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.

 

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

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

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.

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.

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'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

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.

me too, host is yours, kill it

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.

For anyone who set up a test site
1. Set up all of your info...
2. Upload at least 100...

OK & ready

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.

Leo, you should have gotten an email with your id and password for my test site.

I am loading images now.  Let me know if you need anything else.

David

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.

I understand some may feel like the 'previous system' is creeping back into this project if they create a central search site, but that's not the case. The main search site wouldn't change anything at all in the way ppl run their own site, it would be just an addition on top of everything else. Anyone can get their own traffic and sell on their own site separately from the main search, as if it didn't even exist. As for competition on prices / merchandise.... well, it's just always there anyway. I don't insist this being implemented in the symbio system, but I think it would help this project compete with / kill the big sites... and there's very little doubt in my mind that we need to show that we can go for killing the big sites, or you will see your work handed out for free based on 'ad-space revenue'. Just look at getty connect.

The more people start using Symbiostock I have a pretty good feeling these things will almost "make themselves" since this is an open-source project. Inevitably people will want a central promoter. The sort of ideas that people like you come up with is what will end up shaping it

One of the things a hub site could do is manage carts remotely (in effect it creates and manages users remotely).

The downside is you would:

• Have to trust whoever is running the hub site.
• Have to trust whoever is running the hub site.
• Most likely have to pay a monthly marketing fee (or worse) a fraction of your sale.

So keep in mind whoever runs a hub site needs a reason for doing it! Unless someone just enjoys it as a hobby. A hub host would need a good reason to manage all that.

Thats why it will have to be given much thought. Keep in mind you already take on a huge chunk of responsability by working on your own site, paying your own hosting...once you start centralizing, paying fees, asking for traffic...you almost give away your power. So we really have to think about this.

I think the first priority in the idea of "the hub site" is figuring out how you'd make the webmaster benefit without re-inventing the whole problem of microstock all over again. 

The higher-network functions are starting to emerge from their little cocoon for you to see!

I don't even know where to start!

Lets make it a story...

Someone has joined the Symbiostock network and set up their website. For example purposes, its : http://www.clipartillustrations.com/

Brand new site...webmaster wants traffic and backlinks from complementary (or just friendly) sites. So he/she browses around and eventually comes to these sites (note these are testing sites I chose because their Symbiocards were fairly complete) and downloads their Symbiocards from their easy-to-find author pages:

http://tulip.kerioak.com/author/indi/

http://fotostocki.pl/symbiotest/author/admin/

http://ajotte.com/symbiotest/author/admin/

After saving their Symbiocards, they went to their Admin area and uploaded them, fully populating their site with their new network friends. (When this is done, this action will cause your site to email your newfound network buddy that you've added them, and hopefully they would do the same.

Now you can see that everyone's Symbiocard is LOADED with useful stuff. Because nobody has resaved their Symbiocard for this latest version yet, you can see this example: http://www.clipartillustrations.com/author/leo-blanchette/

All of that info (categories, etc) will show up on everyone's sites your Symbiocard has migrated to.

Now when someone searches a network site, this is what they see:

http://www.clipartillustrations.com/search-images/animal/

You can see the Symbiocard in action here too! (the dropdown on each network results)

Note that instead of 5 results, there are 24 on a slider per page. This will solve a certain 404 problem as well.

If you follow the link to the person's "network" you can see the Symbiocard's of each one on my site...if your a customer, this is very interesting. If your a search engine, this is very helpful.

http://www.clipartillustrations.com/symbiostock-network/

---

There are now some "featured images" and "latest images" sliders which can be used in parts of your site, like in the "gallery" page you can now officially link to in your Symbiocard. The widgets can use either thumbnail size or preview size images. They can also be used via shortags, so you can place them anywhere in your content you wish.

[ss-slider id=my-preview-slider size=preview action=latest] � Type: Latest, Size: Preview

[ss-slider id=my-preview-slider size=preview action=featured] � Type: Featured, Size: Preview

[ss-slider id=my-preview-slider size=minipic action=latest] � Type: Latest, Size: Minipic

[ss-slider id=my-preview-slider size=minipic action=featured] � Type: Featured, Size: Minipic

There are plenty of upgrades on this theme too.

You can now update the theme by pushing a button instead of having to re-upload. It updates just like a wordpress.org theme.

---

The BIGGEST thing new webmasters struggle with (at least small startups) is backlinks. With Symbiostock your backlink-rich right out of the box.

---

Here is a list of test sites so you can watch things progress among them as they update / play:

http://cascoly-images.com/symbiotest/

www.9livesillustrations.com/arctium/

http://tulip.kerioak.com/

http://ajotte.com/symbiotest/

http://fotostocki.pl/symbiotest/

http://symbiostock.glennspecht.com/wp/

http://www.photosyouneed.com/

http://quailrunphoto.com/symbiotest/wp-admin/themes.php

ok, here's a quick example of collecting the symbiocards in a db then generating reports

http://cascoly.com/symbio/testsymbio.asp

Oh almost forgot - the green download button everyone was asking for - http://www.clipartillustrations.com/image/orange-man-with-coffee-cup-and-coffee-bag/

Ok, gnight.

And now, when all test sites became public, it's better to go to root folder and put robots.txt file with

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

to avoid indexing and mess in Google results

Leo, problems

1.
search field on my site redirects to
http://fotostocki.pl/symbiotest/?s=animal&submit=Search&post_type=image

while
http://fotostocki.pl/symbiotest/search-images/animal/ is ok

2.
I had  a page /symbiostock-network created before

so that one Leo, you have on your site - doesn-t exist
http://www.clipartillustrations.com/symbiostock-network/

3. I couldn't process uploaded images, they disappeared (but maybe you're doing some tests)


Another SUGGESTION is to change the SELECT to TICK in "Specialty"

Quote from: cascoly on May 18, 2013, 02:49

ok, here's a quick example of collecting the symbiocards in a db then generating reports

http://cascoly.com/symbio/testsymbio.asp

Thats REALLY cool!

Oh just an FYI - the sites also produce an image listing for hub (and other agency) aggregation - http://www.clipartillustrations.com/symbiostock_image_info.csv

That might be useful to you as well.

more than useful!  i was just about to ask for something like that in reply to the other external files we've been talking about! can you add category to that csv?


meanwhile -  one of the things I've been doing is manually running smugmug RSS thru a non-sym WP plugin, then taking the results and displaying them from my other website, thus creating pages of libks to the smugmug images.  eg http://cascoly.com/photo/backgrounds-patterns-mosaics.asp

this makes the whole process simpler - I can write a simple online script that can take anyone's image csv and create html pages that can be posted anywhere

I have updated the test site with new information and profiles.  I have installed the latest plug ins. 

1.  Some of my previous issues with Symbiostock 1.x have been resolved, plugins conflicting with each other.
2.  I have defined a page Symbiostock Network, for some reason everything appears on the right side of the page.  I have tried different page templates with no effect.
3.  I am currently unable to process new images.  The process screen completes without error, but the images are not available.
4.  I am not sure if I have completed the Symbiocard information correctly.  Not sure how to verify that it is working properly.

That is all for now.

http://cascoly.com/symbio/testsymbio.asp

now does a search for keywords across several sites (fixed keywords right now since the limited test data doesn't have a lot of keywords in common)

Thats pretty amazing. How are you doing that?

just imported the csv into a db then do some sql calls in vbscript/asp;  can do it in php too, just that I have more experience with asp