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!

[bvtonedog]

I just installed this, great addon

[tormodg]

Originally Posted by Caerydd

Please note this is not a feature request for this, as I know it is to drive traffic, but it is not entirely suitable for our community, and I would love a 'local' version of synergy.

Why not? I think it's a great feature request. Seconded by me (I already asked for it above). A local version that supports custom categories would be awesome - and worth paying for.

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by Carlos2

Is this useful for non-english forums too?

Not right now. However, we would love to expand to other languages. It all depends on how successful this system is. If lots of people install it and lots of other language boards want it, then we'll naturally add additional languages. For purposes of development efficiency, we couldn't add multi-language suport from the start though.

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by ChrisSy

Say you have a network of your own forums, is it possible to old run this script across your wn forums? Rather than the whole Zoints network?

No, sorry.

As for those of you requesting a local variant, I respect and understand that desire. However, that's not what Zoints is about. Our vision is to bring communities together in a mutually beneficial manner. As can be seen by the traffic people are already getting from this modification, that is happening. And that doesn't take into account the long term SEO benefits people who get threads to the front page will receive. Point being, we do not plan a local variant.

With that said, every forum has their own personal category and members can choose to only show threads from your forum if they so desire. The options on this are pretty powerful and allow all kinds of configuration.

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by RobParker

Very very cool.

We run a football (soccer) website which obviously fits into Sports but are there any plans in the future to narrow down the categories with sub-categories? Mixing football with what I'm sure will be a heavily US influenced category with American Football, Baseball, Basketball, etc might not work that great for us. Having said that I definitely want to give this a try as the potential is huge.

As traffic grows, we'll definitely look into expanding categories and the customization options. We need to keep the category options narrow right now to avoid dilution.

[puertoblack2003]

testing functions out if i wanted to disable this i got this error

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in \includes\adminfunctions_options.php(331) : eval()'d code on line 20

i don't know if i'm the only one and i'm up to date with vb .6.4

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by RobParker

Also I'm not sure if this is the case or not but is there a "read only" type system available? Say for people with a website but no vbulletin forum. Having the ability to put a Synergy page on there to display the news would be great, even if they couldn't submit news themselves.

It looks like you've already killed http://www.dementia.za.net/forums/ with traffic as that forum is down and has the most popular story.

Not at this time. But as that would obviously send more traffic to forums, we're certainly open to the idea of making it happen That's the beauty of a distributed system like this. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by dlee

Having an issue. Installed Zoints and created the forum. The forum, called synergy at www.potatowned.com is obviously going to the wrong place. When you click on it, it goes to http://www.potatowned.com/forumdisplay.php?f=18 which is a broken link. Any ideas? I'm at a loss on this one...

Hi Dan,

It seems to be working ok for me. Did you get that issue resolved? I like how Synergy looks with your skin

[eNforce]

Feature Request:

When deleting a submission would it be possible to leave a reason for the deletion via PM to the person who submit the thread?

[KTBleeding]

I was going to install this yesterday, but probably will tonight.

I have a question though, regarding all Zoints products. This may have been answered here, or on your site.. but I've had a hard time finding it.

I have to register my forum with zoints.com (which I already have done).. I'm wondering what happens now. If I install a Zoints product, do my members get posted onto zoints.com? I would really like to avoid doing that. I personally just don't like the idea.

I guess what my question really is.. Why register the forum with Zoints? And what happens once registered..

Thanks,