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Posts
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Hi – I’m new to Symbiostock, and I’m finding that setting up my site is not intuitive. Are there any sites that provide a how-to for using Symbiostock? The documentation on this site is very weak. Thanks!
Hi David
Did you look at this area? http://www.symbiostock.org/docs/
Are you migrating from an old Symbiostock site or starting from a totally new stock site? The approach is quite different dependent on your starting position.
Steve
Hi Steve – Thanks for the link. There doesn’t seem to be specific “how-to” information for setting up a website. It describes the features but not how to implement them. I’ll keep plugging along until I figure it out – thanks.
Hi David – this is linked from your Symbiostock install as soon as you activate:
http://www.symbiostock.org/docs/3-minute-guide-to-launching-your-store/
It should provide the exact details on how to add a product to your store.
What are you confused with?
<span style=”color: #272727; font-family: ‘Open Sans’, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 28.8px; background-color: #fbfbfb;”>Hi Robin,</span>
From the 3 minute guide:
<ul style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 24px 48px; padding: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: ‘Open Sans’, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;”>
<li style=”box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 6px; margin-bottom: 12px;”>Scroll over the ‘Symbiostock’ tab and click on ‘Upload Media’. Upload an image via the web form.
<li style=”box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 6px; margin-bottom: 12px;”>Standalone users: Once uploaded, click on ‘Settings’ under the same ‘Symbiostock’ tab. Scroll down – you will see the Maintenance Command/Processor. You will see a link that says ‘Run Now’. Click on this. It may take a minute for your image to get processed as Symbiostock waits a certain amount of time prior to processing all new images to ensure they are finished uploading. Refresh that page a few times until you see that your new image has been parsed.I uploaded an image, which seemed to work. When I go to the Settings link under Symbiostock there is no Maintenance Command/Processor (link, heading, button – not sure what this is supposed to be?) and no Run Now link. Possibly I don’t have something else activated or installed? I also purchased the Symbiostock Express theme, not sure how that plays into these other instructions. Thanks.
Hi David – those instructions have been updated (as of a few days ago) to reflect the more compartmentalized settings page. As George said, you can follow the System tab and it will be there.
As for express – here is extensive documentation on customizing it:
http://www.symbiostock.org/docs/category/5-symbiostock-express/
Again, there may be some aspects that are not exact, but overall it should get you going.
Please note that reviews on WordPress are extremely valuable and important, and your 2 star review there has affected the entire team. If you feel compelled, don’t hesitate to either alter it or contact WP to alter it if you feel your concerns have been addressed.
We’ve been extremely occupied for the last 2 months getting the new hosting up, releasing 3.0, and are not able to provide personalized support immediately all the time.
Wow, there are a lot of pieces to this puzzle. Symbiostock, Symbiostock Express, WooCommerce, WordPress, Slider Revolution (also called Revolution Slider?) which I’m not planning to use. Not sure what each piece is supposed to do, where one ends and the other begins. Express seems to be the “look and feel” of the site, something else is the “store-front” piece, I guess WooCommerce. Or maybe Express does it all?
There’s a lot of bits and pieces of documentation, but it looks like it was developed incrementally over time, it’s pretty disjointed and doesn’t provide the A-Z steps required for doing everything to set up a website storefront. This is definitely not for the average Joe, it’s very involved and really frustrating.
Thanks for the help and words of encouragement.
Hi David,
Looks like you installed everything in one go so you didn’t get a chance to ease into it.
Symbiostock Pro is the main plugin – this installs all the required components for you, including WooCommerce and Symbiostock Lite. Everything relating to your store operation (administration) is managed through Symbiostock and WooCommerce.
This is called a ‘plugin’. WordPress has a very specific mechanism of operation in that it supports Plugins and Themes. Plugins do exactly as I just mentioned – they tend to add functionality to your WordPress site but do not generally try to get involved in how your WordPress site looks.
Themes step in to manage your site’s presentation. These generally do not add functionality to your site on the backend.
So Symbiostock can work with any theme – most people use Symbiostock Express because it synergizes well with the Symbiostock plugin.
So first you setup Symbiostock the plugin, to get your media on there, then you work on configuring Express, which is to get your site looking the way you want it to.
And yes, this can be an involved process initially, as designing any website is. However getting products into Symbiostock itself is extremely quick and easy.
As previously mentioned, we have a tutorial on getting your site looking good using Express, and we also have a quick guide on getting products into Symbiostock.
Once you use these guides and get going initially, then the rest is personalization and tweaking.
WordPress is, and will likely always be, a system that allows for quite a bit of customization. This is why it is a bit more involved, but then allows for your site to stand out and be unique.
As for the documentation, yes, development has outpaced documentation which is why we are slowly migrating to a system whereby the plugin is documented inline, while Express and other things are documented via our online docs.
Revolution slider is another plugin that gets installed with Express. This is unique in that it is a plugin that is specifically for the front end. You do not need to use this at all and can disable it.
I recommend you try to ask very specific questions so people can answer them to get you through each obstacle.
Thank you Robin, this is very helpful.
So I’ve gone through the Replicating the Symbiostock Express Demo Site, and followed the suggested settings. I also uploaded several photos to Symbiostock and they appeared to publish successfully. My site is pretty bare bones though, just a slider (think it’s called that) that cycles through several images, three Browse Categories (with links that just go back to the main page, not sure how to set these up), and a header “Cart”.
I’m clearly still missing the “big picture”. Any suggestions for where to poke around next? Thanks!
This is a site using Express:
I’ve always loved the way it looks because it is just seamless and very personalized. I’m not as familiar with setting up Express as some of these guys are, and I’ll see if Dawn can pipe in as well. She’s the Express expert.
Hi David, I’d love to help you with your site. Can you PM me your site’s URL?
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