Major Additions - Synergy by Zoints - A system like Digg integrated into forums.

Index

Installation and Upgrading
FAQ, Changelog and Troubleshooting
Pre-written threads

This plugin is not currently available for vBulletin 3.7.x. Several users have reported serious incompatibilities, and we would not suggest attempting to install it on a forum running 3.7.x at this time.

Foreward

Awhile back, two visionaries by the names of Sal Collaziano and George B realized that a Digg-like system for forums could be highly beneficial. Kudos to those two for their understanding that by working together, we can all benefit.

What is Synergy?

How often does this happen to you? You or a member write a great thread, Google indexes it a week later, but it is buried in the search results so the masses never end up reading it. Frustrating, isn't it? Zoints solves this by taking a system like Digg, then integrating and mirroring in across all forums in a manner that allows great threads to be read by the masses. Synergy is designed to bring you more traffic and inspire your members to create higher quality content in order to obtain "Top Author" status.

Demos (with forums like these using Synergy, you're sure to get some traffic)

You'll notice all the demos look virtually the same except for the skins. This is due to the system mirroring itself across the forums. When a link is clicked, it takes the reader to the originating forum.

Ubuntu Forums
NASIOC
ThumperTalk
LWS


How Synergy Works

You have a lot of high quality threads on your forum. When you (or a trusted usergroup member you permission via the admincp options) decides a thread is worthy of Synergy, you select the "Add to Synergy" link as seen below.




During the next step, you write a short description for the thread and select which category it should go into.




Your thread is then added to a queue on your forum. Once every X hours, the top thread in your queue is added to Synergy.




When your thread is added to Synergy, the system distributes the link and description you wrote to all participating forums. If someone on any forum around the net clicks on your thread link, they are redirected back to your forum to the actual thread so they can read it. If people like your thread, they can vote on it which ranks it higher. Higher ranked threads, especially those that make it to the front page will in turn bring you more traffic.




The admincp settings are as follows:




Proof of Traffic

If you submit good content to Synergy that gets to the front page, you WILL get a lot of traffic. The following screenshot is from a small forum early in our testing. Guess which day it got a thread on the front page?



As more forums join Synergy, more and more people will be reading your threads. Let's work together to remove our reliance on search engines to send us traffic. Our communities are full of great content, it's time for it to be read!

[mcyates]

I am getting this error:

Synergy

Data returned from Zoints:

Thread submission failed:

Done

It used to work fine on my old server but it doesn't work on my new one and that above error pops up.

[Arkidas]

How can I prevent Synergy topics from being counted as my forum's topics ( and posts )?

[mcyates]

Is this supported as my post has not been answered to yet.

[mcyates]

Its working now.

I just uploaded all the files once again and its fixed it. Must have been a corrupt file.

[nymyth]

seems to be running fine, however my back links ie board >> forum >> thread links dont work....they are putting in an extra -

so instead of the link being:
www.jaydabhi.com/forum/lounge

it shows
www.jaydabhi/com/forum/-lounge

Peace

[Cole2026]

Originally Posted by mcyates

I am getting this error:

Synergy

Data returned from Zoints:


Thread submission failed:

Done

It used to work fine on my old server but it doesn't work on my new one and that above error pops up.

Make sure the URL to zoints is http://zoints.com, it cannot have the www or any such article in it to work.

Also, is there any chance this could be updated so it is asynchronous? I think it would be much less seamless if the page did not have to reload upon voting for something.

Cole.

[Mrdby]

3.6.7????

[Jorrit787]

Originally Posted by Mrdby

3.6.7????

It's working fine on my 3.6.7 PL1 installation.

[BrettMo]

Synergy looked great, but I had to turn it off because of an error.

I use vbSEO and every link to a forum such as russophile.com/russian_recipes/ would take me to the synergy forum rather than the recipes forum. That URL should map to a URL like this one: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=194 Other URLS such as russophile.com/photoplog/ worked just fine as did thread displays. The only issue was the forum views. Let me know if you have any ideas how to fis it because I really liksed the synergy plug in.

[aj8690]

Is there any way to remove the synergy forum from the archive???

It makes tons of blank pages in there and it's annoying.

TIA.