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!
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!
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!
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.
Now that your dating site content is optimized and ready to get indexed by search engines, it is time for a final stage – submitting your site to search databases.
Among the search engines Google certainly takes the leading position as the most ‘haunted’ one due to being relevant. This is why I will use it as an example while defining the steps you need to take to let search engines know about your site.
So, the initial step to ‘get friends’ with Google is to be the first to introduce yourself by submitting your site URL through this link http://www.google.com/addurl.html. If you don’t do this – the sky won’t fall over your head, and somehow or other Google spiders will find and index your website on their own… But time is precious in terms of promotion and advertising, and we all want your online dating /social community to reach the top as fast as possible. So why not take a few minutes to help the restless Google crawlers? Good news is that you won’t need to re-submit your site URL again even if you change it – once indexed, it will be tracked and updated automatically (provided you changed only the domain name and did not alter the site content).
Next move is submitting your sitemap to Google. Basically, sitemap is a list of all the website links accessible to users organized in a hierarchical (top-to-down) manner. It helps Google crawlers ‘understand’ the structure of your site and, thus, provide a significantly better indexation to its pages (essential for Flash or JavaScript menus not containing HTML links). SkaDate dating software team developed an integrated tool for automatic XML sitemap generation, which allows you to get a ready map of your site structure by a simple button click in the Admin Panel.
So, what happens next? I bet, most of you wonder how exactly Google (or any other search engine) ‘calculates’ the web site’s relevancy and importance for defining its position in search results, what factors it takes into account, and what is the priority of these factors for such evaluation. No one except for the Google staff members knows this mysterious algorithm. Even SEO sharks will hardly ever get close enough to understanding it, as it constantly gets updated. But still there is some useful information for all of us to learn.
Let’s take a look at Google PageRank, often referred to as ‘PR’ (not to confuse with Public Relations). This is how Google itself describes it: ”PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.” PageRank grades from 0 to 10. The higher your web page rank is – the better (www.yahoo.com and www.microsoft.com have PR9, www.google.com has PR10). Please, note that I mentioned a ‘web page’, not a ‘web site’. For a search engine all your site pages are ‘autonomous’ objects for indexation. So, each page will have its own PR. PageRank is invisible to Internet users in search results. But it can be seen by means of a special tool, such as Google Toolbar. It has both numerical and visual (scale bar) indicators.
As you might have understood from the PageRank description given above, it is based on the quantity and (most importantly) quality of the inbound links to your site pages. If a few web sites with good positions in search results (it is exactly high search ranks, not PR I am speaking about right now) link to your site, they give you a share of their popularity, thus, helping you to get a better PageRank too. So, you should be quite ‘picky’ while going for link exchange, since even multiple references from web sites with low Search Engine Results Placement (SERP) will not help you much in SEO.
And here comes the most important part. PageRank is just one of many components Google engine takes into consideration while ‘granting’ a search results position to your site. Which means that even if you get a PR which is 10 out of 10 – it does not guarantee you the top position in a search rank. This is proved by a number of examples when a web page with a lower PageRank got a higher SERP as compared to its competitors. Besides, PageRank is solely the Google invention, and does not affect search results positions in other search engines in any way. So, no need to focus only on this ‘magic PR’, but it’s essential to give enough attention to other important aspects, such as developing a carefully-optimized site content, choosing relevant keywords, and many more useful things mentioned in my previous articles devoted to SEO.
Search engine optimization is a science, whose motto is definitely ‘live and learn’. It’s constantly altered and updated. So take time to follow the newest SEO trends and strategies – and you will see how rewarding the results of your online business may be.
From my side, I will always be glad to answer your questions and assist in every way.
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.
Now that you have done a great job on selecting the relevant keywords for your site, it’s time to talk about using them on your site efficiently. Well, the word ‘efficiency’ in the given context is something that cannot stand apart from using meta tags.
Basically, meta tags are HTML or XHTML elements used to help search engines list your site accurately in their indexes by providing structured data about your webpage content. Other than the Title tag, meta tags are not visible to the users and serve exclusively to allow search engines and browsers to ‘deal’ with your site more easily and effectively.
Below you fill find a few tips on how to use the meta tags efficiently to make search engines (and users!) like your site.
The title tag– should contain brief information about your site; the total summary of keywords for this tag should not exceed 60 characters, but still try to make it as descriptive as you can since search engines will use it as a title for your listing. Be sure to add your main keyword to it.
Example: <title> Free online dating service for pet lovers </title>
The meta tag – Keywords attribute – this is actually the place for ’storing’ all your keywords. You can add about 1000 characters into this section (commas and spaces count as characters too). Avoid repeating same keywords often (not more than 4-7 times). Although presently this meta tag is ignored by Google (completely ignored, according to what they say), I would still recommend to keep it ‘just in case’. If one fine morning Google decides to return to recognizing keywords meta tag – you will be armed. Plus, this tag may still be of value for other search engines.
Example: <META content=”online dating, dating, matchmaking, pet lovers, pets, cat owner dating, dog owner dating, singles, animal lovers, pet dating, pet health”>
The meta tag – Description attribute – allows you to write the description of what your site is about, which is most likely to be used by search engines while displaying the search results. About 150 characters should be enough for your description to express the site conception, but some search engines allow you for about 400.
Example: <META content=”A dating site for single pet lovers, looking for friendship and love with like-minded personals”>
It is advised that you use meta tags on each page of your site (they should be inserted inside the <HEAD> section of the page). This helps better indexation by search engines and thus, increases your chances for good ranking.
The good question is how to add meta tags to your site. Normally, this can be done through one of the HTML-editors, like Nvu or Dreamweaver. But SkaDate community software developers simplified the process of adding meta information to your dating or social networking site by bringing it to inserting codes to all the site pages right from the Admin Panel/SEO section. You can also add a unique meta title and description to each page via Admin Panel/Languages.
Now let me give you a few pieces of advice on how to get the most out of your relationship with a search engine.
Make sure that your website textual content includes all the relevant keywords you selected for search engines. And remember that the keywords density should not exceed 5-10%.
Check all the links on your site. There shouldn’t be any broken or irrelevant links.
For some important site content (names, links, information) use text rather than images, since Google bots do not recognize text in images. Or at least use alt=”keyword” tag for your images.
Each page of your site has to be reachable from a at least one static text link.
Make sure your site is displayed correctly in all browsers.
Be attentive when it comes to affiliate programs – try to avoid using the textual content on your site identical to content on the other web sources. This may bring you to something opposite to success.
Be careful using other business’ trademarks among your keywords as this may lead to legal issues in regards to possible misleading the potential users.
And here come a few ‘DON’Ts’ that may not only fail to help you in SEO, but at worst will lead to search engines terminating all kinds of interaction with your site by banning it out from the search results.
Don’t go for Black Hat SEO (Spamdexing), which includes keyword stuffing (loading pages with keywords irrelevant to the site content) and link farms (a group of websites containing hyperlinks to each-other).
Don’t use programs sending automated queries to Google, say, for checking the site rank status in search results for various queries.
Don’t place hidden text or links on your site pages. Here I mean text invisible to site visitors, but available to Google crawlers.
Don’t allow duplicate content.
Don’t use cloaking (which is displaying different page content to users and to Google bots)
Don’t create ‘doorway’ pages intended for crawlers rather than for site users.
These simple rules for managing your site content will help you avoid common mistakes causing unwanted consequences and establish friendly and long-term relationship with search engines.
If you have something to say on this subject – don’t hesitate to leave the article comments expressing your opinion!
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
So, the initial step to ‘get friends’ with Google is to be the first to introduce yourself by submitting your site URL through this link 
exactly high search ranks, not PR I am speaking about right now) link to your site, they give you a share of their popularity, thus, helping you to get a better PageRank too. So, you should be quite ‘picky’ while going for link exchange, since even multiple references from web sites with low Search Engine Results Placement (SERP) will not help you much in SEO.
visible to the users and serve exclusively to allow search engines and browsers to ‘deal’ with your site more easily and effectively.
The good question is how to add meta tags to your site. Normally, this can be done through one of the HTML-editors, like Nvu or Dreamweaver. But 