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.

Hey, today we have some more news than just fabulous we-are-working-on-WackWall-2.0 one. We have successfully finished deploying new set of management features for the current WackWall platform.

From now on Network Admnistrators can:

- Remove your social network from WackWall;
- Remove all kinds of content from your social network;
- Remove comments from all kinds of content on your social network;
- Ban users.

These features were long due and we took our time to release them now instead of further forcing to wait for them in the upcoming grand re-launch.

Feel free to submit feedback at dev.wackwall.com.

Today we received report about discovered vulnerability in SkaDate 7.

We have found the origin of the problem within several minutes and updated all hosted customers with an hour. If you are a Managed Solution customer or if you host with us you have already been upgraded and have nothing to worry about.

Shortly after that we have issued fix that you can download from the customer area. If you are self-hosted you need to upgrade as soon as possible.

Go to Customer Area -> Downloads -> Software -> SkaDate 7 -> Misc

There is Skadate7v986_Security_Fix.tar.gz file, you need to copy it to the root folder of your site (often “public_html”) and unpack.

This is the second time we experience security problem during the whole SkaDate product 4 year lifetime. This time again, we have taken measures before all major resources posted about this vulnerability.

If you have any problems please refer to our 24/7 online support.

This is Skalfa style. As if it was not enough that we just released SkaDate 7, we are here with a big update to it with some new candies:

1. News feature – made on top of blogs. Now moderators can simply write blog posts and mark them as “news”. They will automatically appear on a special “news” page, and in the news components on the index page, and member home page.

2. Moderator page – single page for moderators to approve all kinds of content being added to the site. This starts with several features and will eventually contain everything being created on the site.

3. Text formatting – universal formatting for user input just started. Now comments, forums, chat support it. Again, this will be eventually supported by all features on the site that accept user input.

4. Smilies – they are actually a part of the text formatting, and the great thing is that smilies are also supported everywhere. We will soon add support for custom smilesets so every site will be able to upload their own smilies.

5. Ajax IM – an important feature – real-time site-wide instant messenger between site users. If someone initiates an IM session with you, you will receive an invitation no matter on what page you are now. A tool to stimulate users to hang online on your site.

6. Profile notes – a handy feature that allows every user to leave private comments about other users. Notes like “an interesting variant”, or “need to write to see what she’s about” will appear on the corresponding profiles. Also these notes can be viewed on a separate page.

7. Rate photos, Hot-or-not style – Rate all photos on the site (or filter out by gender) one by one, hotornot.com style. Loved by users.

8. Photo approve tool – a handy tool for admin to approve all upcoming photos. Really eases the process of approving.

9. Site suspend – suspend your site temporarily with a polite message to users.

And the last but not the least:

10. 3 New templates – you’d ask how we can produce such cool templates with this kind of speed. Answer: SkaDate 7 new template engine. Check out: Victory (version 6 template remake), Business Networking (version 6 template remake), Colorful Rings (brand new).

Feel free to check out demo.

Here comes another SkaDate 6 Unity maintenance update!

3 new languages in stock!

- Spanish
- Portuguese
- German

Feel free to download those languages from customer area.

Improvements? Improvements!

Of course we couldn’t resist making SkaDate even better with all those micro-enhancements, optimizations, and fixes.

1) Profile preview (topic)
2) Admin notes to profile (topic)
3) direct link to profile from admin (topic)
4) Whois online update (topic)
5) New members list (topic)
6) Ability to delete language prefix (topic)
7) Admin panel, search profile by id (topic)
8 ) direct link to original photo (topic)
9) top photos update (topic)
10) mailbox: change “not read” (topic)
11) professional match template (topic)
12) top rated profiles: add score and rates (topic)
13) Add google analytics ability (topic)
14) Automatic happy birthdate email (topic)
15) A heap of other micro-enhancements, optimizations, and bugfixes.

The update has been packed today. Feel free to download your copy from the customer area.

Thanks to those customers who constantly contribute to quality of our software with testing and reports on Skalfa Boards. We have some candies for you guys, let it be surprise!

Just a quick note of news:

1) chuPPo Chat has become lightweight due to its transition to Flex 3 framework. Now it will load faster than before thus improving users’ experience.

2) Due to numerous requests we have implemented “video in pop-up” feature. Now if you look at someone’s video in chuPPo Chat you can not only put it to video dock but also open it in a separate popup window – this makes it possible to resize the video without interfering with chat interface.

Feel free to check at chuPPo Chat demo.

I’m glad to announce the long-awaited SkaDate 6 Unity update: revision 6.799

It contains numerous fixes and enhancements mainly reported and suggested by our customers.

So, what’s new?

Admin Features:

- Giving new membership type when actually viewing a member detail
- “Send test email” button for mass mailing, activity scheduler
- Admin can set the priority of profile order in search results with these options: by last activity, by paid members, by photos, by join date
- Quick Search – configurable location. Zip or Country/state/city
- Send only new matches – admin can set to send only new matches for specified period
- “Select All” in admin photo approval area
- Admin gets notice if profile a member with recurring membership unregisters
- Changed the order of profiles for review in Admin Panel: latest profiles at the top
- Possibility to hide “Important Tips” on member home page via Admin Panel

User features:

- Ajax Chat/IM – overall stability, display improvement, speed, opponent connection status tracking – thanks to the new backend.
- “CHECK ALL” button to the bottom of the members emails into Mailbox
- Date of user subscription in the profiles
- Option for users to accept only matches who have profiles with pictures in them
- “My neighborhood” feature enhancement
- Tags – member can delete tags which other profiles posted on his profiles
- Possibility to upload image or insert URL for profile page background
- Readable messages change – members will be able to read and answer readable messages
- Fullsize photos
- Highlighting members on search results by membership type
- “Unsubscribe from emails” in email template
- Members can see who recently looked at their profile
- “Remember Me” option at sign-in
- “Subscription” page redesign
- Fixed basic components on “Build Profile” page
- If a free member can’t use IM, they still can answer IM initiated by a premium member
- Text box to add personal message on the “Invite a friend” feature
- Friends request redesign
- Captcha image on contact form

System changes

Fixes

- If someone is removed that a member has referred that they still have that number of referrals
- Ajax chat window jump
- Featured Profiles “Next” link on home page – Skips the first full page of featured members
- Not sending matches email if no matches
- Moderators review profile photos in Admin Panel
- Language Management: `Language Key Types` alphabetical sorting.
- Suspended photos appeared while browsing randomly (fixed).
- Photo Rating module APP many fixes and improvements

The new update is now ready for shipping. Check out SkaDate demo.

We have updated chuPPo Messenger application.

Update summary:
- Skin, smilies change support
- Custom languages support
- Usage statistics
- Usage tracking now based on successful IM sessions between members, not on simultaneous users online like before.

Log in to admin area. Now you can see a separate tab for Messenger with its own settings. Feel free to check and let us know if it works well for you.

As you might have noticed we released a new skin for chuPPo Chat.

This skin will be default for all new chuPPo Chat installations, existing customers can activate it in chuPPo admin area.

We think user interface tweaking can never be too much. Together with the skin, chat application has got some minor interface improvements. Feel free to comment if your users like the new app. We are going to clear out and polish every single detail based on what your users say. Since community business is always user-centric, you might want to gather some feedback from your chatters.

Good luck in your endeavors!

OK, it’s just about time for Skalfa Claus to raise his tousled head out of development docs and announce the December revision of SkaDate: version 6.560

Here’s what we got for you in this release:

- New template
- Upload photo at sign up
- Username choice blacklist (admin, office, support, etc…)
- Instant AJAX username check at sign up
- Index page thumbnails resize fixed
- In the match template of the activity scheduler, the admin can set the amount of matches to be sent, and the match list is randomized each time an email is scheduled
- Profile custom HTML can be turned off
- AJAX chat user sex is displayed with an icon
- Admin can see which photos are password-protected or friends-only
- Suspended users are always taken to you-are-suspended page at sign in
- A profile can be optionally invisible until the admin approves it.
- Number of users in your area statistics
- Total number of site users statistics
- Birthday list
- URL field type added
- Multiple admins
- A snowfall of minor fixes, optimizations, and enhancements.

Features and enhancements for this release were chosen primarily from our customers feedback, partially from what you guys asked on this blog. Keep up the good work so we can do the product even better.

If you don’t have anything to play with during Christmas holidays this version of SkaDate is perfect choice. Run to check demo and submit your feedback.