Here are posts that do not fit other categories.
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
Greetings everybody!
Finally, we have crossed the finish line of the WIN SkaDate Contest.
First of all, we would like to thank you all for taking part in the competition. Your comments and positive feedback have been a great encourage for us to provide even better service, and keep improving SkaDate software to meet all your needs.
Now it’s time to announce the contest results, and the fact that this event has coincided with Skalfa eCommerce Birthday (we are 5 today!) makes the moment even more festive.
Here come the winners.
3d place and SkaDate Mobile Edition goes to Lawrence and his comment:
Skadate helped me very quickly build a great website and it saved me the huge effort of building a site on my own from scratch. Now my site has over 13,000 members in just over one year – http://BrainiacDating.com.
When I started I had no idea how to build a dating site, but the skadate support was very helpful to get my site up and running.
Sure there are several other dating site software packages out there, but skadate’s php code and database are efficiently designed, so that with only some basic knowledge of php – you can easily modify it yourself, or if necessary it relatively inexpensive to outsource small enhancements.
2nd place is taken by John, who gets SkaDate Software License:
Yuch! vs Yum! Let me explain….
After wasting time installing & running on Ning (yuch!) and Boonex (yuch!) as well as testing the online demos of many other software vendors and service providers, I settled on JomSocial for my Joomla-powered site.
But there’s a problem now: it has limited features, which now means I am integrating several other extensions with their own set of hacks & additions that I’ll probably have to repeat when JomSocial release a newer version. (yuch!)
So I would *only* migrate to SkaDate (yum!) because it *flexibly* (creative!) and *logically* (time-saving!) integrates video, photos, templates, search, admin panel and user news/updates (to name just a few).
So after all, it seems like site publishers invest well in SkaDate – I really look forward to using it to bring health-minded people together!
And the 1st place winner is Sibel, who gets SkaDate Software License along with SkaDate Mobile Edition:
Hi,
Me and my partner we discovered Skadate 1 year ago and we are very happy with it…since then!!! We wanted to find the right software, the right server, the best provider and wanted to create a dating site that works 24/7!!! There are many dating site providers out there… After researching for 3 month and trying out many site-demos, we felt like Skadate covered what we were looking for!!!
This is our dating-site and we wanted to have control!
We wanted the site “to look” professional and inviting to our customer…and at the same time we wanted to have easy access to the control panel. We have a bi-lingual customer and it was very easy to translate text to the second language. And we like the easy payment option with PayPal or any creditcard company, when customers wanna sign up as Gold Members…
Our site is fast, secure and we have a good overview on everything. Anyone at any age can use the site. Buttons & pages are easy to access and clear to understand. If my customers are happy, I am happy!!!
With the help and support from Skadate we were able to change many things on our site. We worked very close with their tech-support and designers to re-design the look, the colors, the text and the layout at very affordable price rates. We also made changes to the admin panel. Sometimes I spend 10hours a day in the admin panel! It’s easy to work with and I get the job done.
The Skadate team is very nice and always there when you need them. They are a great help, explain or fix things very fast.
I am overall a very happy customer and I would highly recommend Skadate for all your datingsite-needs…
Our Congratulations to the contest winners!
Although winners are only three, we appreciate the contribution of all participants. This is why each of you will get a personal coupon code with a discount for purchasing SkaDate community and dating script.
Your feedback is a great motivation for us to keep working on the software quality. Thank you guys for building the great community of SkaDate users!
Best regards,
SkaDate Team
Image sources: http://monevator.com,
Posted in Miscellaneous, Products, SkaDate | Tags: mobile edition · SkaDate · skadate contest · win SkaDate
Friday, November 27th, 2009
Thank you for taking a few minutes to support SkaDate in the iDate 2010 – Internet Dating Industry Awards Nomination.
Below are the steps you’ll need to take to cast your vote for us:
1. Follow the link http://www.internetdatingconference.com/vote-miami-2010.php
2. Scroll down a little bit to the ‘Best Dating Software Provider‘ nomination, and click on a radio button against SkaDate.com
3. Now scroll to the bottom of the page, and fill-in the blank fields with your name, company name and e-mail. To confirm you are not a robot type the letters and numbers you see on the captcha (secure image), and don’t forget to tick off the “Terms and Conditions” checkbox
4. Click the ‘Submit’ button
That’s it!
Your vote has moved SkaDate one step toward winning the nomination. We appreciate your contribution!
Best regards,
SkaDate Team
Posted in Miscellaneous, Products, SkaDate | Tags: dating software · iDate 2010 · SkaDate
Monday, September 28th, 2009
Knowing the typical scammers’ tricks allowing them to swindle credulous online community members prevents from a lot of trouble.
But still, the major question is how to make your website safe enough for the members to relax and concentrate on finding love and friendship they are seeking rather than on ‘unmasking’ scammers. SkaDate community software offers you several tools that will make it a lot easier for you to guard your site members’ peace and quiet.
The first feature to check is our Profile Messages Filter. It is a compound integrated tool unifying 2 methods to protect your members from scamming and spam mail – filter by words, and filter by identical content.
As you might have noticed from the fraud techniques descriptions given in the previous article, scammers tend to send ‘introductory’ letters with the very same content to several potential victims. Their psychology is as clear as day – such bulk mass-mailing will bring at least one-two positive results out of, say, ten trials. 
And they do not waste time bothering about the unique content of their inviting love messages. This is why SkaDate developers team integrated a Message Filter into our online dating software that stops messages in case two and more of them have identical content. Intended recipients will not get these messages until a site Administrator approves them. This feature also helps you to prevent spam mailing on your site, which is a significant advantage.
Here is one more of your opportunities – Message filter by words. It allows you to select and add words, whose presence in mailbox messages will make them stuck in the filter. For example, one of the commonly used scamming strategies is to redirect the mailbox conversation from the site to the scammer’s personal e-mail. Why? Not to leave any evidence of his fraud on the site, and not to make a site Administrator suspicious at some point. So, a good idea would be to add an ‘at symbol’ (@) to the list of restricted words. If a member gives his e-mail to another member – you will be the first one to know about that. Another item to be added is a number ‘190′. Including it to the list of ‘potentially dangerous’ words on the site will help you avoid Telephone scam. Here http://agencyscams.com/scammer-letter-templates.html you can find words and word combinations used by scammers most frequently. There are also a few e-mail templates with a typical scam-intended content. Studying this information will help you recognize tricksters and prevent them from interacting with members on your site.
The two methods described above are good when it comes to internal site mailbox conversations. But what to do if a scammer tries to reach his/her potential victim by, let’s say, leaving a comment to the Forum or Blog post, photo and video. Something like: ‘Hey, what a nice photo! If you want – I can send you mine. Just 
write to this e-mail…’ – and same story again. For such situations the ‘Badwords’ feature in the Admin Panel will be an indispensable help. Basically, it is similar to the Message Filter by words – you add the words you do not want your members to use on the site to the Badwords list, and each time someone uses them – they appear as ‘censored’ in the comment text. With this feature you can prevent users from exchanging e-mail addresses, not to mention an ability to free your site from abusive language.
Besides the already mentioned track-down methods, SkaDate community software Admin Panel interface allows you to inspect all the newly-registered profiles before they become available to the site audience. Until a Site Administrator approves (or unapproves) a new member’s profile – it is inactive, and thus, harmless for your site. Just be attentive during the profile review, remember all the scamming techniques, and writing templates scammers commonly use for self-descriptions. Also, pay strong attention at the profile photo. If it seems too good to be true – it most likely is. Real people’s pictures rarely look like have been taken in a professional studio and brought to perfection in Photoshop.
Take some time to check the above-mentioned features at SkaDate community software Admin Panel demo (login details: admin/skadate).
Now, what to do if you have found a suspicious profile, or a confirmed scammer on your site? Definitely, to block it from accessing your site, and report it to an anti-scam agency. There are lots of sites fighting against scam on the web. They create scammers databases for you to be able to check if the person you suspect 
belongs to Internet fraudsters, or to denounce a scammer laid bare by you. SkaDate dating software team does not stand aside from this hard and important work. On one of our websites you can find a database of profiles used in scam, and report your own unpleasant findings. Feel free to visit http://www.dotsilver.com/antiscam/ and share your experience with us.
The main thing to remember is that being a Site Administrator obliges you to take care of your site reputation by providing security and confidence for your site members, who will not need to worry about losing their funds and faith in love.
If you have already been into scam, and have some more advices on how to avoid it – you are welcome to share it in an article comment.
Best wishes,
Irene
Image sources: http://news.cnet.com, http://photos.tradeholding.com, http://www.wsbtv.com
Posted in Miscellaneous, Products, SkaDate | Tags: dating software · online dating scam · SkaDate
Monday, August 31st, 2009
Running an online dating or a social networking site is a very specific kind of business with its own ‘highs and lows’. One of the pitfalls both site owners and members have to be aware of is online dating scam.
Briefly speaking, scamming is swindling someone for financial gain. When it comes to online dating sites – ’someone’ is usually a single man (almost never a woman) searching for his destiny in the World Wide Web. He is usually trusting and unsuspecting, which makes him almost a 100% confirmed candidate to fall for online Internet fraud.
Since scam is not something new in the world of online dating industry, there are tons of articles on the Internet describing ‘red light’ symptoms indicating that you are being fooled, and suggesting solutions on how to avoid such traps. People read them, become more educated and careful… and they stop trusting online community sites.
In order to make your website a secure place for acquaintance and entertainment, you should know how scammers typically act, what tricks they use to swindle dating site members, and obviously how to ‘catch’ such impostors before they cause any harm.
Below you fill find some common scammers’ fraud schemes description. As they say, ‘forewarned is forearmed’.
There are three generally known online dating scam types: a ‘Telephone scam’, a so-called ‘Russian Bride scam’ and a ‘419 Nigerian scam’.
Telephone scam ‘works’ pretty easy. A scammer gives you his/her phone number and asks you to call. You do so, which seems pretty logical if you are unprepared for a negative result. You hear an automatic voice machine (sometimes even a live person). You hang up. You get a phone bill that makes you stiffen in surprise. What is the trick? Scammers use so-called ‘premium rate’ phone and fax-back numbers usually starting with 190. The cost of a call to such number can be about $5 per minute or even higer. One more telephone fraud scheme involves a scammer asking you to dial 90# and hang up the conversation (he/she will definitely provide you with a trustworthy reason why you should do that). As soon as you follow the instructions, the cheat will get access to making long-distance calls using your telephone balance. This 90# scamming technique is no longer popular these days (since telephone communications have become more advanced and difficult to hack), and initially it was targeted for business and governmental numbers (requiring to dial 9 or 9-0 to access an outside line). But still, you should keep it in mind.
‘Russian Bride scam’ is very typical for online dating sites, so give it proper attention. Here is how it usually works. Imagine that you are registered on a dating site or a social network. You are lonely and dreaming to find a soul-mate, who is beautiful, young and naive. And one day you receive a message from a profile that looks very similar to your dream. The only drawback is that the girl who sent it lives in Russia (Ukraine, or one of the other former USSR countries). The message would usually be written in broken English, but have vague content anyone would like. Such letters typically start with a brief description of a potential
bride’s personal qualities (such as being honest, loving, not mercenary etc), and of how much she was impressed with your profile. She will promise to send her photos in case you are interested. And most likely you will receive pictures of a model looking just too good to be a real person. In some cases there will be a real girl on those pictures (and they will look more natural). The only problem is that she has nothing to do with the love messages you receive. No doubts that her photo was stolen from the Internet. But let’s get back to your correspondence. Once you start taking serious interest in your new friend, ’she’ will let you know about her feelings for you. Of course, she is in love. You’ve been chatting for only a week or so? You have never met or even talked to each other on the phone? Well, there are no barriers for true love, and you were definitely meant for each other – this is what she will tell you. Then the most interesting part starts. This girl from a country where there is no job, and winters are too cold will want to come and see you, because her love for you is so strong. But she will need some money to get her visa done (maybe about $300). Once you send it – she will definitely need more…. There can be hundreds of reasons: booking tickets, sick relatives, telephone and Internet connection bills (she can’t imagine even a day without communicating with you!) and so on, and so forth… She will never reveal her bank account details, and will ask you to send funds via some money transfer system. Finally (better sooner than later), you will understand that you are being fooled. But by that time you might become broken-hearted and a few hundred dollars poorer.
‘419 Nigerian scam’ named after the section of the Nigerian law pertaining to fraud unifies several methods of advanced fee fraud. It includes lottery scam, bank loan scam, romance scam and many other kinds of scam (if you are interested, you may check them here http://www.419hell.com/Nigerian_Scam_Baiting/Types_of_419_Scams.html). I will tell you about the specific dating or romance scam. As a rule, you will receive a letter from a profile with an attractive picture. She or he will not be so pushy at first. Following one of the fraud schemes, a scammer will tell you that he/she actually lives in the US, but is currently working abroad… say, in Nigeria. Your communication with such scammer may last for a couple of months or even up to a year before a standard process of sucking out your budget starts. A fraudster will become your friend and make you believe you can trust him. But one day something will definitely happen – your ‘friend’ will completely run out of finance just a week before the salary, or he will get to a hospital (or even to jail), he will need to buy a ticket, cash the money order or save a dying aunty who needs an urgent operation…. By the time the cheat asks you for money, your vigilance will most likely be completely lulled, as scammers are very good at psychology, and they know tons of ‘it-sounds-like-truth’ stories. Once you send the money
– you can forget about it. Most likely, the scammer will disappear too… unless he feels that he can ‘milk’ your wallet for a bit longer.
These were the typical Internet fraud schemes applied on online dating sites by scammers, and earning millions yearly to the ones using them. As an online community site owner, you can add your share to the hard work of fighting against Internet criminals by making your site free from scam and thus, safe and reputable.
In my next article I will introduce a few easy ways to prevent (or get rid of) scamming on your site using tools provided by SkaDate dating software.
For now, feel free to leave your comments and share scam stories you’ve been into or ever heard of. Your experience is very important.
Best wishes,
Irene
Image sources: http://i197.photobucket.com , http://onlinedatinginuk.com , http://www.russian-women-info.com
Posted in Miscellaneous | Tags: 419 Nigerian scam · dating software · online dating scam · Russian Bride scam
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
We are glad to announce that SkaDate dating and social networking software has made one more grade on its way of constant improvement. We have released a 7.1295 build that introduces a set of new features for making your online community even more entertaining for members. The new update also features a few significant improvements for site administrators.
Check the list of features now available in the new SkaDate software revision:
- Groups
- Photo albums
- 123FlashChat
- Possibility to disable base profile fields
- SMTP protocol support
- New online Admin Panel Manual
Now let me provide a more detailed description of each feature.
Groups
This feature allows member to create and join sub-networks (Groups) on your site to share their interests and affiliations. Group members can hold discussions on a private Group Forum inaccessible for non-members, post comments, add or remove the ‘Groups’ component on their profile view page. The Group administration interface allows to set them private or public, and available for joining to anybody or by invitation only. A sub-network creator can also assign moderators and upload a Group image.
Photo Albums
This feature allows your site members to organize their photos in Albums according to their preferences. Photos can be easily moved from one album to another. The number of photos allowed per album is set up by the Site Administrator via Admin Panel. The members will be able to enable or disable the ‘Photo Albums’ component on their profile page.
123FlashChat
In order to entertain multiple requests of our customers we have integrated a new popular audio/video chat into SkaDate software – 123FlashChat, which is a high-quality one-time fee add-on featuring custom skins and logo.
Possibility to disable base profile fields
SkaDate software with its impressing number of features doesn’t lock you down with just creating a dating site. It provides you with all the opportunities for developing a social network featuring blogs, photo and video sharing, albums (new!), groups (new!) and latest activity. Today we are glad to introduce one more option for your members to feel even more comfortable in your online community. It’s a possibility for a Site Administrator to disable such base profile fields as ‘I am’ and ‘Looking for’ which served mainly for dating purposes. Now there is nothing in the way to making your social network even more professional.
SMTP protocol support
Now you can improve your site performance by discharging the server you host on. This feature allows you to choose any server supporting SMTP for the purpose of sending mail from your site. It has become possible to send site e-mails even from your Gmail account!
Online Admin Panel Manual
And here comes good news for Site Administrators – an online version of the Admin Panel Manual is available. Each Admin Panel page now has a ‘Help’ link in an upright corner to a corresponding Online Manual section, thus, making it a lot easier for you to find answers to major questions on adjusting the Admin Panel settings instantly. And no need to worry about the Manual format compatibility with your computer operating system. The latest version of the Manual can be easily accessed through any browser, so you just need an Internet connection.
New build also includes bug fixes, security and performance enhancements for you to get the best of your online venture and make your business more secure. This is why we strongly recommend you to go for this update.
That was a brief description of major innovations of the new SkaDate 7.1295 build. But as they say, ‘one look is worth a thousand words’, so take some time to check the Live Demo and experience all features of our online dating software.
We will be glad to read your comments, impressions and suggestions for the new SkaDate revision.
Best wishes,
Irene
Update: We have integrated a new site template into 7.1295 software build. Now you have even more choices for making your site look attractive and professional.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Tags: dating software · dating templates · release · SkaDate · skadate features
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
Although introduced not so long ago, the sms-billing service has been coming to the fore among the well-known and trustworthy payment methods. What is the reason for its growing popularity?
It’s pretty easy to explain by turning to any customer’s psychology: they want to get goods and services quickly, safely and not having to go through a 
number of sophisticated steps. SMS-billing meets all these requirements providing security along with mobility. No need to expose the credit card details, no need to wait for the transaction to be completed – with sms-payment you get what you want instantly, no need to think about cash – short messages are relatively cheap, and you take these expenses as a part of your monthly telephone bill (which is also an important psychological aspect).
This payment method is convenient and beneficial not only for consumers (site members in our case), but also for vendors. First of all, if you are on the second team, it gives you an opportunity to make the subscription for your site easier and more affordable. Imagine the situation with a Free member, who receives an offer from another user to chat tête-a-tête, but his membership does not include the private messaging service. Most people being in his shoes would prefer paying only for this particular feature (by pressing a few buttons on their mobile device and getting instant access to the desired service) as opposed to purchasing the monthly membership through one of the online payment providers, which would take more time, trouble and funds. Well, I would… as well as the major part of the European countries’ population. It does not mean that sms-payments have to be a substitute for your traditional membership plans, but they can be a great add-on to the process of monetizing your online dating business. A simple calculation shows that depending on the number of your site members and the fee you set up for the site services, you could get hundreds to thousands dollars daily on top of income from subscriptions.
Representing a well-known software company – which is SkaDate – I can’t help saying a few words about how we follow the sms-boom tendency developing new features for our community script and dating software. SkaDate 7 dating software programmers introduced a number of new useful features for members, including the sms-billing. For now it does not cover a wide range of site services: only ‘hot list’ and ‘24-hour trial membership’. We are studying the response of our audience (since our product is mostly USA-oriented) in order to decide if we should go ahead with expanding this feature. But in case you decide to be on the pacesetters team offering the sms-billing service on their sites to show all its advantages to the members, SkaDate team will gladly help you with this. There are 2 world-famous sms-payment providers already integrated into our script: DaoPay and Zong. So to customize the software for adding more items into the list of site features paid by sms will be a lot easier (since the sms billing system itself is 
already present in the program). You could modify the script by yourself (if you have enough coding knowledge), or leave that to our high-skilled developers team. Another option is visiting the SkaDate Certified Specialists website – the guys who know the product really well and provide high quality assistance on any script modifications.
Logically, we have come up to the moment, where I should start speaking about the disadvantages of using sms-billing for your online venture. One is that this payment method is yet to strike root in the USA, where people still prefer tried-and-true PayPal, CCBill and Authorize.net… And for now I can’t think of any more cons, so if you have thoughts on this aspect – you are most welcome to share them by leaving the post comments.
I am looking forward to reading your responses!
Best wishes,
Irene
Posted in Miscellaneous, Products, SkaDate | Tags: dating software · SkaDate · SMS billing
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
Buddypress is an interesting open source community platform project. It got some traction and there a lot of users who like Buddypress more than any other alternatives on the table.
On the other hand I think it’s a seriously misled effort.
First of all, it’s based on Wordpress MU and here I smell the biggest trouble in the air. Andy Peatling is putting a lot of work to base social network features on top of the stagnant and underdeveloped Wordpress MU (looks like only Donncha works on it?) which is a complex platform unintended for what Buddypress developers do with it. Buddypress is essentially hacking Wordpress MU into something it doesn’t want to do and it takes to be a good hacker to do that.
The second suspicious thing is the decisions Andy makes to just keep it going. Read the first two paragraphs about complexity of Wordpress and decision to have logic functions in themes and your nose will feel the same as mine.
The third thing is that Wordpress MU already brings a lot to the table but there’s no guarantee you’ll need it that way. You think the 2 user consoles (one from Wordpress, and one from Buddypress) above the site content are any good? Is this a compromise you agree to make for the sake of using Wordpress plugins?
During my career I’ve been involved in a couple of projects that were started the same wrong way. You take some framework or existing project to “save time on developing trivial features”. You have some head start and agree with limitations it trades for. Inevitably you grow unhappy with those limitations because of the nature of complex systems. If you play it nice with the platform – I mean doing things the way it wants – it’s fine. But the more business logic you need the more clinical situations you face. The system tells you “It can’t be done your way – live with it”.
In the end of the day you might spend more time to get things stretched to work than to write everything from scratch. Also imagine results of both approaches. I’ve seen so much evidence that the don’t-write-what-somebody-else-wrote-100-times notion is as wrong as people-want-features one.
It makes perfect sense for Matt to have Buddypress in Automattic portfolio and it takes only one blog post to have Buddypress jump into the eyes of tens of millions bloggers of the world. But what’s the point? Is it to create a cool open source social platform or to show it can be done on Wordpress MU?
All in all Andy is showing a great deal of coolness in Buddypress user interfaces but I think he would better use his talent for a less troubled start (cough join OpenWack? cough). Buddypress devs will need so much extra guts to fight through Wordpress MU.
I may have done a poor homework of studying Buddypress and will appreciate if anybody clues me in in comments. But feedback like “The big drawback that I see right now is that the blog interface is pretty complex for a novice. I’ve been using Drupal for several years, and one of the things I like about it is that students don’t need any training in how to write a post on the course site. I can imagine them being overwhelmed by the wp dashboard, categories, tags, and the like.” already indicate you’re in trouble. Let along long term compatibility issues threats of two separate developments.
Anyone throw in tips of using Buddypress efficiently I’d love your input.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Tags: social platform · wordpress
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
SkaDate released a new dating software build – SkaDate 7.1201. The main features delivered in the SkaDate 7.1201 build are:
-Top rated blog lists
-Polls
-French and Italian languages
-Three new community and dating templates
-Custom Backgrounds admin approve tool
-IM/Chat Smiles;
-FavIcon
-Members’ photo count;
-Paging for Friend Lists;
- Apply photo watermark to all photos
-Admin photo upload tool
-My Saved Searches
- Latest Activity
- Status Line
Three new well designed templates: Color Touch II, Emotion and Dating Shine.
SkaDate presents three new templates for dating sites and social networks. Starting or running a social network and a dating web site seems to be a daunting task, but with the new great looking templates you may attract more members who will love your web site. SkaDate web designers sharpen their skills on continuing basis and gladden us with their artworks. Take a look at the templates:
Polls
Here are screen shots of the admin and user interfaces of the Pools feature. You may easily create a new poll and set particular answers to your questions. This feature is useful for collecting your members’ feedback which can be used for the analysis of their needs and desires.
Custom Backgrounds admin approve tool.
Sometimes it is necessary to check your members’ background images to prevent using copyrighted materials. Here are screen shots of the admin interface of this feature:
IM/Chat Smiles
Smiles is a common feature of a number instant messengers and chats on the net and now you may express your emotions by using smiles in SkaDate dating software chat and IM.
FavIcon
You may upload your favorite icon and your members will see it in a browser. SkaDate.com has its own favicon. Favicon maybe your logotype or any other picture you want to show in front of your web address.
Number of members photos.
This improvement helps your members to see how many photos a member has without looking at her profile.
Admin photo upload tool.
This feature was in SkaDate 6 and we recoded it for SkaDate 7 basing on customers’ feedback. Now administrators may upload photos to a member’s profile.
My Saved Searches
We made it easier for your members to save their searches. If your member finds a number of interesting profiles he may save the search and it will be available at his fingertips – Member Home page. He can look the profiles again and initiate contact with members at your dating web site or social network.
Latest activity.
Well this feature was long awaited by our customers and we developed it for them. I guess you know this feature from the famous FaceBook™ where you can see the activity of your friends and your activity will be shown to your friends as well. This status section displays the latest activity of your friends, take a look at the below screen shot.
Status line.
This feature is also cool and you can type anything you have in your mind thereby express your mood. Your updates will be shown in the latest activity at your friends’ member home pages. In my mind the status line feature is a perfect feature that will appeal to a set of users.
The build also includes several dating software enhancements and minor fixes. As always SkaDate professionally trained web developers made a good job and developed a number of useful features for online dating web sites and social networks. Feel free to check SkaDate 7 Demo.
SkaDate 7.1201 is a free build to SkaDate 7 license owners and is available for use.
What are your thoughts on the 7.1201 build, and which features are you most interested in using? Please share your opinion.
Posted in Miscellaneous, News, SkaDate | Tags: community script · dating software · dating templates · online dating · SkaDate
Friday, March 6th, 2009
Today I am going to cover two major things we have for you. The first thing is about the new build of SkaDate dating software and community script – SkaDate 7.1081. This build contains new features, improvements and minor fixes. SkaDate 7 developers prepared the following interesting features for SkaDate license owners:
XML Sitemap automatic generator. Now SkaDate 7 dating software will be more search engine friendly due to the XML sitemap which will be automatically generated each time users create profiles, forum topics, blogs, photos and etc. You just need to submit your SkaDate web site’s XML site map to Google via Webmasters tools (Google webmasters). This XML Sitemap will help Google, Yahoo and other search engines to crawl and index your web site consequently you get more positions in search results. Read more about XML Sitemaps.
SMS billing. SkaDate 7 dating software and community script now has sms billing. This is a long-awaited feature. SkaDate 7 supports the following SMS billing payment providers: DaoPay.com and Zong.com You get an account at one of the mentioned sms billing payment providers and your members can pay for these services: Hot List (profiles at the sidebar) and 24 hours trial membership. We think to develop other services for sms billing but a bit later. This feature will help you to increase your revenue through getting real-time payments for your web site’s services from your members. A number of customers prefer to pay for online services by sms and not to share their credit card information. You may reach additional number of customers from your target audience. Try out SkaDate 7 dating software Demo
Profile view customization feature has been improved. Now you may easily change the color of your profile background or customize the background with a picture.
Classifieds are now available in SkaDate 7. Your members can easily advertise their services, sell things, post jobs in the section for classifieds. Other members can add bids and add comments to posted classifieds. It’s a useful feature to interest your members and involve them into social networking and even help them to earn money while being your web site’s members. You will find Classifieds at SkaDate 7 Demo http://www.skadate.com/demo/classifieds.php
Mail system and Cron improvement. We changed the priority of mailing letters to users in SkaDate 7. Now welcome and verification letters will be sent at high priority. As for mass mailing and activity scheduler letters they will be sending every 30 minutes.
3 new cool templates are available in this build plus we adjusted old templates to IE-7. Check them here.
Second thing is about the changes in pricing for SkaDate additional licenses, prices for design integration and designing a unique template.
Design integration price has been reduced from $1000 to $400. Designing a unique template price has been also reduced from $3000 to $1000. We reduced the prices due to the simplicity of the new way of template integration introduced in this SkaDate update. You can have a unique design from SkaDate designers or integrate your design – now it’s even more affordable!
Discounts for SkaDate 7 dating software packages. Now if you buy additional license of SkaDate 7 dating software solution or managed solution you get discounts. Here are the discounted prices for additional SkaDate dating software packages:
| SkaDate Software Solution |
SkaDate Managed Solution |
1st license – $795
2nd license – $695
3rd license – $595 |
1st license – $395
2nd license – $295
3rd license – $195 |
I guess it’s enough for now. Our technical team works hard and in the next build will be available one more important feature for social networking and dating web sites – groups. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to leave your comments.
Thank you for your attention and consideration.
Regards, Tim.
Posted in Miscellaneous, News, SkaDate | Tags: dating software · design integration · discounts · new build · release · SkaDate · SMS billing · unique design · XML sitemap
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
I’m writing this message to reveal the Skalfa master plan for this year. 2009 is here and I want to share the most significant parts of it with you.
First of all, I’m proud that we didn’t suffer any layoffs in the current global economic climate. Skalfa entered its 5th year of existence as a securely profitable entity with stable market positions and steady growth. Another thing that I want to specially mark is the talents we have on our tank. When you have so much bright people under one roof there’s something amazing got to be born.
SkaDate
So far we have achieved remarkable footprint in the small community business market with our flagship product, SkaDate. Our recent release of SkaDate 7 is already showing the world the new level of community tools, showing us the next stage of community management problems, and the new objectives for the development of the product. In 2009 SkaDate will continue extending its feature set but will also integrate several solutions from 3rd parties, such as SMS billing, scam/fraud control tools, image tools, background checks, etc. This is an important step to take in the direction of helping businesses decide their actual problems, not merely providing technical tools. Another important aspect of SkaDate development is refining and fine-tuning the existing features. This is where we hugely rely on customer feedback, and SkaDate 7 is the result.
To extend the portfolio of services to support SkaDate we are working on creating SkaDate Marketplace – a place where certified specialists can offer their services to the end users. Finally, we are looking into signing several deals with software companies for custom development partnership on the base of SkaDate. We think that the diversity of service offers for SkaDate is going to create huge benefit for the customers and will contribute to our goal – producing more quality online dating sites.
WackWall, OpenWack
Let me use this opportunity to shed some light on the current state of things with the two projects: OpenWack, and WackWall.
Currently we are working on the new OpenWack platform which is going to be the new engine for WackWall, and also available as an open source community software package under the GPL license. Yes, Skalfa eCommerce enters free software market this year. We are actively working on the prototypes and concepts.
WackWall is going to stay a place where you can create your own social network or online collaboration/communication tool within minutes, absolutely free. Being based on OpenWack platform is going to greatly diversify its features, possibilities, and purposes of use. Expect the major boost of these with the WackWall 2.0 relaunch on the OpenWack platform.
OpenWack is planned to highly rely on 3rd party development and support. We will have more details for you on that later.
Other Skalfa projects
While working on major projects we always worked on several minor ones. Those are for our own needs, value-added services for the existing solutions, and simply tiny useful products that are fun to develop. Expect some shutdowns and launches from us this year because we have to keep focus on things we do best of all – building impressive community tools, and at the same time we need to enhance our offers with value-added services.
2009 is the year that every entity must keep laser-sharp focus on the core of its business. Take this global recession as not a slowdown but a chance to streamline your operations, clear out your goals, reduce costs, and find new opportunities for your business. We are proud to work with you.
Thank you,
Emil Sarnogoev
CEO
Skalfa eCommerce
Posted in Miscellaneous, News, Products, Projects |
