Its been about two months for me working almost exclusively on this project. Testing has gone well. Symbiostock will never truly be out of development phase, which makes it so much fun. But in a few days I hope to release the first version that should be relatively useable, not merely a testing phase. Its still bare functionality with lots of room for improvement, but its a great start.

I have some customer work to get back to, so really there is a turning point here - I can walk away for a week and find its slown down and interest is lost...or if potential has been seen, I can come back to find its moving faster then when I left with others overseeing its growth. In fact, many key issues were solved with community help. I cannot take all the credit.

If you've noticed, this project has had a very positive overtone. Due to the way its meant to work, its unlikely that will change.  Contrast this with what you've seen develop in other areas of this industry.

Symbiostock is not merely an image selling tool. Its a way to self-sufficiency in a business where some companies will occasionally test its ability to take advantage of overly dependent people. For many people selling images is a hobby and an income supplement. It doesn't hurt so much. Others are feeding their family on this. This tool/theme is meant to accommodate the latter, so even image selling hobbyist will know its been seriously developed with the artist's self-sufficiency in mind.

So with all said - keep it positive. Ignore the conspiracy theories and microstock hype, laugh it away, and realize your personal ability. Please get others of varying skillsets to join in the fun and start building it as a cooperative project.

I'd love to become a passive observer of its progress, just aiding the direction it goes in, and helping along various new features. I also need to start selling complementary aspects to theme soon - as others can as well.

Goals:

So - I'm going back to some projects for some patient customers for a while - here is what is needed for the Symbiostock project sooner than later:

• 1. More people knowing about the project. While I wouldn't expect everyone to deploy a site right away, I'd like an increasing amount of attention going to it as a possible solution.
  
  
• 2. PHP developers. - Not fully dedicated - but just people who can look at code, make revisions, small implementations, and get back to life. (Some important issues in the code were already solved this way!)
  
  
• 3. People to adopt the project. You can literally take it upon yourself to take care of various parts of this project. Setting up tutorials, helping people with hosting issues...spreading the word. Or anything else you can think of.
  
  
• 4. More deployed sites. I'd actually like to see someone launch a thread tracking Symbiostock site deployments, with a goal number in mind. Please show off your sites as you get them deployed, and have fun.
  

I haven't even started to profit on this yet. Hopefully soon I will. But I'd like to see everyone else doing the same. I'm getting to some other stuff for a week or two. Symbiostock is all about self-sufficiency. I'd like to see this thing running itself on large scale, and small scale. So - its your baby - make it grow.

Thanks for all the support so far. I hope it profits everyone.

https://github.com/orangeman555/symbiostock

Gonna try to crack that tonight. With the added bonus that hopefully it won't mess up network-site-searches.

thanks again for all the devotion & hard work, Leo -- i'll be testing the non-root install today...

Thanks. There is still much to be done. And I do not pretend to be more than I am *I REALLY NEED THE HELP* perfecting certain aspects.

BTW - in the meantime you guys can be populating your sites with other content like about pages, custom work available...etc.