Have not tried the buying process, but the back-end (and even login page!) is not encrypted.  Definitely do not recommend using this site from a WiFi hotspot/café.  Also, do not use a password for this site that is used on another site.

With all the talk on the thread (shall-not-be-named) about the security of Symbiostock 0I am reminded of a post about the necessity of hosting (Wordpress) one's site oneself.  I thought that the post was interesting.  One of the points made in it--beyond the main one that people who are serious about hosting a site should host it themselves--is that some hosting sites specialize in Wordpress, so their staff is better at resolving Wordpress-specific issues.

In the thread that shall-not-be-named grsphoto posted a link to an article on Wordpress security, repeated here so that people do not need to visit that thread.  The article reminded me of the aforementioned post because it recommends WPEngine which the author of the aforementioned post recommends, but for other reasons.

I am using bluehost and so far so good, so I have no plans for moving.

Just wanted to share with the community ...

Quote from: steheap on June 25, 2013, 14:02

QuoteCan anybody tell me how the Symbiostock Similar Images widget works?

I've placed it on the bottom of image pages but no similar images are shown (only the headline Similar Images).

I'd forgotten this, but when this feature first came out, you had to run a process each time you added a bunch of images to the site (run the "related images" process?). That went away and found all the images with closely matching keywords.

Has that function now been added in automatically - I couldn't see it in the Symbio options section of Admin?

Steve

I think you need to have the "Related Posts by Taxonomy" plugin activated?

I updated the OP--forgot to do it before ...

If you are modifying code in WP core (wp-includes, wp-admin) your changes will be overwritten when you update wordpress.  It would be better to put something in your child theme functions.php file.  This seems like a useful post:  http://designpx.com/tutorials/customize-tag-cloud-widget

The following is from the above site and seems to do exactly what you want.  I have not tested this, but you should be able to paste it into your functions.php file.  The symbiostock child theme comes with a functions.php file that already has the necessary "<?php" line at the top.  You should be able to just paste the code below in the middle of the file and change the values to what you want.


function custom_tag_cloud_widget($args) {
$args['largest'] = 18; //largest tag
$args['smallest'] = 10; //smallest tag
$args['unit'] = 'px'; //tag font unit
return $args;
}
add_filter( 'widget_tag_cloud_args', 'custom_tag_cloud_widget' );


I put it in my functions.php code (Appearance->Editor, select Theme Functions (functions.php)) and it changed things appropriately.

Hope this helps!

Quote from: Redneck on June 24, 2013, 14:26
I just did the Paypal Sandbox testing but I think jshooz got one thing wrong with his directions.

If you've never done the Paypal sandbox testing before, you will not see a sandbox BUSINESS account because there is none.
You need to create both, a sandbox business account (as merchant, with your Symbiostock admin email) AND a sandbox personal account (as customer, with a user login email).

Testing went ok.

Thanks for trying this out!  Just curious, do you have two business accounts or just the one that you created?  I have a business account with a weird user name that I did not choose, so I assumed that it was setup by Paypal automatically (also I read in the FAQ that a business account is created when you first sign up).

Looks good!

Earlier in this thread I posted a bug in which I could only add one item to the user's cart and when I went to the file management area and deleted the item from the cart I got "Please log in to view your cart."  This is not a bug.  I do not understand it completely, but I think it has something to do with how I setup my wordpress URL (Setting->General:  "Wordpress Address") and my browser.

On my site, any interaction I made with a page once it was done loading occurred as though I was logged out.  For example, if I was on an image page and selected a size option the option highlighted properly, but the total in the green "Download" button was for the selection price, only.  If I selected a different size I would get the "Login/Register" overlay.

The fact that I use HTTPS Everywhere is Firefox and have an SSL certificate on the web site may have caused trouble for me.  My Wordpress address used http:// and so I think between that and my browser add-ons something was getting messed up.  Changing my Wordpress URL from http://... to https://... solved the problem.

So, no bug.

Edit:  the problem was not dependent on the add-ons in my browser as I was using different browsers to test the site.  I still do not understand exactly what was happening, but using the correct URL did the job.

Quote from: Tinny on June 22, 2013, 09:42
Alternatively if you do find the sandbox confusing (as I did as it seemed to send you to a different site altogether with a name I had never heard of) reduce the price of an item to 10p or so, use a different email address to create an account and make the purchase, then remember to increase the price again 

That whole other site thing is part of what took me so long--that and the fact that once you log in to the developer site it was not clear to me how to navigate for sandbox accounts.  There are three sites paypal.com, developer.paypal.com, and sandbox.paypal.com.  The first is obvious, the second is where you setup/manage sandbox accounts, and the last is where you log in with your sandbox accounts to see stuff happen.

Double congrats!

I tried testing out purchasing using Paypal's sandbox.  Maybe this is easier for me because I am in the U.S., but setting up Paypal was not that bad -- after ten minutes of banging my head against the wall -- and once I had my Business and Personal sandbox accounts it was easy to setup things in Symbiostock (thanks Leo and anyone else who worked on the Paypal IPN stuff!).

For those who are just setting up their sites and want to test out purchasing, here is what I had to do, although  because of all the damage to my head the beginning part is kind of fuzzy ...

Note:  This does not include signing up for a Paypal merchant account as I am working with an existing account.

• Sign up with Paypal Developer
  Select the "Log In with Paypal" button and then login using your Paypal Business account.  This seems to do nothing except change the Login button to text with the name on the account, but it creates a Business sandbox account for you automatically.  The next thing to do is create a Personal sandbox account.
  
• Setting up/Managing Sandbox accounts
  From the Paypal Developer page click on the "Applications" button.  On the left edge of the window select the text, "Sandbox accounts."  Click on the "Create Account" button at the top and setup both a Business sandbox account and a Personal sandbox account.  The Business sandbox account will be a stand-in for your business/merchant account and will receive (fake) payment.  The Personal sandbox account will be the test client who will (fake) purchase stuff from your site.
  
  Here are the settings I have for each account:
  
  • Country = (the default setting was my country so I left it that way)
  • Account type = Personal
  • Email address = Use an email different from the email associated with the admin account on your Symbiostock site.  If you already have a test user account on your Symbiostock site you can use the email associated with it.
  • Feel free to set the fake user's first and last name if you want.
  • Bank verified account: Yes (this was the default setting for me and I left it that way)
  • Credit card type:  Visa (I did not play with the other options)
  The other fields I left alone.
  
  Once you create an account you cannot change the email address, so if you need to create an account with a different email address you can (delete the account, if you want and) make a new one!
  
• Integrating Symbiostock
  As admin on your Symbiostock site make your way to the Symbiostock settings (the bee!) and click on the "Settings" tab.  Select the "Sandbox (testing)" button.  Your "Paypal email" is your Sandbox Business account.  Do not forget to click "Save Changes" at the bottom of the page!  I did not take the time to play with the "Site Paypal Logo" option.  That's it for integration!
• Tester/Client Account
  If you do not already have a test client account log out of your site or open a different browser and browse to your web site's client login page (e.g., http://<yoursite>/please-log-in/) and setup an account using the same email you used above for the Personal Sandbox account.  Check the email inbox for the welcome email (hopefully it takes only a few minutes, so take a bathroom break or something), log in as the client and buy something.

You can view your Sandbox Paypal accounts by logging into https://www.sandbox.paypal.com with your Sandbox accounts.

Now you can see what the experience is like on your web site as a client.  You may want to put on your site the fact that your site is a test site.  I am not sure what happens when someone with a real Paypal account tries to purchase something, though ... you could disable registration while using the Sandbox (from admin dashboard go to Settings->General and deselect the checkbox "Anyone can register."

Of course, once you are ready to sell your pictures for real make sure people can register, your Symbiostock->Settings Paypal section is set to, "Live," and your real Paypal business email is in the, "Paypal Email," field.

Edit:  Updated based on helpful correction by Redneck, thanks!

Thanks!

If you open up the style.css file in the site and remove the "v" in v2.4.4 it goes away unless you reinstall, etc.

Edit:  From the Wordpress dashboard:  Appearance->Editor.  Under the "Select theme to edit" menu choose "SYMBIOSTOCK" which brings up style.css.  Remove the "v" from "v2.4.4" and then click "Update File."

I am a little confused about Paypal and Autoreturn.  I see the different SY tutorials refer to it as a step, but do not go into details.  Paypal describes that the page has to meet a series of requirements including referring to the user's name and such, so it seems like the page would have to be auto-generated by something ... 

So, does anyone use Autoreturn for their site and if they do, what URI did you use on your site?

Quote from: alberto on June 14, 2013, 23:28
Minor feature, the ability to show a download counter.

This is (sort of) a by-product of implementing "limited quantity" which is something that I want.

Quote from: quailrunphoto on June 10, 2013, 06:26

Quote from: quailrunphoto on June 10, 2013, 04:44

Quote from: klsbear on June 10, 2013, 04:01
Registration issue

Signed up as new user. Got the notice that a new "customer" had registered almost immediately but now it's been over an hour and I'm still waiting for my password so I can test out the purchasing process.  It seems to be a registration e-mail issue, not Bluehost or my cable provider.  I tried sending an e-mail from my gmail account to my account with the cable provider that I'm using as the test account and that went through within a minute.

I just did the same procedure with a little different result.  My test user received an email after about 15 minutes.   It was not stuck in spam or any other email filter.  I am also using BlueHost.

If anyone is good at reading message source code, I have attached the test user message.  It shows a significant delay in delivery of about 20 minutes.  I have underlined the location.

The only thing majorly different between yours and mine (received my test user within a few seconds) is that yours mentions Postini.  Anyone else having problems and using Postini?  I signed up for Bluehost a while ago and never enabled Postini.

Update:  then again, my site is practically empty and not part of the network--it's complicated :\

Quote from: cascoly on June 10, 2013, 00:45
ok - here's my version of the paypal bugs:

login as the buyer 'testing2'  it still shows an image1 i paid for awhile ago in my customer license area (this also didn't get any download info) i click to buy a different image2, and it goes to the cart listing 2 x $2.  i delete the old image, and click agree but the green box doesnt light up so i cant pay.  when i refresh the old image1 is back.  i click on image1 and get the image1 page, but clicking on 'download' there (showing only $2, not the $4 it should be if there were still 2 images), and it goes to the cart showing only image2 and now allows me to click the green button.

something's getting left over??

I think this is related.  Registered a new user and tried to add more than one thing to my cart, but only see the first thing.  If I try to remove the item from the cart it reappears if I refresh.

When I delete the item in the cart the page displays "Please log in to view your cart."  Should this be something more like, "Your cart is empty" ...?

Quote from: grsphoto on June 10, 2013, 01:55
Just wondering where the image files get put?  Thinking of trying some experiments with copies of the originals.

I found my originals in
symbiostock_rf
and the thumbnails in
wp-content/uploads/symbiostock_rf_content

I have no way how to do this, but would clients be okay with receiving an email with a link from which they can download their purchase?  The link would expire after, say, 30 days.  It would then be up to the clients to keep track of their email.  Any thoughts?

This is probably related to the previously mentioned search issue(s) ... searching for a substring of an existing keyword gets different result, for example a search for "flower" does not include the results from a search for "flowers."  Is this expected?

Quote from: Leo on May 26, 2013, 03:17
Good question! You know quite a bit about wordpress. The easy answers first:

Thanks, but I only know the basics about Wordpress and content management stuff. 

Quote from: Leo on May 26, 2013, 03:17
1. Yes, one contributor per site. The initial purpose of symbiostock was to get everyone independent that way.
2. Yes, one symbiocard per site. The symbiocards are generated as having a unique key according your domain, and that way they are always fetched from the root of your site predictably.

But regarding permissions - everything "significant" to symbiostock is generally done as an admin. If you find any abuse-able stuff on the lower end let me know

From what I looked at the permissions make sense considering that there are basically two roles in use right now: "Subscriber" and "Administrator."  Subscriber has pretty much no options in the backend as far as content goes.

Quote from: Leo on May 26, 2013, 03:17
Images cannot be properly generated through WP's "add new image" feature (comes with registering a post type) but I have not yet figured out how to completely remove it. Technically the only legit way to add an image is through the image processor. But again if you find any loopholes or areas of possible abuse let me know.

But multiple image authors per site...with a few adjustments it should be possible. Right now everything is set up for complete independence. Once you start managing multiple authors a whole new feature set is demanded. So I started simple

Makes perfect sense.  Get it working for one first. 

Using version 2.2.7 and not sure if this classifies as a "bug" or a design question for the community (or door number three?).

It seems that only a user with an "Administrator" role can have a Symbiocard associated with their pictures.  What if someone wants to create a site for someone else and only give them an "Editor", "Author," or "Contributor" role?  Not sure

Is the intent of Symbiostock to be one artist/photographer per site with a network connecting/associating the different sites?  If so, it makes sense to have one Symbiocard per site.

For that matter, how are the different Wordpress roles "supposed" to map to Symbiostock permissions in the backend?  For those (like me) not familiar with Wordpress already the different Wordpress roles are defined at http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities.

From what I can gather here are the current back-end permissions for the different roles:

• Subscriber - Can only edit their profile in Symbiostock back-end.
• Contributor - Can do Subscriber stuff plus create new "Post," "Image," "Comment," and "Datasheet" content and edit their own content, but cannot publish them--"Submit for Review" is there instead of "Publish"--nor can they upload new image files of any sort.  They can reprocess their own Image content from the Symbiostock Images section of the backend and insert files in the Media Library into the Description section of an Image.
• Author - Can do Contributor stuff plus add new Media to the Media Library (not proper Symbiostock Image content) and publish/edit their own content.  This means they can put a new picture into the description for content of type "Image," but not upload something that will be delivered automatically and "processed."  Not sure how Paypal works with Image content created this way ... but proceeds probably go to the person that setup the Paypal account.
• Editor - Can do Author stuff plus publish/edit stuff submitted by others.  No access to Symbiostock upload features.
• Administrator - All access.  Can use Symbiostock Upload.

FWIW ...

Quote from: cascoly on May 22, 2013, 03:37
still have GD -- added the ini line  but imagemagick doesn't show up - any suggestion s?

@cascoly Bluehost has some great help documentation for installing PHP extensions (http://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/534 and posted the page itself further down just in case it is not visible).  Is there a line in your php.ini for extension_dir?

QuoteViewing Currently Installed PECL Packages
To view the PECL Packages currently installed, you will need ssh access. To learn how to get SSH access, Click Here. Once you have logged in via SSH, enter the following command:

Code Select Expand

/usr/bin/pecl list
       

Installing New PECL Packa
In the past we have done manual installations of packages as our customers needed them, but actually now we just have a pre-installed library, and if you wish to have another PECL package installed, these are the directions for doing so: You can download and install PECL packages locally to your account. You'll need SSH access. Once you're logged in, these are steps for installation:

    Create a folder in your home directory to download and compile the packages in.

   

Code Select Expand

mkdir ~/pecl

    Create a directory for you php extensions to be located in. Something like ~/php/extensions.

   

Code Select Expand

$ mkdir ~/php )

    $ mkdir ~/php/extensions

    Change directories to that created pecl directory and run the following command:

   

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cd ~/pecl

    pecl download <packagename>

    ********************** For multiple PECL packages, repeat steps 4-9 and then step 12 *****************
    That will download the package which you'll then need to untar with:

   

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tar -xvzf

    Change directories to the extracted directory and run the phpize command

   

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cd ~/pecl/<packagedirectory>

    phpize
           

    When that's done, run the following command from inside the module folder ./configure --prefix=$HOME/pecl/<packagedirectory> ( you can find the directory to use by typing pwd inside the package directory)

   

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cd ~/pecl/<packagedirectory>

    ./configure --prefix=$HOME/pecl/<packagedirectory>

    If that runs without error, then the package should be compatible with our environment. If it completes successfully, run the following command from individual module directory make

   

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make

    That will create the module file that you'll need to put in your php.ini. It'll be located in the modules directory and will be named <packagename>.so

   

Code Select Expand

cd modules

    Copy the .so file to your ~/php/extensions directory that you created.

   

Code Select Expand

cp <packagename>.so ~/php/extensions

    Copy the existing server-installed extensions from /usr/lib64/php/modules/ to the ~/php/extensions directory:

   

Code Select Expand

cp -rf /usr/lib64/php/modules/* ~/php/extensions/

    Edit your php.ini file in public_html (assuming you're on single php.ini mode from the php config icon in the cpanel) and change the extension_dir setting to the full path to your ~/php/extensions directory

       extension_dir = "/home<#>/<username>/php/extensions"

    Add the extension to your php.ini file. It'll look like:

    extension=<filename>.so

Quote from: Leo on May 20, 2013, 08:31
print_r also has a friend named var_dump (sometime's can make things easier to read in HTML though it only seems to happen on WAMP server...I wish I could get it working with html online too).

Are you using the 2.0 test version? There is a nice little help-area in there. I'll paste it for you:
Image Processing — ImageMagic or GD Library

---

Some notes on your server's image processing methods — there are a few things that influence your server's ability to process large images, and large amounts of images.

   
•     The image processing module: ImageMagic, or inferior choice, GD Library
•     Memory allowed: Edit wp-config.php file to change performance.
•     Maximum allowed time a script can run.

Image processing occurs in a few areas in the Symbiostock theme:

   
•     Process Uploads (Note at top of screen, it will tell you if you are using GD or ImageMagic)
•     Images Listing / Editing Area ("Bulk Options" dropdown, "Reprocess")

Symbiostock checks to see if your server is using ImageMagick and if its not, it falls back to GD Library. Its highly advised you configure your server to use ImageMagic if it does not already. It uses less memory and generally produces better results. "Cheap" hosting using GD Library will give you much trouble with frequest script crashes, though will often still give satisfactory results in a good server environment.

If you can't seem to break out of memory limitations, use BLUEHOST as your hosting company instead. BLUEHOST has the best cost/power ratio and Symbiostock sites do great on it.

No, I have not yet signed up 2.0.  I can give you admin on a site if you PM your email ...

Quote from: Leo on May 20, 2013, 08:18
Hi there!
Yes, it is possible. So many of these things are very simple to do, just take a little time. After 2.0 series is finally out and definitely stable, I should be able to give attention to all of these little details. But yes, thats perfectly possible.

Awesome, thanks!