Reflections, Our Next Stage & Some Announcements

Reflecting Upon Our Progress As We Look Forward to 2017

It has been said that sometimes you have to look back in order to realise how far you’ve come. Reflecting back on both 2015 – with our monumental beginning – and 2016, it’s clear that Symbiostock has come a long way and a robust foundation has been established. These last two years have encompassed a firm focus on research, development and implementation of new technology. This intense process has involved listening to and identifying the needs of our community and creating solutions to meet those important requirements. We started out in April of 2015 with only a handful of Symbiostock supporters and we’ve grown to now having over 500 active installs of the base Symbiostock plugin. Symbiostock is no longer a small device, it’s a fully-fledged engine comprising of many arms. Let’s take a quick look at the large areas of technological development that has taken place:

• The core plugin, Symbiostock Pro, has developed into an advanced software technology unlike any other available for digital media professionals (photographers, vector artists & videographers). With so many features and plugin extensions available, we rarely receive requests for new additions. Plugin extensions include the Symbiostock Submitter, Symbiostock Video, Symbiostock Maps and Symbiostock Anytype.
• Symbiostock Hosting was created to alleviate the server side troubles experienced by so many Symbiostock users. This solution has greatly reduced the occurrence of server related issues and simplified the process for new users to setup their independent site.
• We launched Symzio, the first contributor centric stock agency. Symzio works in a revolutionary way by connecting directly to independent contributor websites and allows artists to set their own RF prices and retain the bulk of sales profit. We also created the free Symzio Link Exchange Widget to assist the community reach their SEO objectives.

These powerfully interconnected elements have received deep dedication from our small team of developers, to a point where we believe all the technological development made has setup a solid foundation from which we can now shift gears into the next big task for our community: marketing and promotion. Now that all the big tools we needed to be armed with as independent artists are here, we can move forward and confidently place our efforts towards jumping over the marketing hurdles that exist. There are numerous unhappy microstock contributors who are not aware that an option outside of the mainstream exists for them. The more contributors learn about Symbiostock and join the movement, the more pull we will have in attracting digital media consumers. Whilst marketing is its own beast to conquer, we’re excited and committed to this next challenging phase. Symbiostock is ready to strive into 2017 with goals of expanding our community’s footprint and influence. In other words, we’ve made a solid ship and we’re ready to set sail! From the team here at Symbiostock, we thank our wonderful community of artists for your continued support and we look forward to working alongside you towards the opportunities that lay ahead.

Coming Soon: Symbiostock Vendors Plugin

We will soon be introducing Symbiostock Vendors – a formidable new plugin designed to allow businesses that are comprised of multiple individuals to set up a single Symbiostock website with multiple sub Symbiostock contributor accounts to cater for each person. The plugin facilities a system where each individual user has with their own WP dashboard and their own Symbiostock FTP folder, from which they upload and manage their individual media products. Sub accounts are unable to access the main website’s admin settings, which only the parent admin account has access to. This advanced system is scalable and contributor accounts can be added or removed as required.

Symbiostock Vendors allows groups of artists who wish to work together as one entity, to establish their core Symbiostock site whilst at the same time provisioning each artist with the tools needed to control their media products, without affecting the media of other users – you can only see and edit your own uploads through the backend. On the frontend, everyone’s media appears on the one website. The website also integrates into Symzio as one business. This means the combined pool of published media is piped through only one single Symzio account.

Symbiostock Vendors is currently in its testing phase and further information about the mechanics of the plugin will be provided closer to its release date – which we anticipate to be later this January.

Retirement of the Legacy Symbiostock Importer/Exporter

Over the last two years we have assisted and ensured that Legacy Symbiostock users who wanted to progress forward with our technology had a means of migrating to Symbiostock as efficiently as possible. Our Legacy Symbiostock Importer/ Exporter made this a significantly seamless process compared to the task of manually transitioning media over to a new system.

The volume of usage of the importer has reduced now to a point where it is not resource worthy to maintain its upkeep. As a result, the Legacy Importer/Exporter will be officially retired on the 31st of January, 2017. This gives ample time for anyone who may still be using the legacy system to migrate over to Symbiostock. Our team will provide requested assistance with transitions only up until the deadline, after which the importer will permanently be deactivated.