You will notice that there are featured images, beautiful sliders, categories, and when you go to any of the image product pages, you can choose a resolution to purchase for immediate download.

In a nutshell, Symbiostock allows anyone, whether it be an amateur photographer or professional illustrator, to effortlessly upload their new images to their website, and have them be put on sale through a secured download system for customers, automatically.

But that’s not all. The Symbiostock project is growing by leaps and bounds and has now become your one-stop repository for all your media, with optional addons that allow you to integrate videos, as well as distribute your stuff to third party agencies.

Don’t have a website? Don’t know anything about WordPress? Don’t worry.

Our goal is ease and automation. Once you’re setup, all you have to do is upload your images to Symbiostock, and it will do the rest.

Here is an example of a Symbiostock artist that really show how great a Symbiostock powered site can look:

Amazeindesign.com: Gorgeous vector art
https://amazeindesign.com/

Interested in getting started? If you don’t already have your own webhost, we strongly recommend checking out our hosting guide which is specialized to make the setup process as easy as possible. Just sign up, follow the installation guide, and your site will be up in less than 30 minutes.

The post What is Symbiostock? appeared first on Symbiostock Knowledgebase & Documentation.

Adding A New Contributor

1) Within your WP Dashboard, go to Users > Add New User. Populate the necessary fields with your contributor’s details and make sure to enter the correct email address of the new contributor.  For ‘Role’ select Symbiostock Contributor from the drop down list.  Select the ‘Send the new user an email about their account’ option. Click the ‘Add New User’ button to save. Once you have completed this step, your newly created contributor will receive an email containing their WP account’s username and a link to reset their password.  Once the contributor has reset their WP account password, they will be able to login to their own WP dashboard control panel.

2) Your new contributor will appear in your User list. Go to ‘All Users’ then hover over your newly added contributor’s username and click ‘Edit’. Scroll down to the ‘Symbiostock’ section. You will see the contributor’s upload directory path and unfilled fields for their FTP information. Go into your cPanel (or whichever web hosting control panel you use) for your website and add a new FTP account for your contributor, making sure to use the FTP directory path specified by Symbiostock for their home directory. Make note of the FTP username and FTP password that you create for your contributor, you will need these details for the next step.

3) Now go back to the Edit User page and add that FTP username and FTP password to those fields. Click the ‘Update User’ button to save. Once you have done this, your contributor will be able to see their FTP credentials within their WP Dashboard by going to ‘Profile’ and scrolling down to the Symbiostock section.

Uploading Media

Contributors can only add media by uploading files via FTP. To upload media files, your contributor will need to install an FTP client (such as FileZilla) and connect to their FTP directory using the credentials you’ve created. Contributors can view their FTP information by logging into their WP Dashboard > Profile and then scrolling down to the Symbiostock section. Once media files are uploaded via and parsed by your Cron processor, your contributor will be able to view and edit their media files via their WP dashboard > Symbiostock > Media. Each contributor can only access and edit their own images.

Note: Unlike contributor accounts, the administrative account can upload media either via FTP, or the web uploader, just like a standard Symbiostock site.

Deleting A Contributor

Within your WP Dashboard, go to Users. Hover over the username of the contributor you wish to delete and click ‘Delete’. If that contributor does not have any media files in their account, all you need to do is click the ‘Confirm Deletion’ button and that contributor will be deleted from the system. However, if the contributor has media files, you will be asked ‘What should be done with content owned by this user?’ and you need to select one of the following options:

• Delete all content.
  If you select this option, all the media files uploaded by the contributor will be deleted.

or

• Attribute all content to: [Dropdown List]
  If you select this option, all of the media files uploaded by the contributor will be kept but you need to assign those files to another account. Select the account you want to assign content to from the drop down list.

After you have made your selection, click the ‘Confirm Deletion’ button to delete the contributor.

Once a contributor has been deleted, they will no longer have access to their WP dashboard control panel. Deleting a contributor does not automatically delete their FTP account and you will need to login to your cPanel (or whichever web hosting control panel you use) for your website and delete the associated FTP account.

Information Pertaining to Your Central Administrative Account

It is through your administrator that the overall settings for your website is controlled. Your contributors cannot access control settings such as Symbiostock Settings, the website’s appearance, plugins, Woocommerce settings, Users, Posts, Pages etc.

Whilst your contributors can only access and edit their own media files through their WP account, as the administrator you will see and have the ability to edit all of the media uploaded by all of your contributors through your Symbiostock > Media page.

Compatible with Symbiostock Premium Plugins

Premium Symbiostock plugins including Symbiostock Video and Symbiostock Submitter are compatible with Symbiostock Vendors and these can be added through the administrative account. So if you’re using Symbiostock Video, for example, your contributors will be able to add video media to your store. And with Symbiostock Submitter,  the administrative account can submit media to third party agencies.

Plugins can only be added and controlled through the central administrative account.

Symzio Integration

Symbiostock Vendors is compatible with Symzio. To be integrated with Symzio, just like a normal Symbiostock powered website, all you need to do is meet the eligibility criteria and apply. Integration is exactly the same as process as with a regular Symbiostock site. Once connected, your website integrates into Symzio as one business. This means the combined pool of published media is piped through only one single Symzio account.

Symzio integration can only be added through the central administrative account.

WooCommerce Product Vendors

Symbiostock Vendors is fully compatible with WooCommerce Product Vendors. The version it is compatible with is view-able via the Symbiostock Vendors purchase page. When choosing to use WooCommerce Product Vendors in conjunction with Symbiostock Vendors, ensure you enable this setting in  your Symbiostock > Settings area. Once enabled, when you create WooCommerce Vendor Admins or managers, they will automatically also become Symbiostock Contributors. It is recommended that you restrict each admin to one vendor, and no longer create Symbiostock Contributors directly. Please note that if you use a different version of WooCommerce Product Vendors than is listed on our purchase page, we cannot guarantee bug-free functionality. Additionally, if you experience any shortcomings or bugs in the integration, don’t hesitate to reach out to us via our forum and we will do our best to look into it.

The post Symbiostock Vendors appeared first on Symbiostock Knowledgebase & Documentation.

IMPORTANT: Before proceeding with the steps described in this guide, you must first create a license by following the steps in the License Quick Guide.

Once you have created a regular licence, proceed with the steps below to set your desired Symbiostock Anytype licence.

At the bottom of your license editing page, you will see the Symbiostock Anytype addon. If you set the arbitrary download postfix field, when a customer makes a purchase of a product with that license, rather than using the original file for delivery, it will instead look for a file with this postfix within the ss_media folder and deliver this to the customer.

The syntax is as follows – if your file has a product ID of 2563 (you can find this by hovering over the product name in your Symbiostock > Media list or just edit it and look at the URL), and an arbitrary download postfix of ‘pack.zip’, the file to upload would be ‘ss_2563_arb_pack.zip’.

So, let’s examine a few ways in which this could be used.

Providing a RAW file for the customer

You set the arbitrary postix in your license edit page to ‘rawfile.arw’. You upload all your JPEG images and Symbiostock processes them. You then manually get the IDs from within Symbiostock for each file and rename the RAW image on your computer to ss_38372_arb_rawfile.arw, where 38372 is the ID of the file. You then upload this file directly into the ss_media folder in your Symbiostock install.

Now, you can offer both JPEG licenses and RAW licenses for that image, and charge differently based on the license. When a customer buys the JPEG version, Symbiostock will resize accordingly. When they purchase the arbitrary download license, Symbiostock will deliver your uploaded file.

Providing a packaged ZIP file for a vector

You set the arbitrary postix in your license edit page to ‘zippack.zip’. You upload all your vetors and Symbiostock processes them. You then manually get the IDs from within Symbiostock for each file. You then create a ZIP file on your computer for each vector and add both the JPEG and vector into that zip file and rename the file to ss_38372_arb_zippack.zip, where 38372 is the ID of the file. You then upload this file directly into the ss_media folder in your Symbiostock install.

Now, you can offer a packaged file to customers that includes both the vector and a JPEG file, and charge differently based on the license. When a customer buys the JPEG version, Symbiostock will resize accordingly. When they purchase the arbitrary download license, Symbiostock will deliver your uploaded file.

Image packs

Along with having individual images for sale, you can include 10, 20, or even a thousand in a ZIP file. Then, as exampled above, upload the ZIP file with the correct syntax and offer it for sale as a special image bundle and create a JPEG file for the parent product that is just a placeholder for the bundle. Don’t offer any other licenses for that product and you now have a Symbiostock product that has no single image that will ever be provided to the customer. When they make a purchase, the only license they can choose is your arbitrary one, in which case they will receive the ZIP file.

Tips

• You can have as many arbitrary download licenses as you want, even more than one per image
• You can use this with any media type, be it videos, images, or vectors.
• You can even include non-media files using this system – have a book, or music, or other digital products alone or packaged in a zip file.
• When viewing the product as a customer, if the Anytype file does not exist for that license, it will be disabled and Symbiostock will prevent it from being purchased.
• After purchase, if the file does not exist, Symbiostock will not be able to complete the order, and an error will be posted in your Symbiostock dashboard.

The post Symbiostock Anytype: Arbitrating downloads appeared first on Symbiostock Knowledgebase & Documentation.

You can manually run the scheduler by going to Symbiostock > Settings > System and clicking on ‘Run Now’. A window will pop up and this initiates the scheduler. If you prefer manually doing it, you can do that – but it is highly recommended that you tell your system to run this automatically as it just makes things a whole lot easier. On Linux, these jobs are called ‘cron jobs’.

Different systems will implement this differently, but here are some links to some popular control panels:

Cpanel

Plesk

Please note that the script to run is in Symbiostock > Settings > System – copy that entire line into your scheduled task. Also, as control panel versions change, some aspects of setting up the scheduled task may differ from the links above, so search for the best solution for your specific control panel for optimal results.

Once the processor is scheduled, you don’t ever have to look at it again. It will keep checking and adding new images, regenerating thumbnails, and doing all the organization in the background.

If you have any issues with your processor, please post your query in the forums.

The post Setting up the Scheduler/Image Processor appeared first on Symbiostock Knowledgebase & Documentation.

There are two ways of adding the Symzio Link Exchange widget to your WordPress site – as a widget or shortcode. The widget method is easier, but is dependent on your theme’s implementation of widget areas. Shortcodes can require a bit more if you want it customized,  but are more dynamic and can be placed in any post and on any page.

The Widget

The widget can be accessed by navigating to Appearance > Widgets. It will appear in the list of available widgets as Symzio Link Exchange. You can then add this to any widget area. Once added, you can open it to access all the settings.

The Shortcode

The shortcode is a snippet of text you can stick anywhere in WordPress and it will automatically replace it with the Symzio Link Exchange widget. The shortcode for the Symzio Link Exchange widget is:

[symzio-link-exchange]

If you add this anywhere, the widget will show up with all the default settings. If this works for you, great. If you want to change stuff in it, such as the title or limits, you need to then add some custom settings to the shortcode.

Optional shortcode settings

Here is a list of the available options:

title – An <h3> title that will show up right above your widget. Use single quotations around multiple word titles, for example ‘Link Exchange Partners’.
max – The maximum number of results to display (minimum of 5. 0 for all)
imgs – Whether to display thumbnails or not (0 or 1)
desc – The size of the user’s profile bio (full, short, or none)
size – The overall size of the widget (mini, small, or normal)
stack – Whether to stack partners vertically or horizontally (vertical or horizontal)
id – a custom CSS class to attach to this instance of the widget

An example of a shortcode where you want to make a more minimal display:

[symzio-link-exchange title= desc=none size=mini]

The post Using the Symzio Link Exchange appeared first on Symbiostock Knowledgebase & Documentation.

There are two ways of adding the Symzio Widget to your WordPress site – as a widget or shortcode. The widget method is easier, but is dependent on your theme’s implementation of widget areas. Shortcodes can require a bit more if you want it customized,  but are more dynamic and can be placed in any post and on any page.

The Widget

The widget can be accessed by navigating to Appearance > Widgets. It will appear in the list of available widgets as Symzio Widget. You can then add this to any widget area. Once added, you can open it to access all the settings.

The Shortcode

The shortcode is a snippet of text you can stick anywhere in WordPress and it will automatically replace it with the Symzio Widget widget. The shortcode for Symzio Widget is:

[symzio-search-widget]

If you add this anywhere, the widget will show up with all the default settings. If this works for you, great. If you want to change stuff in it, such as the size or limits, you need to then add some custom settings to the shortcode.

Optional shortcode settings

Here is a list of the available options:

title – An <h3> title that will show up right above your widget
max – The maximum number of results to display (minimum of 1, maximum of 10)
w – The width of each thumbnail
h – The height of each thumbnail
context – Whether to display the image details (0 or 1)
ack – your Symzio affiliate ID to earn commissions on sales
id – a custom CSS class to attach to this instance of the widget

An example of a shortcode where you want to change the thumbnail size and context:

[symzio-search-widget w=150 context=0]

The post Using the Symzio Widget appeared first on Symbiostock Knowledgebase & Documentation.

In addition, licenses can be personalized for a variety of other uses, including print sales, physical products, and other mechanisms that do not directly involve digital sales. Many of our users even use it simply as a way of distributing promotional images for free and keeping track of who is downloading what.

Below is a summary of the key licensing features Symbiostock provides:

• Create as many global licenses as you need.
• Each license can be fully customized, from image size to title, description, and default price.
• Global licenses can be applied to any media in your store.
• Apply licenses to all the media in your store automatically in bulk or during saves.
• Apply licenses based on media type (raster, vector etc.)
• Apply licenses based on media size
• Apply licenses based on tags (include certain keywords, exclude others)
• Apply licenses based on editorial, exclusive.
• Apply license changes (price, size etc.) to all products automatically.
• Create JPEG licenses for vector images and set the size of the rendered file.

The automatic license application filters can be mixed and matched to provide both simple and highly personalized licensing structures to fit any need.

Your licenses will all link to your central ‘Licenses’ page. This is created by Symbiostock and must remain a ‘Page’ in your WordPress install. You can edit this page from within your control panel to describe the legalese of your licenses.

Details on how to use licensing features can be found in this section.

The post Licences Overview appeared first on Symbiostock Knowledgebase & Documentation.

It uses the GPS field in your product edit pages to determine the location of the media. This is automatically populated if your media has GPS metadata already embedded.

There are two ways of adding Symbiostock Maps to your WordPress site – as a widget or shortcode. The widget method is easier, but is dependent on your theme’s implementation of widget areas. Shortcodes can require a bit more if you want it customized,  but are more dynamic and can be placed in any post and on any page.

The Widget

The widget can be accessed by navigating to Appearance > Widgets. It will appear in the list of available widgets as Symbiostock Maps. You can then add this to any widget area. Once added, you can open it to access all the settings.

The Shortcode

The shortcode is a snippet of text you can stick anywhere in WordPress and it will automatically replace it with the Symbiostock Maps widget. The shortcode for Symbiostock Maps is:

[ss-maps-widget]

If you add this anywhere, the widget will show up with all the default settings. If this works for you, great. If you want to change stuff in it, such as the map color or size, you need to then add some custom settings to the shortcode.

Optional shortcode settings

Here is a list of the available options:

title – An optional title that will appear above your widget. Use single quotations around multiple word titles, for example ‘Interactive Map’.
max – The maximum number of images to display
w – The width of the widget (if no unit is specified defaults to px)
h – The height of the widget
bright – the brightness of the maps display
color – the color overlay of the maps display
start – the location to start search for images from
mtype – the type of map to display – (ROADMAP, SATELLITE, HYBRID, or TERRAIN)
thumbs – set to 0 if you do not want thumbnails to be used
thumbw – the maximum thumbnail width
thumbh – the maximum thumbnail height
popimgw – the maximum popup image width
popimgh – the maximum popup image height
popicocolor – the media type icon color
popicosize – the media type icon size
poptitlecolor – the title color
poptitlefontsize – the title font size
id – a custom CSS class to attach to this instance of the widget

An example of a shortcode where you want to change the icon size and color:

[ss-maps-widget popicosize=25 popicocolor=#J98J8]

Tips:

• If you traveled to a specific location and want to showcase that in a blog post, throw in the shortcode and just change the ‘start’ option to the travel destination. This way the maps module will search first for media that is closest to that location.
• The maps zoom level will automatically adjust to include all the images Symbiostock finds based on your start location. So if you put a start location in Brazil, but you only have images in New York, the map will automatically move to New York and zoom to fit all the nearest media there.
• The maximum number of images to display is an important variable if you want to target specific locations – if you put this too high, the map will keep looking for media closest to your target location, even if it ends up being thousands of miles away. If you only have 5 images in Egypt, and you want to focus only on Egypt, change the ‘max’ option to 5, and the ‘start’ option to Egypt.
• You can override a majority of the style options available both via shortcode and the widget by using CSS to manipulate the class names embedded in the plugin itself. You can find these by right clicking on the popup box and inspecting the elements.
• If you just want to use the maps module to show a map without images, change the ‘max’ to 0 and set your ‘start’ location.
• All the variables in the shortcode are also available via the widget, and it’s better to formulate how you want your map to look via the widget first then manually convert it to a shortcode if you want to do some heavy customization.
• For a responsive map, use percentages for the width.

The post Symbiostock Maps: Showcase your media by location appeared first on Symbiostock Knowledgebase & Documentation.

• Post-process your images/videos as you would normally in your favorite image editing software.
• Keyword your images/videos via your software through metadata, if supported.
• Upload your full resolution, un-watermarked JPEG/MP4 media via FTP in bulk to Symbiostock once all of it is post-processed and keyworded.
• Your media should auto-publish and be put on sale without any additional actions.

Photographers/videographers who use Symbiostock for keywording

• Post-process your images/videos as you would normally in your favorite image editing software.
• Upload your full resolution, un-watermarked JPEG/MP4 media via FTP in bulk to Symbiostock once all of it is post-processed.
• Your media should be in draft mode. Edit them using the quick-edit or bulk-edit interface and add titles, descriptions, keywords, and categories, and publish media all in one go.
• Your media is now on sale.

Vector artists who will not provide accompanying/alternate JPEGs

• Upload your media via FTP in bulk to Symbiostock.
• Your media should be in draft mode. Edit them using the quick-edit or bulk-edit interface and add titles, descriptions, keywords, and categories, and publish media all in one go.
• Your media is now on sale.

Vector artists who will provide accompanying/alternate JPEGs

• Keyword your alternate JPEGs via your software through metadata, if supported.
• Upload your vectors and full resolution, un-watermarked Alternate JPEGs at the same time via FTP in bulk to Symbiostock. Make sure each vector and its accompanying JPEG have the same filename other than the file extension (‘flower.eps’ and ‘flower.jpg’).
• Make sure you have enabled the reading of the alternate JPEG metadata enabled in your Symbiostock > Settings > Media tab if you are adding keywords before uploading.
• Your media should auto-publish and be put on sale without any additional actions OR, if you keyword after upload, your media should be in draft mode until you keyword and publish.
• Your media is now on sale.

As you can see, we have minimized all of your efforts to the only two necessary tasks: keywording and uploading.

The post Ideal Workflow appeared first on Symbiostock Knowledgebase & Documentation.

The process is simple – add agencies to your Symbiostock > Settings > Symbiostock Submitter page, including their FTP servers, login information, and choose what types of media to distribute to them. You can send raster images (JPEG etc), videos or vectors (EPS). Once you decide on which types to upload, everything is done automatically.

When you upload a new image (or have current images) the background scheduler will automatically upload your media files to the designated agencies. You don’t have to do anything else.

Features include optionally auto-generating JPEGs with your vectors and uploading them at the same time with the same name, setting the accompanying JPEG width and height, and resubmitting any images you want to any agency.

In order to resubmit or check the status of the submissions, edit any of your media products by going to Symbiostock or the Media tab under Symbiostock, and editing a product. Scroll down and you will see a variety of tabs on your left. One will say ‘Stock Agencies’. When you click on that, you can see checkboxes pertaining to the submission status of that image to the agencies. Simply check or uncheck these if you want to arbitrate their submission status.

You can additionally disable submission on that image by selecting ‘No’ under ‘Include in Submissions’.

A few notes about the submission system:

• You can add as many or as few agencies as you’d like.
• If you add an agency after you have thousands of images, some already submitted to other agencies, the system will automatically submit them to the new one without creating any duplicates.
• If an upload fails for any reasons, the file will not be marked as submitted and the system will try again.
• If you delete an agency after submissions have been done, all records relating to the submission status of images to that agency will be permanently lost.
• The submission system only submits published images. This is a feature to prevent the auto-submission of newly processed images before you’ve had a chance to decide if you want to submit it or not.
• There is no limit to the number of images or agencies or re-submissions you can make.

PLUS! Symbiostock also acts as a metadata editor for all compliant images and videos. This means that once you upload your image to Symbiostock, you can change the metadata right within WordPress. Then, when it is submitted to agencies, all the new titles, descriptions and keywords will be submitted along with the image, making the submission process even easier.

If you have any issues with the agency uploading / distribution system, please post your query in our forums.

CSV Export

All your images’ and videos’ metadata can be exported via the CSV links at the bottom of the Symbiostock Submitter settings page. This is useful if an agency does not read metadata. Just import that data into your favorite spreadsheet editor and change the column titles to match whatever the target agency is.

Tips & Tricks

• If you have agencies that you want to submit to but they don’t have FTP upload capabilities, you can still use the submitter to organize and keep track of your submissions. In this case, rather than have your FTP server information for this new agency point to the agency itself, have it point to a directory on your own server, or an FTP server at home (http://www.xlightftpd.com/). This way, when you add a new file, and it gets uploaded to all the agencies, it will also store a copy of this in the directory you specified on your own server. Then, when you want to manually upload it to the agency, just submit everything in that directory then delete all the files. It will then get re-filled with all the new ones for the next time. A good method is to keep your directory structure organized, so have a parent directory called ‘manual_agencies’ and subdirectories for each agency, such as ‘manual_agencies/istock’. Then add that path to the ‘Remote directory’ field in that agency’s listing in the Symbiostock Submitter settings interface. Using this method, Symbiostock will keep track of all your submissions for you, and coupled with metadata writing, it makes the submission process quite streamlined for both FTP and non-FTP agencies.
• You can also use the FTP system to upload all your current and new files to any target. It does not have to be an agency. You can use it to keep a backup of all your media, or to send all your media to a third party on a one time basis. Just add the FTP credentials for the target, click submit, then wait for the processor to submit everything. Then, just delete the agency, and you will have easily transferred everything to the other location without downloading anything onto your own computer.

Troubleshooting

• If media is not being submitted, make sure the media is published, you have the correct media type checked for that agency under the Symbiostock Submitter settings, and most importantly, test the FTP connection status via your own FTP client (such as Filezilla) to confirm that your credentials work.
• If media is showing up in the agency, but there are duplicates or some are corrupted, this is because the transfer process got interrupted. This generally is because the agency’s FTP server is being glitchy, but it can also be your web server’s connection. Either way, it is not the submitter itself.

The post Symbiostock Submitter appeared first on Symbiostock Knowledgebase & Documentation.