Here we are finally – the Christmas Holidays are right behind the corner. We can feel them coming with decorated trees, cozy family evenings and Christmas gifts we’ve been dreaming about during the year.

SkaDate Team have come up with two great news: the new build of SkaDate Dating Software, and a Christmas special: SkaDate Script + Mobile Edition for only $350 (regular price $500). The special offer will last until December 25, 2010, so hurry up to start your successful business with SkaDate now!

You can find more information on the new software build features and discounts at our official blog, and from our pre-sale team who are happy to answer your questions 24/7.

Happy Holidays from SkaDate Team!

We are pleased to announce releasing a new version of SkaDate Dating Software – SkaDate 8 Engage.

It has a number of stunning features for members, and a few significant improvements for site administrators.

Here is what you will find in SkaDate 8 Engage Dating Script:

• New social networking and dating templates

SkaDate 8 comes with two new themes: Bubbles (great for a dating site) and Moonlight (perfect for a business or social network).

• Games

A capturing entertaining feature for your site members that will make their online dating experience even more fun and interactive. Includes single- and multiplayer games, such as: PentHouse Pool Single Player, Domino Multiplayer, PokerStar, Learn Texas Holdem, Domino Singleplayer, Texas Hold’em Multiplayer.

The Games feature can be easily enabled/disabled via the Admin Panel. Games can be user credits- and membership-dependent.

• Speed-Dating

SkaDate 8 Engage introduces another way for your site members to get to know each other in relaxed and social atmosphere.

Speed-dating is a series of time-limited conversations the event participants go through with the members who meet the matching criteria. It allows site users to meet a lot of new people within one date in a fun and easy way.

Speed-dating feature can work with default Ajax text chat or with audio/video chat add-ons.

• Sign-up with Mobile Edition

Your potential site members now have a freedom to join right from their mobile device. A simplified (shortened) sign-up form consists of a few basic questions making the join process fast and simple.

• Password protection for photo albums

Members’ privacy comes first. Instead of protecting each and every private photo with a password, site users can now make the whole album password-protected so that only the closest friends could see its contents.

• Comments summary

Now a site user can see comments for all the content they uploaded in one place. This simplifies the process of comments overview, and helps users not to miss a thing.

• Photo tags

Now there is a possibility to tag photos with keywords, thus making photo browsing more convenient for site users.

• New secure image (captcha)

The new captcha looks more attractive while providing the same level of security.

• Sound signal on incoming IM message

This little improvement will ensure the members receive each and every single message when having a private chat. Can be turned on/off by a member.

• Categories for Virtual Gifts

The Virtual Gifts divided by categories make it easier for a user to choose the right gift for every special occasion.

• Possibility to modify the MemberHome page components via Admin Panel

A simplified component-based code customization interface is now available in SkaDate Online Dating Software for a MemberHome page. Now you can play with the MemberHome page components without accessing the software files and folders on the server.

• Simplified interface for disabling dating features

SkaDate PHP Dating Script comes with a variety of dating and social networking features, thus allowing you to create a website that would match either concept. To make it easier for you to convert your site into a purely social network, we have made it possible to disable all the major dating features in one place in the Admin Panel (no code modification required).

• Option to choose European or US date format on the site

To make it right both for our US and European customers we have added a possibility to choose the date format to display on your site that best meets the needs of your target audience.

• Delete a profile with member content

Those having to deal with spammer profiles on a daily basis will like this feature a lot. It gives you an option to delete a member’s profile along with all the content they were able to post while having access to your site. Meaning that you won’t have to surf through the forum and blog posts searching for the spam content and deleting it every time you remove an unwanted profile.

These and other features added to SkaDate 8 Engage bring it to the new level of interactivity, making the software even more competitive and user-friendly.

Good news for the existing SkaDate customers is that having enhanced the script with new features, we didn’t change the core. This makes SkaDate 8 Engage fully compatible with versions 7 and 7,5 meaning there is no need to restore site modifications from scratch after upgrading.

Check the Live Demo of SkaDate 8 Engage, learn more about the new SkaDate Dating Software features, and ask your questions from our pre-sale team 24/7.

We are happy to announce that our startup-in-residence, Oxwall software has been released. Feel free to read details and to download first betas.

Let’s see what comes out of this experiement. One thing is sure: Oxwall comes as the long-awaited freedom solution for WackWall community. Good luck to the Oxwall team in their journey!

We are glad to announce launching a new build of SkaDate Dating Script – 7.5.1877

SkaDate Dating Software now features even more colorful community templates, popular user features and site administration improvements.

Below is what you will find in SkaDate 7.5.1877:

USER FEATURES

Three new templates: Avatar, Dream Date, Guys

Facebook contacts import

Your members have a great opportunity to invite their Facbook friends to join your site. A perfect promotional tool for your online dating business!

Possibility to add RSS feeds from third-party resources

Your site members can make their profile page more interesting and attractive by adding RSS feeds from their favorite resources

Categories for video

Categories for video will make it easier for your site members to browse the uploaded clips.

Possibility to start new conversations from the Mailbox

Site users can start new conversations right from the mailbox. For their convenience, the system will offer auto-complete options from the friends list for the addressee field.

Forum improvements:

- possibility to attach files to forum posts

- possibility to insert pictures to a forum post body

- possibility to send private messages from the forum post view page

ADMIN FEATURES

Notification about new member registration

To provide faster profile review and maximum attention to the new registered users, site Admins have an option to enable new member registration notifications to email.

Classifieds items approval tool

Site Admins can choose whether new classified items will be approved automatically or manually.

SITE FEATURES

Geo-targeted advertisement

SkaDate Dating Software has come up with another tool for making your ad campaigns even more efficient. Geo-targeted ads allow you to reach the target audience with the content that depends on the visitor’s location.

PHP 5.3 support

SkaDate now supports PHP 5.3 in order to keep up with the latest coding standards.

There have been done a few fixes and usability improvements, which has made SkaDate Dating Script more stable and user-friendly.

Learn more about the new SkaDate build at our Dating Software Blog, check the Live Demo and ask your questions from our pre-sales team 24/7 at www.skadate.com.

Kind regards
SkaDate Team

Hello all,

SkaDate Team is glad to present a new SkaDate dating software build – 7.5.1550.

It comes with new features, usability enhancements and minor bug fixes. This is what you will find in SkaDate 7.5.1550:

• Improved User Points system

• New Latest Activity items

• Official safari support

• Integration of Honesty Online background check service

• Possibility to disable the ‘Latest Activity’ feature in the Admin Panel

• Possibilitiy to add emoticons to the status line on the Memberhome page

• Possibility for Site Administrator to set the number of profiles displayed in the ‘Friends List’

• Usability improvements

Learn more about the new SkaDate dating script build, check the Live Demo and ask your questions from our pre-sales operators 24/7 at www.SkaDate.com.

Best regards,
SkaDate Team

Believe it or not but Xitti Adult Social Network Builder is finally live.

We worked very hard on it because Xitti introduces OpenWack – our new community software platform. Now you can check it live in action. We worked on this new software for more than a year to solve specific technical problems on modern community sites. Now it’s available for you.

Beta
Of course, Xitti is beta at this point so you shouldn’t use it for production sites yet. It even lacks some necessary features which we postponed to release earlier. But at this point we are working to introduce all basic functionality for a community site, so hold on.

Troubleshooting
What’s important to remember is that this is a new software platform which is yet to mature. Although at this point it’s pretty stable you will still find problems in there (guaranteed! ). Please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Feedback
Problem reports, suggestions and (of course) opinions are hearty welcome at our Discussion/Help board: GetSatisfaction.com/Xitti.

Help us test Xitti to receive after-beta benefit: FREE LIFETIME hosting!

What’s next?
Xitti comes to host adult social networks from WackWall social network builder. WackWall will no longer host adult content and will also be converted to the new software platform with the existing social networks that are still alive. Watch news!

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.

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:

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.

It’s the day after the Christmas night but everybody is in the office. I am so incredibly excited to make this announcement that I can hardly type. I will try though.

We are rolling out the seventh major release of our flagship product – SkaDate. This is the product of 6 months of hard work by big development team and one crazy month of heavy testing. And what is even more valuable, this is also the product of company’s 4 years of experience.

SkaDate 7 intentionally has no codename unlike previous versions, SuccessPoint and Unity. Number 7 has been lucky for the company on several occasions so it deserved to be not only the version number but also the official name.

SkaDate traditionally had a full pack of features thus with this release we concentrated on the overall usability, stability, and performance. SkaDate 7 introduces the new platform engine with reworked forms, AJAX, JavaScript, templates, languages, document and component models. Those changes (both explicit and implicit) are just too much to list them here but I will cover some of the important ones.

Features

We have reworked some of the features according to the feedback from our customers and now are glad to introduce new level of usability for events, video, blogs, forum, mailbox, and others.

As one example, video now supports not only plain uploading of files but also embedding video codes from any of the video sharing sites out there. It means that your members can now generate content for you without actually uploading files to your servers – only embedding their favorite clips from their favorite video sharing services. On your site they will be wrapped up in comments, tags, rates, and selections – so your site can become a big meta video storage in no time with zero costs.

Security

Security has always been one of the strongest points of our software. SkaDate 7 continues this tradition by using the same methods of protecting site content. We just had some optimizations and fixes during the development since SkaDate 6 security still remains unbeaten.

Performance

This is an interesting topic about SkaDate 7 and I want to cover it in details.

What are the usual ways to optimize performance on high-traffic websites? There are several tools to set up for a site like Nginx (a tiny proxy-server that optimizes HTTP requests for Apache) and Memcache (in-memory data storage) and others. Finally, there is clusterization – the last measure because it adds up considerable running costs and helps when nothing else can. You set up separate server(s) for database and for http requests. There is a load balancer that sends queries to the least loaded server out of the cluster. Database and storage servers need to be synchronized which is also a complicated task. This method provides scalability solution for any usage volume, the only downside is high cost and big additional complexity.

These methods are transparent for programming code – you can apply them to any existing site. We believe the optimization starts from ground zero – at planning and writing software.

SkaDate introduces built-in performance optimization by smart cache handle. Imagine that there’s a selection of latest site members on the homepage and every time anyone opens it, this selection is queried against the database (that has say a million members). SkaDate caches this selection to a compiled HTML code and doesn’t make any queries. Once a new member signs up this cache gets removed and SkaDate makes one new query which gets cached until the next selection change. If 1,000 visitors open your homepage and only 3 of them sign up, SkaDate makes 3 selections instead of 1,000 and gives you 333 times performance boost for this unit.

This is one small example of how SkaDate handles data and caches pages and their parts for making as little SELECT database queries as possible. Given that SELECTs absolutely outnumber INSERTs and UPDATEs on an average community site this gives unlimited possibilities for performance. Eliminating actual database queries can’t be substituted with other methods. A really busy site on SkaDate can even do without high-cost clusterization with only internal cache handle, nginx, and memcache.

Almost one year ago I said that there’s no way to handle million userbase sites on PHP/MySQL. I’m going to gladly eat my words once we perform a number of tests on SkaDate 7. There is no packaged software that does this kind of optimization, SkaDate comes first to enable businesses play big games.

Template management and integration

Another big advantage is the new way to handle templates. Given that we removed regular HTML markup from templates we now offer easier and much faster template integration and better support for new features. From now on we do not need to add markup to all templates when we add a minor feature or rebuild an old one, and new templates are integrated way easier. For you it means bigger selection of 100% up-to-date templates and 5 times as cheaper custom template integration.

In templates you can actually override the default HTML markup with your own, but except for the homepage in 99% of cases you don’t need to. We ported 5 templates from the previous version and created 2 new ones within a couple of weeks. Earlier that process would take us about a couple of months. From now on we can extend our free collection of high-end dating site templates on the constant basis.

Index page now supports arbitrary HTML code insertion and inclusion of the standard components, like latest profiles, video, photos, etc. You can even add/remove main menu, standard header, sidebar, etc.. to quickly create a unique homepage for your dating/social networking site.

Forms

Forms are 80% of the software functionality that is why we paid special attention to eliminate the existing shortcomings of the previous versions. On top of complex and dependent profile fields (that you’ve seen in SkaDate 5.x, 6.x forms) we introduce advanced Ajax validation, unified error handling, and easier programming form assemble.

Sorry for being a little bit too techy in this announcement. This new masterpiece from my team makes me feel as if I’m a little boy with a new toy again. I hope to share that feeling with you.

SkaDate once again puts its straightforward for small businesses. You don’t need multi-million budget for starting a community business. We have put so much insight, experience, and effort into one package. For you.

If you don’t feel like downloading and installing software we have hosted solution available.

Ok. Enough words at this point, I invite you to check SkaDate 7 on your own.

SkaDate 7 information: www.SkaDate.com
SkaDate 7 Online Demo: www.SkaDate.com/demo.php

Thank you.

Emil Sarnogoev
CEO
Skalfa eCommerce

Now this is big. I mean it’s huge. Today we are widening our community software portfolio (SkaDate, chuPPo) with one more product.

WackWall is an online webservice that allows you to create your own white/private label hosted social network free and within minutes.

Basic usage

You can create a nice social network free with just a few clicks and well under 10 minutes. No downloads, no installs – launch it and show it to your friends, period. It’s ready for others to join and have fun.

Advanced usage

There’s something more lying behind that for your users. A WackWall user can join unlimited networks, create unlimited networks as well as control and monitor it from one place. Content can be shared within several networks at once. It’s big fun when you try it once.

I suggest you to create 3 networks for start – for family (Your surname will do well as the network name), for colleagues (company name?), and for friends (plural of how you call each other, like “stinkers.wackwall.com”). Try uploading a photo and sharing some Internet links within these networks. Webcam chat, anyone? Once you get a basic idea of what WackWall is you can instantly see how it leverages community creation and participation.

WackWall development roadmap

What we’ve got to show you today is only the beginning. Expect aggressive development from our engineering team.

Features coming soon:

• A collection of design themes
• Much deeper design and layout customization – an object of special attention from us.
• Features customization
• Customizable languages
• Friends, invitations
• Private networks
• Forums
• Blogs
• Video sharing
• Events
• Classifieds

Particularly expect forums feature to go live within days.

We also aim at perfection of what’s already there that is why we keep our ears open. Real-life usage and user feedback is going to show how we can improve WackWall. Nothing else really matters.

Why is WackWall important?
What’s the point of using your WackWall-powered network instead of Facebook or Myspace?

Social networking shift

There’s something evermoving about Internet social networks and the way we use them. Om Malik said awhile ago that social networks should be an addition of some upper-level activity not destination in itself. We see that to be true in many ways. A lot of businesses realize that and organize communities around their products and services. Entertainment resources do the same. WackWall can help with that.

Business

After many years of applying software in business I figured out that getting sidetracked with technical issues is a very common misstep. You might find that WackWall doesn’t exactly fit your final needs but it’s a unique chance to test-proof your idea. You can have your own domain name with WackWall for free, you can play with tools, and attract some traffic. You will be surprised that people need not features but benefits.

There’s a great chance that an average user you are trying to attract is not going to demand advanced features but will appreciate fast start and comprehensive experience. The irony is that while webmasters strive for complexity and customization users are intimidated by that.

Decentralization

We have seen that many times. Consumers’ needs are seldom fulfilled when you have only several big suppliers. The real value is discovered when small businesses get chance to produce the same or better. The crowd of small businesses is what makes a particular market healthy because of diversity and competition.

The same with social networks. These days nobody believes that Facebook, Myspace, and Bebo are just enough. WackWall makes it easy for anyone who cares to have a social network dedicated to their socium.

Big generic networks do not offer customized features for that have additional value for special interest communities. An independent filmmakers community wants video sharing as primary feature while short stories writers will enjoy blogs. With WackWall you can reorganize your main page and choose only those features you want.

Smaller communities of their own special interest enjoy more intimate communication and are able to adjust for special needs easily. Elder generation is also the right audience for many business, niche, and special interest social networks. It’s logical that they don’t hang out on Facebook.

Casual users inhabiting big generic networks are a liquid crowd. They always move to the next cool thing every 2-3 years. That is because their activity has little value for themselves and for the communities they participate in. They just poke around. On the other hand, small networks always try to attract users by some special interest – this alone is the definition of deeper and more sustainable communication.

Generic networks will always have fuel of younger generation – their primary audience – just because it increases every year. Yet we see giants approaching their peaks. MySpace is already showing slight decline. Facebook probably has a couple of years ahead. Meanwhile, niche networks launch like hell and those having real communities survive and grow. Now you only need to invest 10 minutes to launch. I love BMW, check out my BMW Club network. It took me 15 minutes with creating custom images.

Centralization

In present days it’s becoming hard to manage one’s many online identities on different services. You need only one user ID for WackWall-powered social networks. We will also be one of the first to jump on universal identity bandwagon once there’s a persuasive elaboration. Existing initiatives like OpenID just do not cut it yet. Maybe it takes ICANN to do it (at least they should do something better than figuring out ways to charge us another 25 cent per domain per year).

Privacy

WackWall will make it possible to create several networks with their own privacy settings so you can manage several activities both public and private under one identity – right from the WackWall account homepage. This is impossible on generic social networks and some people rightfully call privacy #1 concern about using online social networks.

Community

By the term social network people often mean a facebook-size behemot. Online community value is not about size (whatever metrics VCs and marketers have) but about communication within it.

A social network website is an online tool to serve community needs. Online community can very well consist of 5 people (e.g. your family) to give great benefits to its members.

The size is not the key. Trying to compensate lack of communication with size isn’t going to lead anywhere. It’s like walking in the street and trying to make acquainted with strangers asking them questions about their personal habits.

Instead, imagine sitting with friends in your beloved cafe discussing the subject of your special interest, yesterday party, or someone’s new hobby. Social networking tools here are soft music, the sofa, the table, and the cups of coffee.

A group of people with sustainable communication is what makes a community. There’s no community more viable than an existing group with shared interest armored with specially designated nice place and tools.

Invite all your family members to share photos on your new fresh social network at WackWall.

Advertisement

Now imagine a stranger coming to your party and start telling everyone about commercial products with a loud voice. At best, the guy will be ignored. At worst, he will be shown the door or people will start leaving.

The sorry state of social networks advertisement at this moment resembles just that. The forms of advertisement that will dominate in online communities are not yet invented so social networks are always on the edge of spoiling user experience with ads. Learn more about advertisement on Wackwall.

If you plan to support your social network with regular ads make sure that they are:

1) unobtrusive;
2) as targeted as possible.

When you host a party for xbox gamers put a brochure of latest game releases on that coffee table.

Start together with WackWall

Invest 5 minutes to sign up for a free Wackwall account and create a free social network.

I’m really excited to announce the launch. Let’s create excellent communities together.

Emil Sarnogoev
CEO
Skalfa eCommerce