Coming Soon: Symbiostock Maps & Symzio Link Exchange Widget

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Announcing the coming of two powerful new tools to get you excited towards the end of the year:

Symbiostock Maps

Coming soon is a powerful new addon called Symbiostock Maps. Symbiostock Maps will allow you to display multiple photos and media on an interactive world map. This optional addon for Symbiostock Pro uses the Google Maps API to insert a customizable map anywhere on your website. If your media is geotagged (i.e. assigned with a geographical location), Symbiostock Maps will use that information to present the location of the image on a Google map.

Multiple maps can be created to focus on different regions of the world. You can choose how many images you want shown; whether the images show up as thumbnails or location markers; customize colors; thumbnail proportions and more. When a thumbnail/location marker is clicked, a popup opens up showing a larger preview of the image – which if clicked takes the customer to the actual product page.

Take a look at a live example of Symbiostock Maps in action:

Symbiostock Maps Demo 1

To illustrate how customizable this addon is, here is another example which displays the map in ‘Hybrid’ mode and with completely different visual settings:

Symbiostock Maps Demo 2

Symbiostock Maps is perfect for artists who capture travel locations, architectural marvels and natural wonders, whether it be via photography, video or illustrations.

Further details on how to make the most of Symbiostock Maps will become available with the release of this exciting new addon.

Symzio Link Exchange Widget

Symbiostock Maps

In the recent months Symbiostock Forums have been buzzing with independent artists trying to collaborate and brainstorm ways of supporting each other through mutually beneficial link exchange agreements. Creating niche specific link exchange partnerships can be a valuable way of attracting visitors to sites, both through direct traffic exchange and by triggering search engines.

However, creating a link exchange system isn’t always easy to keep track of and requires ongoing monitoring and maintenance. Tasks such as checking your partnered sites to ensure that your links are still there, or checking whether the sites you’re linking to are still online and implementing updates are ongoing aspects of link exchanges that are time consuming and not much fun to do – because most of us would rather spend that energy working on our creative projects.

And so we decided to create the Symzio Link Exchange Widget – a fully automated link exchange system that effortlessly sets up a link exchange area on any page, or section, of your website. Some of the advanced features of the widget include:

  • Auto checking contributor sites to make sure they are online. Sites that go offline are automatically excluded so that there are no ‘dead’ links.
  • Only includes sites that also display the widget.
  • Dynamically altering the rank order in which sites are displayed sites based on how much each individual site contributes to the link exchange program. The widget uses advanced mechanisms to calculate how much each site is promoting the Symzio Link Exchange Widget – sites providing greater support are listed higher on the page and this is automatically updated.
  • The widget does not output Javascript; it outputs HTML which can be indexed by search engines and contains hard coded links to encourage SEO.
  • Will only display contributors who have been with Symzio for at least 1 month.

Each contributor’s listing will source information directly from their Symzio public profile, including:

  • The contributor’s business name
  • Description with their profile image
  • Link to their independent website
  • Link to their Symzio contributor profile
  • Links to Facebook & Twitter pages

Although there will be a default minimum number of listings displayed, you will be able to set how many contributors you want to list on your link exchange area.

The Symzio Link Exchange Widget will become available soon and will be bundled with the base Symbiostock Pro plugin.

As we continue to band together as a proactive community of independent artists, the greater our opportunity for success becomes. And with innovative tools such as this new widget we can easily keep up our momentum up and further growth of our movement!

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Symbiostock Anytype: Sell RAW Files Alongside JPEGS & more!

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Symbiostock Anytype is now available from the Symbiostock Store!

What is Symbiostock Anytype?
Symbiostock Anytype is an optional addon for Symbiostock Pro. Symbiostock Anytype requires Symbiostock Pro 3.3 and is not compatible with older versions of Pro.

What does Symbiostock Anytype do?
Symbiostock Anytype permits you to upload a file that you can associate to any product within Symbiostock to be served to customers upon purchase instead of the original uploaded media file. The file is sold through the same individual product page as the corresponding Symbioctock media product. The associated file can be any type of file, for example: RAW, ZIP, PDF and DOC files.

Why use Symbiostock Anytype?
Have you ever thought about selling a ZIP bundle that contains an image file and a model release document? Or a ZIP bundle with a vector file and a JPEG? How about selling RAW versions of your images? What a revolutionary idea?! These are just some of the most useful ways of utilizing Symbiostock Anytype.

You can also be creative and make image packs – create a four pack of Christmas pictures and sell them during the upcoming holiday season. And if you really want to think outside of the box, you could even sell PDF tutorials on how you created a particular image – of course you may not want to give away such trade secrets! But the point is, Symbiostock Anytype allows you to customize the downloads for each product listing in powerful new way.

What media product types can Symbiostock Anytype be used with?
You can use Symbiostock Anytype with any media type, be it videos, images, or vectors.

Symbiostock Anytype

How do you use Symbiostock Anytype?
For a detailed guide on how to use Symbiostock Anytype to create downloadable RAW files / a Packaged ZIP file for a vector / Image Packs, please see our documentation.

As a brief overview, the way to use Symbiostock Anytype starts with creating a new license using the usual license creation steps. Once you have the new license set up, you are required to specify an arbitrary ‘postfix’ in the ‘Arbitrate download’ field. This postfix is then used in naming the file that you which to serve (there is a specific syntax formula that must be used). Symbiostock Anytype looks for files with the specified postfix and associates it to the correlating product using the syntax formula. Once associated to a product and updated by the cron processor, the new license shows up on the product’s license options.

When the license is purchased, a download for the associated file is served to customers.

Is there a limit to the number of arbitrary download licenses you can create with Symbiostock Anytype?
No. You can have as many arbitrary download licenses as you want, even more than one per image.

How much does Symbiostock Anytype cost?
$29. This includes lifetime updates. You can grab Symbiostock Anytype from the Symbiostock Store.

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Announcing Symbiostock Anytype

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We’ve had a number of users ask about whether or not Symbiostock provides the option of serving non-standard downloadable files alongside regular Symbiostock products. For example, for any given media product, to provide your customer the option of purchasing a RAW version of the image on the same product page. Or the option of providing a ZIP bundle on the same product page. Currently, Symbiostock does not have any such facility.

BUT…

But, as long standing users probably know by now, our development team is a highly progressive one. So it follows suit that we try to provide high demand tools for our growing community to make your lives as independent artists that much easier. And with that being said, the good news is that very soon you’ll be able to grab Symbiostock Anytype – a new Symbiostock Pro addon that will allow you to do exactly what was described above. You’ll be able to sell RAW files through the same individual product page as the corresponding Symbiostock media product. Or sell a ZIP bundle that contains both an image file and a model release PDF file. Or a ZIP containing a vector file and a JPEG. You could even create image packs whereby you bundle as many images as you want within a single ZIP and sell it as a special offer. There are many possibilities.

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Symbiostock Anytype will permit you to have as many arbitrary download licenses as you want, even more than one per media product. You will be able to use this with any media type, be it videos, images, or vectors.

Symbiostock Anytype will be part of a line of purchasable ‘addons’ created for Symbiostock Pro. Addon software such as this allows you to choose how extensive your Symbiostock Pro install becomes, and only extend features based on if/when you need it. Paid addons will also help to fund Symbiostock development and growth.

Symbiostock Anytype will be released on October 13th and will be available through the Symbiostock Store for $29.

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