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!

[puertoblack2003]

Originally Posted by d8tabyte

I want to take this moment to offer my thoughts to other admins who may want to install this on their forums.

I had synergy installed from the first day it was released. I believed in DChapman, as he had sufficiently convinced me on Zoints through TheAdminZone.com. I heavily promoted the use of synergy through out my forums and supported it on other admin forums as I saw an immediate effect in my stats as far as referring websites and unique users.

I have the #1 top author on Synergy, as well as many in the top 20. As of 2 days ago, we were banned for an unexplained reason. The reason isn't so much the problem, it was the complete lack of customer service provided by the Zoints team. See, we were not informed of the banning. We were simply banned. The members start emailing my staff and my staff starts calling me asking me what is going on, and I have to offer up the "Hell if I know" response as I was away on business and had not received any kind of warning or email informing me of this action. So now, I have to explain to my members that our forum is no longer welcome on the synergy lists and that they need not waste their time browsing the system, as votes are no longer accepted from our forum.

My main reason I am posting this is not to +++++ or complain, they have a zero tolerance policy and will not re-institute a banned forum, my point is to inform other forum owners that they should consider this when they make the choice to download and install or not. While they can sell you on their product just fine, when it comes down to providing even the smallest courtesy as an email, or warning to allow you to adjust what ever infraction has caused a negative light on your forum, they lack and in a serious way.

I am frankly shocked and I will be removing all Zoints modifications from my forums. I do not appreciate the embarrassment of having to deal with my members and not have an answer to give them.

wow bro thanks in advance for this, i had posted few time about my issue about this if itworks well on a windows server and received no response to this, so i asked a staff at abyss.com where i purchased my server (program) from to assist me in getting this to work.Oh well though i understand this program is free to license members but at least help out the noobs...sorry to go off topic.

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by d8tabyte

Complaint

Synergy interconnects forums big time and you were taking advantage of other forums by not following the simple rules. Other forum owners count on us to uphold a quality standard otherwise this service is meaningless. Therefore, we have a zero tolerance policy and I make no apologies for that.

I agree that we could have communicated after the fact a bit better. We'll look into sending a "Thank you for using Synergy, breaking the rules, and degrading the quality of the service. Best of luck to you, but you've been banned".

If you burned down a house would you complain to the firemen about their loud sirens?

Sheesh. You screwed up and were screwing others. Stop playing victim.

[d8tabyte]

Well I can promise you that the rules were not broken on purpose in any malicious attempt to some how take advantage of anybody. As far as that goes, I have no idea what rules were broken because that was never communicated to me. My moderators simply supplied threads which were posted on my site and follow my site's topic and generate discussion. If there are specific topics that you do not want posted on your system, i.e gossip, since they don't stand up to your standards of "quality content" then specifically state that those particular topics are not allowed. Contrary to your belief that forum topics must be some groundbreaking, in depth topic - the average forum post is about as long as your response to me.

Your response here as you put it just shows that you lack the ability to work with users who sincerely attempt to support you and your products. But I digress, I've made my point and this is not a place to debate, I merely wanted to inform the other admins of your wonderful service abilities before they walked into something they wouldn't do to their worst members, even banned spammers get an email stating they were banned.

Sheesh.

[Zoints]

Anyway, you're right. We should have communicated better and I'll see what we can do about correcting that in the future. And my post above was lacking professionalism and I sincerely apologize. I make no excuses other than to say something has recently transpired that has left me rather numb to the world. I won't edit it as I don't believe in covering up my mistakes.

I'm sorry you're no longer using Synergy but do wish you all the best.

[Stop]

In few, after about a month running it, Synergy has trebled my site traffic. Thanks Zoints.

[Orcun]

Well well... a DChapman classic. The guy who said that "seo is deprecated" and developed a whole new and better way of sharing Reputable content.

Thanks DChapman.

Well, I would like to ask a question. My boards is in Turkish language so can there be a language switch which allows english posts to appear on english forums and same for turkish so people get what they want in their own language. ??

[project-Buckfas]

Hi DChapman

I am going to change the domain name my forum is under. How will this affect zoints synergy? Is there an easy way to complete the transition?

Thanks
PB

[fishhub]

Originally Posted by Zoints

Synergy 0.9.7 has been released.

Changelog

2006/2/6: 0.9.7

- Cleanup of navbits
- Title/Description html-izing fix
- Thread/vote counts do not count towards forum total
- Default category fix
- Last post for subforums fixed
- RSS Feeds added

Would like a better understanding on the highlighted red sentence. Does it mean no thread and post count in forumhome page?

TIA

[milsirhc]

installed.. run cron job manually.. nothing is displayed on my forum synergy page?

iamboredr: synergy

[scottct1]

I dont know whats going on but whenever I try going to any of the links in Synergy the URL I am going to is http://www.satelliteguys.us/synergy.php?do=disabled

And I get a message saying...
We're sorry, the system is temporarily unavailable. We'll be back as soon as possible.

In my Admin CP Synergy is enabled.

Any ideas?