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Posts
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Hi Robin,
Without trying to be disrespectful, I don’t know you, or of you. I think many of us are hearing about you for the first time since SymbioStock went into a speed wobble.
What we all are is very confused, and I speak for myself when I say … do I really want to make a decision about this? We have to invest more time into a project that no one seems to treat with the respect it deserves. Now we will have to learn new ways and new methods, and Woo-hoos and What-nots. I write almost fulltime now. and I cannot spend weeks rebuilding a site that I am yet to make a sale on.
So most of us are just watching what is happening from the outside. What happened behind closed doors has never been shared with us.
Hi Robin-
Couple of questions regarding migration:
1. My legacy site seems to take up a lot of disk space, perhaps something to do with all of the preview images generated and whatnot. How will the plugin compare?
2. I see on your demo site the watermark is Symbiostock. Do we get to have personalized watermarks?
Scenic: WordPress generates thumbnails for each product, and accordingly it will take up some space, but not much more than any other system would. I can’t specify exactly why your legacy site takes up space (or whether that is abnormal or not). The thumbnails generated by the new Symbiostock are stripped down and reasonably efficiently sized although I have kept the quality quite high as you don’t want to dissuade customers with JPEG artifacting.
Most of the current features can be read on our news release regarding the demo, including watermarking:
http://www.symbiostock.org/the-symbiostock-demo-is-live/
Please explain – if it’s free how does it fund development?
“As an added bonus, Symbiostock Express will be free for all hosting clients. This service is going to be the primary way we fund Symbiostock’s development.”
Steve
http://www.softlightstock.comPlease explain – if it’s free how does it fund development? “As an added bonus, Symbiostock Express will be free for all hosting clients. This service is going to be the primary way we fund Symbiostock’s development.”
The way I understood it from a previous post was that the Symbiostock plugin was free. You can add that to any theme of your choice that is woo-commerce compatible. If you want his Express theme you can purchase it but if you opt to go with his full hosting package the theme is included. In short, you get the basic plugin for free. You have the option to purchase themes from him which he hopes will fund future development.
Hi Robin-
My legacy installation runs on WordPress installed in a directory on my domain (the photo site is just one part of my total website). I was thinking of just creating another directory, installing WordPress to it, and putting the plugin version of Symbiostock on that. However, recent experiences on my website have opened my eyes to some possible problems, so now I’ve got some questions:
1. Will the media importer for the plugin work if both installations are on the same domain, just different directories?
2. Will it even work to have two WordPress installations on the same domain, in different directories? My concern with this is that the database for the WordPress installation is separate from the installation in the directory– it contains things like user logins, and a lot more. Since it is separate, wouldn’t both WordPress installations then be trying to write to the same database, and wouldn’t that then end up with a big conflict between the two? I don’t want to have to incur the expense and trouble of a whole new domain to try out the plugin, and I’m pretty heavily invested in the current domain.
Thanks
Rick (ScenicOregon)
Hey Rick – great questions.
1) Yes, WordPress is extremely good at isolating itself. During development I have uninstalled and re-installed Symbiostock on fresh installs of wordpress in root domains, subdirectories, and have had them running concurrently on the same domain. Some plugins may not be coded in a way that isolates their data to the wordpress directory, but in the backend there is a variable called ‘ABSPATH’ which is basically the root directory of that specific wordpress install. All development goes through that. So if you were to say create a directory called ‘yourdomain.com/w’, everything, including your media that is imported through Symbiostock will be placed from within that directory.
2) Although I haven’t done this because mixing wordpress installs on databases can be dicey, wordpress does have an easy function to run on the same database as other wordpress installs. When you first setup your wordpress install, you have the choice of changing the table prefix for all the tables for that install. So, for example, the base prefix is usually ‘wp_’, and is probably what your current site uses. You can easily just change that to ‘wp2_’ when you install the new version. It will ask you for the table prefix during the install.
So, all in all, there is very little customization you require and wordpress is already built to accomplish what you are asking about. Symbiostock cleanly follows suit. I can’t vouch for other plugins, however, as some may create their own tables or not use the ‘ABSPATH’ variable to drive all their data storage, so there could be conflicts with other plugins.
I also forgot to mention that you won’t need to go through all that trouble to test the plugin out – our hosting solution will have a free trial that you can use to fully investigate it. I may even provide a permanently free account you can use with limited storage space (like 5 megabytes or something) so you can fiddle with it and upgrade anytime in the future.
The importer is now online via the downloads link on the bottom of the page. If you encounter any issues, post them here and I will try to rectify them quickly.
Is there a post to explain the steps for migrating from the legacy symbio to the new? I do not plan to buy another domain and would like to use the same domain/web server.
Hi Nikd,
Read this doc:
http://www.symbiostock.org/docs/symbiostock-importerexporter/
And follow the link provided to download the Importer/Exporter. Remember to do a test run before going through the whole site to ensure you have everything running as expected. If you need assistance, let me know.
I followed the excellent documents, but then wrote my own primer on how I migrated my own site. It is here:
http://www.backyardsilver.com/2015/07/learning-points-from-creating-a-new-symbiostock-website/
As my blog post explains, I moved myself to a new server during this process, and I’m migrating BackyardSilver today to that same server. So if the link doesn’t work, please bear with me!
Steve
What do I need to do if I don’t want to / have another website? Is there a way or would I need to buy another domain?
What do I need to do if I don’t want to / have another website? Is there a way or would I need to buy another domain?
No, you don’t need to buy another domain.
I think there are 2 easy ways to do it.1. You install the Symbiostock plugin into your existing WP after switching the theme to anything else but the old Symbiostock theme (and after installing WooCommerce) and then start the migration process. I didn’t do it that way but I’m sure others might be able to help if you want to go this route.
2. Here’s what I did. I created a directory like “new-symbio” or whatever and installed a brand new WordPress + WooCommerce based on the default WP theme (I think it was TwentyFifteen). Then I installed the Symbiostock plugin. Then I started the image/product migration which took some hours. After everything was migrated I simply pointed my domain to that “new-symbio” directory.
I’m trying to migrate on the new engine and have downloaded the files needed
Next step is so
<span style=”color: #383838; font-family: ‘Open Sans’, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;”>”In order to use this, you will need to install it on your legacy install and on your new install. If they are both on the same server, then you only have to install it there.”</span>
and I’m already lost. Can someone tell me what this mean in practise?
How do I install on my legacy install? (have no clue what a legacy or legacy install is by the way….)
Thanks….
jean
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