[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?

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

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

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

I think the simpler thing would be for Leo to take a look and if it’s OK with him, make it part of the theme in a future version – it’s a pretty minor alteration and I can’t imagine what it could break.

I could learn about writing plugins (it would be a good thing to do, but I don’t have time right now to do that) but no promises on when that could happen.

When there is an update, if the modified file has no other changes, then you just replace it – it only requires work if there are other changes to that file.

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

It requires code. The original thread had information on how to change it to hardwire a different number and then as a follow on I posted a thread about a change I made to the widgets for latest images and similar images so you could specify the numbers there in the WordPress UI.

Here’s what 6 images in 3 columns looks like:

http://www.digitalbristles.com/image/sunrise-over-merrymeeting-lake/

If you’re up for changing a php file you can get the code from GitHub

https://github.com/joannsnover/symbiostock/commit/1f06bfaea5e55897dfc0afead26182912438ee40

The green lines in the display are the lines I added, red those that were deleted – you can grab the entire file or just cut and paste

[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.

[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

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

I guess I’m not clear what restrictions there would be, if any, with use of this plugin for a Symbiostock site – have you done test purchases when logged in using one of the social media sites you’ve supported?

Do the users who log in this way show up on your site’s dashboard in the list of users?

One thing that comes to mind is that if I logged in one day using my facebook credentials and made a purchase, then another time came back and logged in with my Google+ credentials, those would be two different accounts, I think, from Symbiostock’s point of view and thus any prior purchases wouldn’t be shown.

It’d be worth testing this out to be sure purchasing works as expected, given how the cart is tied to the login.

One of the reviewers on the plugin’s page complained about having to have a OneAll (the developer I assume) account to use the plugin. Is that correct?

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

I had the same problem – updated again just now though and now I see 1.3.7.

I did try to see if that made a difference in my XML file for the promo images, but it didn’t – it’s still empty, and still says that 1.2.6 (that’s not a typo, I mean 1.2.6) is my premium plugin version

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

The customer’s cart – and thus purchases – are tied to the login, so I’m not sure how that could work, but if there is a Symbiostock site you know of that has that working, perhaps you could get the owner to come here and post about what they did?

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

Lovely work – this one really caught my eye

Another thing that caught my eye was the statement that you could log in with your social media accounts – I don’t think there is any way to do that with Symbiostock.

I don’t have any open network slots, unfortunately…

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

I posted my lack of success in the PicturEngine thread – I made the previews but the XML file is empty

[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.

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

So I made my promo previews – or at least most of them (1,712 of 1,719 got processed; no idea which didn’t or why).

But the XML file link in the marketing tab doesn’t show the files processed as it should have, so I don’t think PicturEngine will be able to pull anything over.

Christine wrote up a “how-to” that I think was in the old forum, but got lost in the transfer. I have it in an e-mail PicturEngine sent to registered users in early December and I’ll put the next in the next reply.

The part that says the XML file “should NOT show this” is how my XML file looks. Given how long it took to make the previews (as you have to babysit each page of 100) I’m not just going to “try again” if that means making the previews.

Did anyone else get this far and have the XML file not work? If so, how did you fix it?

The only other thing is that the premium version says 1.2.6 in my XML file and it’s really 1.3.7. The Symbiostock version is correct

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

@leo wrote:

PE – if things are set up you should be able to go through each page of your portfolio, select all, and generate previews. Having an option to create PE previews on-upload would be something I could implement.

Honestly, this is at best just a workaround.

But I did set my images per page to 100 – which gives me 18 pages to work through to create the promo previews – today. And later if I need to update it, I have to keep track of where I stopped last time to know what to update.

This is slow, error prone and manual.

After doing 3 pages (300 images) I thought I’d check to see that there were 300 new files somewhere before going on. I found the files in the symbiostock_rf directory in the form xxxx_promo.jpg where xxxx is the image number.

There are 293 files with a promo suffix, not 300. I have no idea why that is or which images aren’t included. I get a message after each page “100 images reprocessed”. At first I thought I’d selected the wrong option and chosen to reprocess my watermarked previews, but as the promo files are there, I think it’s just the wrong message given on completion.

I’m not going to worry about the missing files because this is just a test, but I’m trying to illustrate that this isn’t really a workable approach if you have a large portfolio, will be adding more images over time, and care that all your images get over to the marketer. I have a sheet of notepaper with 1 to 18 marked on it and I’m crossing off as each page completes – there’s no way to know what you did in the event that I’m interrupted (for whatever reason) in the middle of doing this. It’d be nice to have some way of knowing without writing on a piece of paper…

I’ll let you know once I get this all connected up with PicturEngine

[JoAnnSnoverParticipant]

You’re not alone! If you decide to have another look at this after the puppy is trained, here are some other blogs talking in general about troubleshooting problems with Google Authorship

http://searchengineland.com/troubleshooting-google-authorship-issues-174903

http://cypressnorth.com/company-news/google-authorship-not-showing-up-try-these-14-tips-to-get-authorship-working-for-you/

[Author]

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