Author Topic: FTP sync by dropstock.io (Read 5534 times)

dino · « **on:** March 30, 2016, 01:26 »

Hi all,

I’m not among the most active writers here in the forum, but as a part-time stock photographer I regularly come here and get myself updated with all the new stuff in microstock world.

I travel and work a lot, so something that really bothered me was wasting countless hours of manually uploading files to different agencies over unreliable FTP connections. Uploading 100 pictures this way is painfully inefficient. Doing that from Laos Wifi or on cellular network?

So, I asked a programming friend to help me improve my workflow and we came up with simple solution:

Sync pictures once to Dropbox and distribute them from there through the cloud to all my FTP accounts.

Dropbox handles all the unstable parts of getting files to the internet uncorrupted and securely. I don’t even have to monitor that process, I can work offline on selecting, enhancing and keywording photos and then just put them in my local Dropbox folder. Once I’m online, Dropbox syncs them and seconds later they are ready to be submitted on all my stock agencies!

This has saved me quite a few hours in the last weeks already and we figured it might be useful for other people too. Since I’m a designer by profession and my friend is a developer, we just hit the work hammocks and created a website.

If you want to save some time and repetitive work, you can give it a try now. During the beta it’s free for unlimited number of photos & FTP accounts. All your photos and FTP credentials stay inside your Dropbox accounts, we don’t store any of that on our servers.

Here is how it works
https://youtu.be/n_8VZwFXatU

Here’s the link: http://dropstock.io/?=ms

Let us know what you think!
For any further questions post here or PM me.

Harvepino · « **Reply #1 on:** April 13, 2016, 06:15 »

Finally someone made this!

I was close to hiring a coder to create the exact app for me.

I tried uploading 2 batches of 30 images. Delivered without a glitch within 5 mins to 18 agencies. You guys rock!

dino · « **Reply #2 on:** April 21, 2016, 05:29 »

Since beta launch, we already transferred more than 11k files! Thanks everyone

No major issues, most are due to wrong credentials.

We are still staying in beta for a bit more.

http://dropstock.io

Thanks harvepino for kind words!

superdone · « **Reply #3 on:** April 28, 2016, 05:06 »

I am interested in video too.

alistaircotton · « **Reply #4 on:** April 28, 2016, 11:13 »

Good idea.

Here in South Africa with slow and expensive bandwidth a service like this is more or less critical - especially for video uploads.

I've been using Photoshelter's FTP service for years. But they don't offer video so I've needed to bin their service.

Since we already have a server in Germany with unlimited bandwidth I've contracted a provider in India re-working a plugin that uses FTP to send files directly from our server to the agencies.

The first version is working technically and I've managed to move about 2 gig of video files from that server. Like a proper geek I was all excited to see a real server thump out huge files in a few seconds that take a full night to upload to just one destination from our FTP here.

A second version of the development is due now which will hopefully have ironed out some noted issues.

Then I noticed this from Symbiostock this week: http://www.symbiostock.org/product/symbiostock-submitter/

(If the link gets removed, Google Symbiostock Submitter)

And now this service which also looks like it can do the job.

Nothing for so long and now many options!

Harvepino · « **Reply #5 on:** April 28, 2016, 14:33 »

Quote from: alistaircotton on April 28, 2016, 11:13

Good idea.

Here in South Africa with slow and expensive bandwidth a service like this is more or less critical - especially for video uploads.

I've been using Photoshelter's FTP service for years. But they don't offer video so I've needed to bin their service.

Since we already have a server in Germany with unlimited bandwidth I've contracted a provider in India re-working a plugin that uses FTP to send files directly from our server to the agencies.

The first version is working technically and I've managed to move about 2 gig of video files from that server. Like a proper geek I was all excited to see a real server thump out huge files in a few seconds that take a full night to upload to just one destination from our FTP here.

A second version of the development is due now which will hopefully have ironed out some noted issues.

Then I noticed this from Symbiostock this week: http://www.symbiostock.org/product/symbiostock-submitter/

(If the link gets removed, Google Symbiostock Submitter)

And now this service which also looks like it can do the job.

Nothing for so long and now many options!

My advice: Stay away from Symbiostock. I signed up to do exactly what you describe - send files from Symbiostock to agencies' FTP servers. Symbiostock describes itself as a great tool to distribute content to agencies. I got banned from Symbiostock after two days of doing it and never seen my money back. Explanation was that you are meant to distribute only content that you sell through Symbiostock... and pay hosting for it. If you want to pay hosting for large video files, cost would be astronomical. Symbiostock is lying about functionality they offer, so careful.

On the other hand, I'm very happy with Dropstock.io so far. I've sent 300 images to 25 agencies through them this month and I can't complain. Very reliable tool, already can't live without it

melking · « **Reply #6 on:** April 28, 2016, 14:47 »

I have tried it and so far I love it!! Thank you so much!!!

alistaircotton · « **Reply #7 on:** April 29, 2016, 02:31 »

Quote from: Harvepino on April 28, 2016, 14:33

I got banned from Symbiostock after two days of doing it and never seen my money back. Explanation was that you are meant to distribute only content that you sell through Symbiostock... and pay hosting for it. If you want to pay hosting for large video files, cost would be astronomical. Symbiostock is lying about functionality they offer, so careful.

That's an incredible story. I certainly got the impression that the point of paying $50 for the plugin was to do exactly that - send files out to other agencies. It is, indeed, the point of the plugin?

I clearly don't understand the Symbiostock model anyway - I thought it is was a theme / plugin hosted on your own server that then fed files to their main agency? And that hosting with them was optional but at least made a revenue stream for them.

As an aside, I've got no problem paying for services that work effectively. There is little I dislike more than a "free" plugin or system that basically means it's not supported. With an obviously few noted exceptions, these "free" community things tend to start off well and then fall over when the main developer/s find themselves working weekends for nothing.

rjung · « **Reply #8 on:** April 30, 2016, 03:34 »

Hi, I'm Robert, the developer behind dropstock.io

Awesome to read you like what we have built so far!

After some wrestling with the Dropbox API some technical problems which limited the file size we could handle efficiently were solved. So after testing those changes with a few thousand additional uploads we should be able to tackle bigger files (read: videos) soon

So far we've made 16k uploads and moved about 124GB of pictures btw \o/

alistaircotton · « **Reply #9 on:** April 30, 2016, 04:50 »

Thanks Robert

Cudos to all the good work you have put into this.
I'm sure you will notify this forum when lager file sync is active? Keen to try out some large video files on your system.

rjung · « **Reply #10 on:** April 30, 2016, 10:34 »

Will do! So far, tests look very promising, I might make it public next week. You can help me by keep uploading pictures (and getting more people to use it

) to test upload stability. Have a good weekend!‚

rjung · « **Reply #11 on:** November 22, 2016, 11:52 »

Video upload is live!

Enable Video for all agencies you want to upload to, drop video files (up to 4GB) into your upload folder and that's it!

Please note that it might take quite a while for uploads to start and finish, we'll upload videos with a limited bandwidth to ensure stable image upload for the rest of the users. We'll monitor how this works and appreciate your feedback - we're still in free beta mode

stockVid · « **Reply #12 on:** December 17, 2016, 10:51 »

I am concerned about giving you all my accounts usernames and passwords.

Just how secure is this?

rjung · « **Reply #13 on:** December 18, 2016, 04:39 »

We store your credentials inside your Dropbox folder and there only. We have to read this information when we make uploads on your behalf of course, but never store this information on our servers, those are actually on read-only file systems.

So security basically depends on how secure your Dropbox account is. With a good password there you should be safe

kmclachlan · « **Reply #14 on:** December 31, 2016, 17:31 »

Whats your plan for making this sustainable? I imagine taking high-quality JPGs and then transfering them to 1+ other destinations will chew through a ton of bandwidth... otherwise sounds pretty straightforward?

rjung · « **Reply #15 on:** January 02, 2017, 01:03 »

Yes, we'll have to put a (reasonable) price tag on this at some point, first we want to make sure this works absolutely flawlessly. We recently enabled video uploads and that's bringing a whole new set of challenges to the game.

Luckily, there's no need for us to rush, that's no startup but a small side project scratching our own needs, so we prioritise on making it as reliable (and thus hands-off) as possible before we start looking into covering costs.

08stock08 · « **Reply #16 on:** February 11, 2017, 06:43 »

It does not work any more. Clicking on setup is error 500. The page you were looking for doesn't exist.

Error code 500.

dino · « **Reply #17 on:** February 13, 2017, 22:19 »

Hi 08stock08,

send us an email to hello@dropstock.io and we will have a look at your account.

Since is a 500 error it is most likely just a temporary server hiccup.
We are up and working.

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Author Topic: FTP sync by dropstock.io (Read 5534 times)

dino

Harvepino

dino

superdone

alistaircotton

Harvepino

melking

alistaircotton

rjung

alistaircotton

rjung

rjung

stockVid

rjung

kmclachlan

rjung

08stock08

dino

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