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Microstock Photography Forum - General => Symbiostock => Symbiostock - Network Building => Topic started by: cathyslife on July 11, 2013, 20:53

Title: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: cathyslife on July 11, 2013, 20:53
I would really like to visit other peoples sites that have blogs and leave comments, etc. I thought maybe we could list urls to blog pages on SY members' sites.

I will start. Feel free to leave comments, links, etc.

http://cathyslifestockphotos.com/blog/ (http://cathyslifestockphotos.com/blog/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: grsphoto on July 11, 2013, 22:04
Comments always welcome ;D

The lazy Photographer    http://glennspecht.com/wp/category/s10-blogs/c59-lazy-photographer-photo-blog/ (http://glennspecht.com/wp/category/s10-blogs/c59-lazy-photographer-photo-blog/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: Imagenomad on July 12, 2013, 00:29
Good idea.

http://stockphotology.com/blog/ (http://stockphotology.com/blog/)

Give me another day or two though...  8)

Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: Kerioak~Christine on July 12, 2013, 01:25
Good idea, mine is
stockimages.kerioak.com (http://stockimages.kerioak.com)


Modified - thanks Cathy for the heads up.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: Ron on July 12, 2013, 03:53
http://semmickphoto.com/blog/ (http://semmickphoto.com/blog/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: picture5469 on July 12, 2013, 05:30
http://www.picture5479.com/blog/ (http://www.picture5479.com/category/blog/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: sc on July 12, 2013, 08:16
http://softlightstock.com/blog/ (http://softlightstock.com/blog/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: farbled on July 12, 2013, 10:12
I accidentally deleted my blog (photomining.com) when I moved the domain over to Bluehost this week. If I can figure out how to re-implement it I'll get it back up and running soon....
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: steheap on July 12, 2013, 19:01
And mine - I'll check out these other ones as well.

Steve

http://www.backyardsilver.com/2013/07/selling-stock-photos-through-your-own-personal-website/ (http://www.backyardsilver.com/2013/07/selling-stock-photos-through-your-own-personal-website/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: cathyslife on July 14, 2013, 07:41
Good idea, mine is
[url]http://stockimages.kerioak.com[/url] ([url]http://stockimages.kerioak.com[/url]) com/blog


Christine, your link above is messed up. Or did you mean for it to be that way?
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: cathyslife on July 14, 2013, 08:05
I made a folder to drag weblocs of all your blogs into, so that every week I can go through and post a comment. I noticed that some people are requiring login in order to leave a comment on a blog post. I can tell you that for me personally, I will not want to create that many logins just to leave a comment. Right now, there are only 7 posts in this thread. If everyone in the SY network posted a link to their blog, it will already be a large amount. And growing fast.

You, of course, can do whatever you like for your blog page. But I did want to mention that the SY theme allows for moderation of all comments, if you like. This way, you can weed out any irrelevant posts. I understand why you would want to capture login data. Are there other advantages to requiring login that I might be missing?
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: alberto on July 14, 2013, 08:19
Good idea, mine is
[url]http://stockimages.kerioak.com[/url] ([url]http://stockimages.kerioak.com[/url]) com/blog


Christine, your link above is messed up. Or did you mean for it to be that way?


The link is http://stockimages.kerioak.com/blog (http://stockimages.kerioak.com/blog)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: steheap on July 14, 2013, 09:15
Quote
This way, you can weed out any irrelevant posts.

Thanks for your comment on my blog, Cathy. I don't require login, but I do moderate each post. I have Akismet running which weeds out 90% of the spam posts really effectively, and so the ones I see are almost always valid posts. I just approve them and they are online.

Steve
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: Ron on July 14, 2013, 09:19
Quote
This way, you can weed out any irrelevant posts.

Thanks for your comment on my blog, Cathy. I don't require login, but I do moderate each post. I have Akismet running which weeds out 90% of the spam posts really effectively, and so the ones I see are almost always valid posts. I just approve them and they are online.

Steve
I have the same approach  :)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: cathyslife on July 14, 2013, 09:32
same here.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: grsphoto on July 14, 2013, 10:10
I noticed that some people are requiring login in order to leave a comment on a blog post. I can tell you that for me personally, I will not want to create that many logins just to leave a comment.


I was going to make a similar comment... then I check my own settings.

Whoops. I am one of the people I was going to comment about    ::)   :-\

For those who want to change this.

Settings>Disscussion settings
   Other comment settings          Unclick User must be registered and logged in to comment

Comment away
http://glennspecht.com/wp/category/s10-blogs/c59-lazy-photographer-photo-blog/ (http://glennspecht.com/wp/category/s10-blogs/c59-lazy-photographer-photo-blog/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: klsbear on July 14, 2013, 10:21
I'm just diving into the blogging aspect of the theme.  Here's the link to my blog and my first real post.

http://www.karensarragaphotography.com/blog/ (http://www.karensarragaphotography.com/blog/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: cathyslife on July 14, 2013, 10:31
I'm just diving into the blogging aspect of the theme.  Here's the link to my blog and my first real post.

[url]http://www.karensarragaphotography.com/blog/[/url] ([url]http://www.karensarragaphotography.com/blog/[/url])


I don't think you have comments turned on. Go to Settings>Discussion and go through the settings there. Also Settings>Reading, there are a few settings there at the top. Be sure to define your Blog page as your posts page.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: EmberMike on July 14, 2013, 10:43

I ended up not wanting to keep a blog on my Symbiostock site, but I do keep one on my other similarly-named site. Matter of fact my other site has become pretty much just a blog, and a small portfolio of stock and other design work.

Both links are in my signature.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: sc on July 14, 2013, 10:47
Ok, also  fixed my site so you don't need to register to comment.

Steve
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: EmberMike on July 14, 2013, 10:51

Allowing open commenting in a WordPress system will undoubtedly result in comment spam. I'd highly recommend getting some sort of comment spam plugin or switching your commenting system to Disqus to cut down on spam. I use Disqus and get almost zero spam comments. Before that, I was spending a lot of time moderating comment spam.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: klsbear on July 14, 2013, 10:57
I'm just diving into the blogging aspect of the theme.  Here's the link to my blog and my first real post.

[url]http://www.karensarragaphotography.com/blog/[/url] ([url]http://www.karensarragaphotography.com/blog/[/url])


I don't think you have comments turned on. Go to Settings>Discussion and go through the settings there. Also Settings>Reading, there are a few settings there at the top. Be sure to define your Blog page as your posts page.


Thanks for the notice Cathy.  That was a tricky one to track down.  I had the settings and discussion info correct and in editing the post itself it seemed like Comments were on.  I finally found in the view Posts/Quick Edits view the "allow comments" box was not checked to allow comments.  I probably missed the check box when writing the original post and the Quick Edits view seemed to be the only place to correct that.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: klsbear on July 14, 2013, 11:01
I made a folder to drag weblocs of all your blogs into, so that every week I can go through and post a comment. I noticed that some people are requiring login in order to leave a comment on a blog post. I can tell you that for me personally, I will not want to create that many logins just to leave a comment. Right now, there are only 7 posts in this thread. If everyone in the SY network posted a link to their blog, it will already be a large amount. And growing fast.

You, of course, can do whatever you like for your blog page. But I did want to mention that the SY theme allows for moderation of all comments, if you like. This way, you can weed out any irrelevant posts. I understand why you would want to capture login data. Are there other advantages to requiring login that I might be missing?

I'm entering all the blog addresses into a Symbiostock folder in my Feedily Reader so it automatically updates when new blog entries are posted.  I'm not a guru when it comes to SEO but it seems like site traffic plays a role so I figure having subscribers that cause Feedily to reach out regularly to link in and out should be a good thing.  I've added my own site to my reader too just for that reason but if someone has a good argument against using a reader like Feedily I'd be open to changing things.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: cathyslife on July 14, 2013, 11:01

Allowing open commenting in a WordPress system will undoubtedly result in comment spam. I'd highly recommend getting some sort of comment spam plugin or switching your commenting system to Disqus to cut down on spam. I use Disqus and get almost zero spam comments. Before that, I was spending a lot of time moderating comment spam.

I already had an Akismet account, so I just re-activated that. Nice sites, by the way.  :)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: Imagenomad on July 15, 2013, 08:30
OK, removed the need for a login, enabled comments and just posted a freshly minted entry.

http://stockphotology.com/blog/ (http://stockphotology.com/blog/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: quailrunphoto on July 15, 2013, 08:53
Great idea.  Happy to share and constructive comments always welcome.

http://quailrunphoto.com/blog/ (http://quailrunphoto.com/blog/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: quailrunphoto on July 15, 2013, 17:15
This might help to organize the blogs you are interested in.

If you have a WordPress account, you can use the reader function to keep a working list of the blogs you are interested in following.

Attached is a screen shot of my WordPress reader page.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: cathyslife on July 15, 2013, 17:50
Thank you for that David! Very helpful, adding all blog sites to it right now.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: klsbear on July 15, 2013, 18:02
I've been using Feedily because I have other blogs I follow so it was easy to add the Symbiostock blogs but I'll check out the WP option too.  It might be easier to have them all in one place.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: LesPalenik on August 04, 2013, 05:20
Cathy,

Great idea! Thank you for starting it,  here is my blog:

www.advantica.wordpress.com (http://www.advantica.wordpress.com)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: cathyslife on August 04, 2013, 08:45
Cathy,

Great idea! Thank you for starting it,  here is my blog:

[url=http://www.advantica.wordpress.com]www.advantica.wordpress.com[/url] ([url]http://www.advantica.wordpress.com[/url])


No problem...I'm adding you to my blog feed.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: Anita Potter on August 10, 2013, 13:31
I have a blog and after I get done with uploading I'll pay more attention to it.  The blog on my SY site will just be for updates related to it but this one has everything I do on it.

www.mddu.com (http://www.mddu.com)

Not much on it but that'll change once the dust settles.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: djpadavona on August 11, 2013, 09:19
Mine is -

http://dpstockphotos.com/155-2/photography-and-design-blog/ (http://dpstockphotos.com/155-2/photography-and-design-blog/)

I warn you ahead of time that until the SY Page of Posts bug gets fixed, your blog is going to be a bit of a mess. I have nearly 60 posts and they are all on the same page. SY doesn't recognize the 6 posts per page limit. I know Leo is working on it, and I don't want to keep bringing it up, but I'm not sure it's worth a lot of effort blogging until the bug gets tracked down.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: CrackerClips on August 11, 2013, 10:57
Mine is -

[url]http://dpstockphotos.com/155-2/photography-and-design-blog/[/url] ([url]http://dpstockphotos.com/155-2/photography-and-design-blog/[/url])

I warn you ahead of time that until the SY Page of Posts bug gets fixed, your blog is going to be a bit of a mess. I have nearly 60 posts and they are all on the same page. SY doesn't recognize the 6 posts per page limit. I know Leo is working on it, and I don't want to keep bringing it up, but I'm not sure it's worth a lot of effort blogging until the bug gets tracked down.


Thanks, I hadn't heard about this bug before.  I've been racking my brain trying to figure out why all of my posts show up on the same page even though I'd set it in settings to only show max 3 posts.  At this point my previous blog posts were all video related and each had two or three videos embedded.  Imagine how long it takes to load a page containing 15 or more blog posts with a total of 30+ videos.  At least this saves me the time of trying to look for a fix. 
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: Redneck on August 11, 2013, 11:34
Just set a "Read more" tag after a short intro text to direct the viewers to the full content page. This way you will only have teasers on the blog roll page. When somebody wants to read the full article then he can click the headline of the post to get to it.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: djpadavona on August 11, 2013, 13:35
Just set a "Read more" tag after a short intro text to direct the viewers to the full content page. This way you will only have teasers on the blog roll page. When somebody wants to read the full article then he can click the headline of the post to get to it.

Yeah I do something similar on my main Front page. If I have a new blog article to highlight, I manually create an entry on my front page giving a summary type preview of the post, and then "Read More" to click to the full post. But that doesn't save the Page of Posts problem, which unfortunately people will find and attempt to read. I've considered taking down my link to the Page of Posts, but I don't want to eliminate the links to the posts themselves and cause Google to wonder why they are "hidden".

Another frustration is that the popular Taxonomy Related Posts plug-in just doesn't work with Symbiostock. If you want to keep people on your website, then after they finish reading a post they are interested in, you show them related material that they can click to. I use that plug-in on all my blogs, but it won't work with SY. I have found that people visit 40% to 50% more pages with the Related Posts than without it.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: djpadavona on August 11, 2013, 14:08
Update - I was able to get Related Posts to show up in the Footer. Not exactly what I wanted but it will have to do for now.
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: Kerioak~Christine on August 12, 2013, 10:13
I have just added a new blog - might make a useful read for those who have not seen this yet :D
http://stockimages.kerioak.com/symbiostock-search-engine-for-firefox/ (http://stockimages.kerioak.com/symbiostock-search-engine-for-firefox/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: plrang on August 13, 2013, 09:05
Well.. I have a few, but this is the closest one http://imagerion.com/ (http://imagerion.com/) see you there :)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: Kerioak~Christine on September 06, 2013, 12:17
I missed this one when it was posted - maybe we should all add it to our signature links as it is sensible and has lots of useful links attached

http://stock.imagerion.com/symbiostock-top-tips/ (http://stock.imagerion.com/symbiostock-top-tips/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: Leo Blanchette on September 06, 2013, 12:53
Update - I was able to get Related Posts to show up in the Footer. Not exactly what I wanted but it will have to do for now.

Will fix today
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: LesPalenik on October 17, 2013, 02:22
Just posted an article about Symbiostock on my blogsite:

http://advantica.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/symbiostock-paradigm-shift-in-image-stock-world/ (http://advantica.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/symbiostock-paradigm-shift-in-image-stock-world/)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: Ron on October 17, 2013, 03:01
Just posted an article about Symbiostock on my blogsite:

[url]http://advantica.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/symbiostock-paradigm-shift-in-image-stock-world/[/url] ([url]http://advantica.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/symbiostock-paradigm-shift-in-image-stock-world/[/url])
Great read, little tip, I personally like justified textlay out. It looks cleaner imo. Cheers :)
Title: Re: Symbiostock Blogs
Post by: LesPalenik on October 17, 2013, 18:00
Thanks, Ron. Due to my limited knowIedge of Wordpress,  I have always used just the left justified text.
How do you specify the full text justification?