

Take for instance farbled. He has some really high-specialty stuff. If someone searches asbestos on a site not even connected to his network (even 30+ jumps away) there is a very good chance he will still be advertized for his niche. Needless to say, I'm putting *lots* of work into this feature, so it has a way to go.

The symbiocard is also downloadable, allowing you to upload your friend's symbiocard in your admin area---it will automatically set up all network attributes for that site, including saving avatars locally, etc.

The symbiocard also has a compact version which shows as an author attribution under the image: http://www.clipartillustrations.com/image/3d-da-vinci-ornithopter-flying-machine/

RSS

RSS links have been scattered everywhere. Good for SEO and users: http://www.clipartillustrations.com/search-images/mechanical-engineering/ Plus the network could use them if needed.

IPTC / Datasheets Improvements

A highly experimental feature (and its optional) is image "datasheets" which displays IPTC info. I'm still working on it, and its quite messy right now. It will have its own admin screen where you can edit IPTC data (anticipating future laws / standards in IPTC)
the image: http://www.clipartillustrations.com/image/robot-rocketeer-flying-up/
its datasheet: http://www.clipartillustrations.com/datasheet/file-114-metadata-sheet/

Tons of bugs have been fixed and are still getting worked on.


Related Images Fixed (for Mr 242)
Huge huge improvement on "related images". They do not have to be prepopulated. Someone made a great plugin in response to this theme and its now included at install. Wonderful feature!


Most of the "cool stuff" is happening in the admin area and the code, so I can't display it from here. But there is a small preview for you

The admin area stuff:

A click-on-feature wiki! You click info on anything and it shows you directions in the admin screen.

Revamped network management panel, fluid and automated.

Extended user options / info.

Plus other stuff.

Just what I was hoping for Leo, was dying to see some things in action! Thanks

Keep up the awesome work!

You mean people are waiting for a big release 

Some great ideas here Leo - I especially like the idea of images appearing that are not directly linked, that will probably be the biggest benefit in getting clients interested and being able to easily  display whether we are available for projects is also a great idea.

Looking forward to seeing it all in action

Sounds great!

Great news, Leo!

Can´t hardly wait for the new release to appear! The Symbiocard features sounds great and might us easily put into a position that only the largest agencies can offer to their clients.

Thanks also for taking so much care about the related images feature - I am sure it will be a very important aspect for all users having a larger portfolio... Says "Mr 242" :-)

Sounds great, just can't wait. I hope my small customizations gonna survive Finally my "stock page" looks -as I want- and it will look better for sure. Thanks Leo NOSLEEP Blanchette

Sounds great to me too, Leo. I'm really looking forward to seeing it!

The Symbiocards sounds amazing..... but, how will it be protected from the scammers, spammers and merchants of porn?

One bad experience on the network could send a buyer back to the safety of the agencies forever....

Glenn

This is so very cool Leo. Thank you for the tonnes of hard (and so creative) work you've put in. And thanks for the mention too! I can't wait to get everything where it should be on my sites.

all sounds great - any estimated release date?

I'm glad everyone likes it! No release date yet. This release is about as much work as it was to get the first initial release of Symbiostock out.

I just realized the icons are working on tablets now! I updated the icons to its newest release and this time everything is working great! You can check out www.clipartillustrations.com to see how it behaves on your tablets/devices. Let me know if the icons are working for you too.

What icons do you mean? Nothing looks different on my iPhone 4.

Hey just a thought - have you considered implementing an (optional of course for each user) hreview system of stars? If implemented properly buyers could rate items and this would show up in Google results. Yes of course thats a HUGE double edged sword, but some may want it. And it could help SEO.

Its just an idea anyway. The only real plugin that does this is so clunky its terrible.

I was going to recommend the plugin, but someone just said its clunky and terrible. I'm sure there must be something out there?

When your dealing with those star-reviews  they are recognized as a rating system electronically too...just tedious to put in because of all the ajaxy stuff you have to set up. It would be handy for network people to travel/rate their friend's content. You telling me there are no good plugins?

I'm using one on another site called GD Star, it seemed to be best one that I could find that actually uses the right hreview system for the google benefits, but its bloated and complicated. Add to that, Google has dropped the star ratings from my site in search results for some reason!

BTW - It's not something I think is crucial, its just an idea

Strange though it might sound, the best thing you can do for your images is add comments-- as far as google goes.

Symbiostock is a network...and I was hoping it could become a little more social. Perhaps we should find a way to add a certain type of comment system to images that is relevant to customers/network. I'd need ideas on that though.

Whoever is tuned into this thread -

I need to set up a few testing sites to truly explore this new networking system. Its not enough to do it on my local machine. I need a more realistically simulated environment.

Want to help me test?

What you could do:

Set up a new symbiostock site like

www yourexistingsite com / symbiotest /

Then send me an invite as an admin and DO NOT delete me. Upload about 100 or more images and auto-process them to publish, giving me a nice image base to work with.

Also let me know and I'll invite you to the Teambox project I'm setting up. I'm hoping the 2.0 release is lightyears beyond what we have now...so more serious testing should be set up. This will be very very helpful in making a better product, instead of the launch-release-launch-bug-thread process we've all grown to love 

It might be a fair amount of work, but your greatly helping by contributing your time/website folder to this.

Done.
And I am ready for Teambox testing, whatever it is

me too, host is yours, kill it

I'm a little scattered today -
For anyone who set up a test site - thanks a lot - please fill in your info completely so I can work with your Symbiocards properly as I develop this thing

1. Set up all of your info. Note the new info area here: /wp-admin/profile.php  (Its necessary for your symbiocard)
2. Upload at least 100 images and process-to-publish, but probably  more if you can.

This whole symbiostock project is pure brilliance. This is the real game changer not some new agency or collection, stocksy, offset,deposit,  whatever... this is the s**t When I watched this develop, I saw and I still see one basic technical advantage that big agencies have over various symbio sites: customers there have a huge amount and variety of stock accessible with one search, and that is fundamental to most of them. Maybe symbiostock should have a main search site, where they could search just about every simbyo collection with one click. Being searchable through that site would be voluntary, but not joining in wouldn't make much sense I guess . Operating that site supposed to be pretty cheap, since it wouldn't host any files.

That idea is partially addressed in the plugin I'm making which creates a "hub" site - which in turn creates a central search area for a number of network sites.

The problem with a central database is what you see now - overly centralized systems create imbalances and a lot of unhealthy (and often unfair) competition.

Nature tends to have things right - although nature has plenty of "super-societies" they generally balance out and fragment when they get too big. They are also made up of smaller worker units all of which are perfectly self-sufficient in their own right. Symbiostock attempts to emulate those sorts of relationships because they tend to be foolproof and actually supply everyone in a balanced way. So really its not even my idea ...its just an honest look at nature's success.

People tend to create overly-centralized systems with a lot of overly-dependent workers and subsystems and pretend it somehow emulates nautures design (as they say, survival of the fittest, eat or be eaten! Get big, take territory...that nonsense). Those systems "break" easy when problems come up. They are top-heavy, expensive, eat up resources (often from the bottom-line workers). Also the search engines most agents use must find a way to take 10,000,000 images (or products) and give them a place in the first 20 pages of a given keyphrase...and minding the attention span of the average human probably does not make it to page 20...its an impossible game and everyone just loves playing it for some reason.

But there will be a "network hub" plugin which creates a sort of central farmer's market for quite a few network sites. Also hub plugins will be able to aggregate other hub sites as well...combining hubs... so this idea of doing the impossible (making a huge central database) is really up for grabs for whoever has the time but I don't think overly centralized systems are ever really able to be successful in the long-run. At least not when they are responsible for providing in a balanced way.

Its not possible to explain all this stuff in just a few lines, but at least it gives you an idea of where things *may* be headed as long as they are successful.

Quote from: Leo on May 15, 2013, 19:59
For anyone who set up a test site
1. Set up all of your info...
2. Upload at least 100...

OK & ready

Leo

I created symbiotest under my site cascoly-images/pix as you described
but did you want us to install a complete new WP?? or to create symbiotest where the current theme is located and then just switch themes to test

either way, i'll get it set and you still have admin access from earlier

This will need to simulate a unique site (like all the others) so you will need to get a new db up and running. Thanks for the setup. It will be very helpful. Gonna see if I can't get autoupdates running too.