PicturEngine Directions

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

This is Christine’s tutorial for how to set up PicturEngine as it was sent to me in a December 2, 2013 e-mail from PicturEngine support

TUTORIAL FOR PICTURENGINE AND SYMBOSTOCK
Symbiostock

Go to Symbiostock (bee) Marketing Tab

In the dropdown list for Marketer select “On”

Generate a marketer user number and make a note of this number.

Go to
a) Stock Images (ladybird)
All Images and select the images you wish to appear on the marketing partner
In Bulk Actions select Make Promo Preview and Apply

b) Symbiostock (bee) if you have Symbiostock Professional Plug-in
Batch Editor
Select the images you wish to appear on the marketing partner
Image Processing
Select – Generate promo images
Save changes to selected images

Return to the Marketing Tab in Symbiostock Bee and check your images have been processed by clicking on the link that says something like
http://your-symbiostock-site.com?ss-12345678=xml&type=all

It should NOT show this (means no images are showing and you need to try again ):

1.2.6
2.9.7

It should show something like this :

9
838
96
1.2.6
2.9.7

ss-12345678
123456
SL,EL
http://kerioakimaging.com/image/tabby-cat-with-tinsel/
http://kerioakimaging.com?ss-12345678=image&image_number=123456
http://kerioakimaging.com/wp-content/uploads/symbiostock_rf_content/123456-minipic.jpg
N
Y
Christine-Kerioak

<![CDATA[

Tabby Cat with Tinsel

A lovely female tabby and white cat wearing three bells on her collar sitting in front of a sparkly red and gold background. She is shown sitting, chest and face and is looking to the side and down from the camera]]>
4488
5142
bright, cat, christmas, Christmas Decorations, christmassy, decoration, feline, Female, festive, gold, lights, nobody, red, seasonal, sparkles, tabby, tabby and white, xmas

Make sure this is correct. It is the details that PicturEngine will pull into their site.

[ChristineParticipant]

Jo Ann, did you re-do “Generate marketer user number” in the Symbiostock Marketing page?

I did not include this in the instructions as most people would have been starting from scratch, but those of us who had already generated the number needed to re-do it for some reason.

I promise – this IS much easier than doing the google ownership – it must be as I managed it 😀

Is anyone else using PE (and going to pay their fee when it falls due) as it might be nice to link together ?

http://kerioakimaging.com - trying to reopen
http://nail-art-at.kerioak.com - Art and Nail Art

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

I did turn off marketing and turned it on again but the number stayed the same (and I did this after I made all the thumbnails).

This morning I just went and checked generate marketer user number and saved and nothing changed.

Then I realized I had to check the first box and the “are you sure” box after the sentence before clicking save – that is the most bizarre user interface – and it made a new number, but my XML file is still identical – wrong version for the premium plugin and no data. I clicked on the link provided to see the new file

Given that the marketer number is not included in the promo file names, there is no reason to regenerate the promo previews – that would be just (insert rude word here).

So is there some manual way I can make that XML file?

I don’t care enough about PicturEngine to babysit generating another set of previews. It’s not easy vs. hard, but just time wasting complexity over something that should be automated. Harrumph!! But thank you for filling me in.

I don’t know if I’ll use PE, but what I’ve seen so far from the searches I’ve done isn’t encouraging – if I were a buyer I don’t think I’d use it. It might get better, but right now it has small thumbnails, it’s slow and the results aren’t half as appealing as if I did a search on one of the agencies.

I just thought it’d be worth giving the trial a shot as I think the idea behind it is very interesting

[ChristineParticipant]

I do not know if there would be an automated way as the marketer number is included in each of the (xml?) files, I have replaced the actual number with text

eg

11
1014
96
1.2.6
2.9.8

ss-marketernumber
10280
SL,EL
http://kerioakimaging.com/image/sleepy-seven-week-old-rottweiler-puppy/
http://kerioakimaging.com?ss-marketernumber=image&image_number=10280
http://kerioakimaging.com/wp-content/uploads/symbiostock_rf_content/10280-minipic.jpg
N
Y
Christine-Kerioak

<![CDATA[

Seven Week Old Rottweiler Puppy

A really cute and fluffy seven week old tired Rottweiler puppy laying down on a white base against a white background. He has his nose, or muzzle, tucked between his front paws and looks ready to go to sleep after an exhausting time getting into mischief

Photographed isolated against a white background]]>
4640
5616
7 weeks, animal, baby, black, brown, canine, cute, dog, exhausted, fluffy, head down, isolated, mammal, nobody, nose between paws, on white, pet, pup, puppy, rottie, rottweiler, seven weeks old, sleepy, small, studio, tan, tiny, tired, worn out

http://kerioakimaging.com - trying to reopen
http://nail-art-at.kerioak.com - Art and Nail Art

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

I tried one more thing just now. I added one new image from my drafts I hadn’t yet published and then via Bulk Actions I selected that one and said Make promo image. It said it reprocessed one image.

I thought that, having regenerated the marketing number this morning, at worst I’d get one item listed when I clicked on the link -http://www.digitalbristles.com/?ss-784482783=xml&type=all in my case -and possibly the presence of all those other promo images might give me a full list.

Nada. Not even the one new image. I still see the version from your tutorial of “It should NOT show this”!

If Leo gets back this way at some point, perhaps he can think of something I can try – I see no errors, and as far as I know there’s no log file to give a clue about what might be wrong.

[LeoParticipant]

Set me up with an admin account — I’ll see whats going on with that.

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

You should have just received e-mail with your account information

[LeoParticipant]

I sent you the protected link – you should see the 48 images I just processed to promo.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the process ran longer than 30 seconds! Apparently batches of 48 process fine on your server without stopping.

I recall that this issue stemmed from a while ago. I had, a few months ago, overhauled this part of the system to give the sort of results PE was suggesting. I’ll spare you quite a few details, but this made it necessary to regenerate things.

So simply go through them, delete “un promote” them, and redo the promoted images. You’ll end up with results like I showed you in the email.

Also regarding other issues, like the batch operator, I’m making the corrections we had spoken about.

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

@leo wrote:

So simply go through them, delete “un promote” them, and redo the promoted images. You’ll end up with results like I showed you in the email.

I’m really sorry for being dense, but I don’t understand what you’re telling me to do.

delete “un promote” them – does that mean you want me to delete the 1700+ promotional preview files I made? I only made those files yesterday, not months ago, so why are they no good?

Why would repeating the (long) process of generating the previews work now, when the one I tried this morning as a test (after Christine told me I needed to regenerate the magic number) didn’t? Have you modified some code on my site to make things work?

If you do mean that I have to repeat everything, what happens in a few months time when I want to add another 1,000 images to PicturEngine? Do I have to generate a new marketer number and then delete all the previews and reprocess 2,700+ promo previews?

[LeoParticipant]

Sorry if I was unclear on anything.

First and foremost: I didn’t change any code.

To clarify, we’re talking about the two options:

Delete selected promo images
OR
Delete ALL promo images (caution)

For me to generate the 45 you saw, I did “#Delete selected promo images”, then simply “#Generate promo images ” and waited for a while during the processing, and it gave me an update every few images until 45 were met.

Why don’t you start with 300 or so, and see how that integrates with PE, before you take the time for all of your images.

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

After looking around for the words you mentioned for deleting promo images and not finding them in bulk editing, I checked the batch editor.

So I should be clear – I used bulk image editing to generate the promo previews yesterday – Christine’s tutorial said you could do that or use the batch editor.

I thought I’d do an experiment. I didn’t delete anything but I went to publish two uploaded images that I hadn’t to try one with the bulk editing tools and one with the batch editor to see what happened.

The batch editor added one image to the XML file but the image I tried to add using the bulk editing “Make Promo Preview” did not appear in the XML file.

So I guess that’s why my 1,700 images never made it to the XML file – at least on my site, the Bulk actions option for making promo previews doesn’t work (it generates the images just fine but doesn’t put them into the XML).

I don’t know if anyone else has tried this – Christine left me with the impression that she’d used the bulk editor, not the batch editor to make her file, but has anyone else?

The problem with using the batch editor to go through my portfolio is how do I systematically do that? I can’t select the whole portfolio. I may have images that aren’t in any category and they’d get left out.

I’d prefer a one-button or automatic solution (like the nightly site map update) but if it has to be manual, the page by page in the bulk actions is easier to control.

I’ll use the batch editor to do a few best sellers and worry about the rest later.

I don’t think I have to delete anything as I tested with two images already in the XML file and processed them again. They didn’t get added a second time.

And if I did decide to wipe the slate clean, is there any reason not to just delete the files on the server using Fetch?

[LeoParticipant]

Thanks for telling me about that. I thought I had removed that capability in the bulk edit area, leaving it only to the premium version, so now I see where your trouble was coming from.

If you delete only the files its possible the database will not get updated, so as much as possible you should do the batch editor. There is a delete-all for the promo pics, so you can do that if you need to reset.

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

Aah – much clearer now!

Perhaps you want to tell Justin that what PictureEngine is sending out to Symbiostock site owners who sign up (Christine’s tutorial) is out of date and needs to be changed?

Or Christine, perhaps you can update what you wrote to reflect what Leo just said and pass it on (I assume he obtained the tutorial from you)?

[ChristineParticipant]

The only place I posted the full tutorial was here, until you mentioned that you had had an email with it I was not aware that Justin had passed it on. When I am back on the computerninwill edit the post above to remove the option, I did not know it was only availabe with professional plugin now

http://kerioakimaging.com - trying to reopen
http://nail-art-at.kerioak.com - Art and Nail Art

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

It’s available in regular Symbiostock, but it just doesn’t work 🙂

If it isn’t supposed to be there, then that interface should be changed to remove the item for generating promo previews.

I used the batch editor to process 1350 of my images and 60 of them now show up in the account section of PicturEngine, but none of them show up in searches (and the check box that says searchable is checked).

I have no idea why so few or why search can’t find them. I take it your files show up? Is there a lag between the time they show up in the photographer’s account UI and in searches?

[Author]

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