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!
This is that time of the year again. On the first day of winter we celebrate the birthday of Skalfa eCommerce. Today we hit the 5 year milestone.
Let me go a little personal here. When 5 years ago I announced starting a new company I was not nearly confident it’s going to shoot. We needed to start from scratch after the first year so we were a software product company without a product. Hell, that was tough but that was the time we again proved the simple truth – gather talents and build something people want. That worked. Any piece of software can be built if you have capable people on your tank and some passionate customers to start with. Some people were very early to grasp values we were aiming at.
Now SkaDate is one of the most recognizable names in the online dating software world. We never aimed at “growing big” but grew 5 times in staff – by customer need.
Thank you all for supporting us all these years. By using our products and telling us where we need to improve you’ve been pushing us forward. A lot of your ideas are surprising and encouraging. Every time we raise another big project on SkaDate I feel excited about how people use our software. I hope to enjoy it years and years on. The upcoming year is going to be revolutionary for our company with the launch of new open source and SaaS products in our core competence marketplace. Watch our progress, we want to share that with you.
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!
You’ve been a fantastic crowd all these years. Thanks to your demand and feedback we’ve developed military discipline when serving you. Thanks to your patience we’ve been able to polish our shortcomings and actually improve all across our bottom line. Thanks to your insight we’ve created a marvelous product. Thanks to your ideas we’ve been able to take part in raising the best dating and community sites on the Internet.
All Skalfa employees in the USA, Czech Republic, Kyrgyz Republic and Russia want to wish you happy Thanksgiving, terrific Christmas shopping season, and new successful endeavors in the upcoming year.
Looks like there is a chance to start your own Facebook while sitting on a favorite chair
SkaDate Dating and Community Software Company is glad to invite those of you who believe our product is a key to success to take part in a competition – WIN SkaDate.
We give everyone a chance to get a SkaDate license along with Mobile Edition for free. All you need to do is tell us why you think SkaDate is the perfect solution for your online community business. Tell us what features, characteristics and special qualities make SkaDate the best dating script and community software for you.
If SkaDate software has already helped you build a community site of your dream – you are also welcome to share your success story, as you have an opportunity to win another license for implementing one more great web site idea.
Post your comments about SkaDate here and you may win SkaDate license with the Mobile Edition.
There are going to be three prize positions in the contest:
1st place winner will get a free SkaDate Community Software package and SkaDate Mobile Edition ($500 value) 2nd place winner will get a free SkaDate Software package ($350 value) 3d place winner’s prize is SkaDate Mobile Edition ($150 value)
This is how we are going to process your feedback and choose the winners:
The contest will last from November 4, 2009 to December 1, 2009. This is when you are welcome to post your comments about SkaDate community and dating script, and vote for the ones you find worth winning. We will take into account all your support votes and choose the comments we like the most to announce the contest results on December 1, 2009.
Get a chance to build your own community site for free – WIN (Why INeed) SkaDate!
Good Luck!
SkaDate Team
Update: SkaDate Team would like to thank you for your activity in posting all that positive feedback. We have decided to make a small surprise for all of you taking part in this contest even if you do not win a prize position. What kind of surprise it’ going to be will be revealed on December 1, 2009 – the day we announce the contest results. Carry on!
The good news to share today is that the next great event in Online Dating Industry is coming up. The iDate 2010 Awards will take place on January 28, 2010 in Miami during the Internet Dating Conference, where the CEO of Skalfa eCommerce Emil Sarnogoev will participate to answer your questions and tell more about SkaDate Dating and Community Software. This is when the best dating sites and dating software companies will be chosen from candidates in 11 industry-related categories.
Most important is that your votes of support can help a company meriting nomination be included in the list of finalists, and get the position it deserves.
If you find SkaDate Dating Software Company worthy of election in the ‘Best Dating Software Provider’ category – nominate it now at http://www.InternetDatingConference.com/nominations-miami-2010.php and leave your votes for it from November 22, 2009 to January 7, 2010.
We appreciate your support and contribution in helping SkaDate Company get rewarded according to the merits in providing professional and reliable community software and dating script.
SkaDate released a new update of its professional dating and community software – 7.1365.
This update brings a number of improvements which make SkaDate dating and community software more user-friendly, flexible and easy-to-manage.
The new update of SkaDate community software is available at the customer area where you may download it and update your web site. If you prefer not to update your Skadate community software version at this time you may do it at a later date.
If you don’t have SkaDate dating and community software yet then Get it Now!
I want to thank everybody who contributed to shaping SkaDate software and helping it become what it is nowadays.
Recently we launched Suggest.SkaDate.com – an online tool for suggesting your ideas in a way that can be appreciated and managed by us. But in fact the most active of our customers contributed long before that starting from 2005 – the year of product launch.
Thus I wanted to spread some clue on how we manage this valuable feedback. First of all, we do not merely implement whatever people ask. Nobody would benefit from this. Suggestions are too many, and everyone’s needs are different that is why we have to keep the product roadmap straight, responding to the market situation and massive demand more than the individual needs of specialized projects (sites). Any site can be ruined by throwing packs of features at users and making their way through the site difficult. Also we have limited development forces of course, and have to choose what’s critical.
Most-voted ideas
We give them thorough evaluation but the final decision would depend on whether we think that this suggestion is reasonable for the majority of SkaDate-powered sites. This is hard because people use SkaDate for all kinds of dating/social hybrids. Nonetheless, we’ve been helping online dating businesses since 2002 – far before SkaDate was even launched – and we think that our experience earned us a nose for good ideas for dating and community sites.
Ideas with more than 10 votes
We pay attention to them because the more votes we receive the harder it is to bubble up your idea to the top. We do not want that to get in your way of bringing our attention to your suggestion.
Ideas that are less than 10 votes
We still keep an eye on them detecting reasonable ideas no matter how many people voted. If you suggest something that we find reasonable we will comment, too, asking others to vote for it. Again, this is not to let good ideas be buried under the so-so ones.
Go to Suggest.SkaDate.com and tell us your vision. We absolutely love great ideas.
Thank you for your contribution.
Emil Sarnogoev
CEO
Skalfa eCommerce
P.S. If your suggestion doesn’t receive recognition from other customers but is absolutely critical for your website you can opt for custom development. For that go to SkaDate Certified Specialists resource (SkaDateCS) or write to our sales team.
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.
Skalfa eCommerce has been improving its flagship product – SkaDate community software – for years to bring you the cutting-edge dating and social networking technologies for building successful online business. Today we are glad to announce launching a new add-on making SkaDate software even more usable and entertaining – SkaDate ME (Mobile Edition).
SkaDate ME is a one-time-fee add-on giving your site users an opportunity to stay connected wherever they are. Now, using their favorite mobile device, they can access the most important online dating features: sending and receiving on-site messages, checking profile lists (new, online, featured, My Matches), viewing photos and profile info, bookmarking profiles, chatting via Ajax Instant Messenger, using Quick Search and pre-saved search criteria.
SkaDate Mobile Edition is a lightweight version of SkaDate dating and community software compatible with the following mobile telephone models and browsers: iPhone (Safari), HTC (Windows Mobile OS, Opera), Nokia (Opera Mini, Internet Explorer). Present-day technologies make it possible to enjoy high loading speed and all advantages of Internet-surfing with high-resolution screens and 3G-facility in mobile devices.
All that makes SkaDate ME an indispensable add-on for your traditional online community software giving users significantly more freedom and opportunities for finding what they need on your site.
Check the demo of SkaDate ME add-on for mobile dating at mobile.skadate.com and be the first to experience the advantages of new technologies in dating and social networking industry. SkaDate community software team is happy to introduce this opportunity to the customers!
Feel free to leave your notes and comments on SkaDate Mobile Edition release. Your opinion is important to us.
3d place and SkaDate Mobile Edition goes to Lawrence and his comment:
2nd place is taken by John, who gets SkaDate Software License:
And the 1st place winner is Sibel, who gets SkaDate Software License along with SkaDate Mobile Edition:
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.
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.
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 
SkaDate ME