unsure…they have an excellent forum/community. You could ask in there.
Do you know of people (publishers) doing well with osdate, and if customers of sites using it are very comfortable using its interface? As comfortable and user friendly as visitors might find it with sites using datemill?
i asked the very same question re OsDate, on their forum (a few weeks ago).
i.e. i always saw sites that had hundreds, even thousands, of members, but only ever 2 or 3 people were onlinbe when i was on the site…which was strange. But someone did eventually post a dating site, i think it was a New Zealand site, and it had big numbers of registered users, along with many many online ones. You’ll find the url if you look at the Osdate forum.
I know what you mean re the squarish box type look of Osdate.
The bottom line for me will be the SEO (search engine friendly aspect). Osdate and Datemill will have to be search engine friendly, if I use them. I need good looking url’s, that google loves. If you’re not well covered by the search engines, your site may as well not even exist.
I’ve seen several mentions of Date Mill and statements that an update is forthcoming, how good the support is, etc. Problem is when I visit the site what I see are that all the announcements for product development end at some point in the 2nd quarter of 2006. Is this still a viable option? Lack of product announcements is just one little clue I look for to determine if a project has lost momentum for whatever reason.
Just like most of you, I’ve been doing lots of research for weeks and months on what to buy. I’m looking at 2 separate purchases, a social networking program and a dating program. I don’t want to confuse topics here, but do want to mention all those that look favorable to me including those that are less social network and more dating:
PhpFox, written about here a great deal, has one thing going for it I especially like: an active owner who regularly writes a blog about development including a long piece on how to integrate with vB.
Skadate, a dating package, seems rock solid right down to the fact I was able to call and speak with a real live human in tech support. When I asked where he was located he said Indiana.
Web Network and Web Date, from the same company, looks solid though compared to most I’ve looked at, it seems on the high end once you start adding all the plug-ins.
Handshakes also seems very solid but I’m concerned that no phone support is offered.
vldPersonals is not on the list YET because I only read about it for the first time here. It looks very solid, but I need to do more research.
Dolphin is NOT on my list, though I was very impressed with it. I have read so many negative things about customer support that I’m a little too nervous about them to simply overlook all the criticism as nothing more than a few angry people.
IMO - it’s a case of Pennywise Pound foolish with some commercial scripts outs there. Just be weary on what is purchased out there as I have been there and done that. Look for good support and a script that CAN handle a large amount of clients. Try to look for example’s of established sites that have used the script.
It’s one thing looking @ a DEMO and another have a site with a community with 1000+ people to handle at one time.
Regards,
GG
Just do thorough research before being too impulsive.
I already have an established social network. Just wondering if anyone knows software that one can buy or even freesource for Video and Music uploading (kind of like myspace)
hi, thanks for that new script - skadate That is new to me, and to this thread. It looks really good. But the price is way too expensive - 795 dollars…and 195 dollars per update, and they suggest on average two updates per year. That is a great shame…wonderful looking script, loaded with great templates.
The one piece of advice that I’d strongly give to you, - is only go with totally unencrypted scripts. This is something that I have learned from extensive reading and reseach. And sadly you’ll find that 98 percent of scripts have some level of encrytion.
You asked about datemill - well Dan is one of the best support people I have ever encountered. He’s honest, decent and offers great support. Now admittedly I don’t know what would happen (God forbid) if he walked out in front of a bus tomorrow. But his script is entirely unencrypted, so you’re always gonna be able to adapt it, even if he or his company is not around. And it is relatively inexpensive compared to most other scripts. And unlike other scripts, there is not a whole host of additional add-ons that you have to buy.
Just my 2 cents.
I have just moved from BuddyZone to PHPFox. Today is our first day being open.
I’ve been working with PHPFox to migrate all my users over. Their support has been pretty good. Sometimes slow in responding. Several times I had to wait more than 24 hours for responses.
So far I’m impressed with the feature set of PHPFox. And the admin panel makes managing the site much easier.
I have a couple of complaints so far though.
The script overall seems to run slow. I’m on a dedicated server with dual cpu and other scripts are much quicker. Anyone have experience with this?
My other problem is that there is no way to allow people to change usersnames. They suggested I just make the change in db myself. But that is more complicated than just a one table change. It seems they user username as the key between tables. And when they write user images to file system the files are prefixed with the username.
I’ll let you know how things go as we move forward with the script.
The site is located here:
www.mytribalspace.com
The username issue is appearing to be a larger problem than I thought.
In the friends table, all friends are written to the table as usernames not an id!
Anyone checked out Social Media v1.5.0??
Here’s the post about it:
It looks like it might be good but I’m hardly an expert!
Hi, I think, no one mention GPLdate
Whats the diffrence betwen gpldate and dolphin ?
whats better ? gpldate or dolphin ?
ps.
anyone got gpldate, cuz project on hold at the moment?.
prv me pls
thanks
Kris
I’m not the best when it comes to clear and precise definitions.
An unencrypted script may or may not necessarily be a commercial script. Dan sells his datemill script commercially, and yet it is entirely unencrypted. OsDate on the otherhand distribute their unencrypted script at no cost (tho you can buy themes and add-ons IIRC).
as for open source, a definition of open source is available at:
in section, it says: 3. Derived Works
The (open source) license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
So I think (others know more about this than me, and help me out here) that under the open source license, you would not be able to encrypt parts of a script and call it open source. It defeats the purpose of such a license.
Open source means that a script is available in it’s entirety to others.
Just one point of clarification: open source and unencrypted are not the same thing, right? In other words, can you claim to be selling an open source script that you’ve also encrypted?
Has anyone seen this or is anyone using it? I think it’s new, but then who knows. I’m no coder so I don’t know if it’s based on another script or if it’s encrypted or what. As far as I can see the cost is £80 GB pounds or $155
Yes, I looked at this in my own search. It isn’t new, but it is being marketed under a new name. When I first looked at this option, it was called “iFDate”. In mid-February that name was gone and a seemingly new product put in it’s place. One good sign for them: active forums. Read some forum threads and you can usually learn a great deal about how users are thinking about a product, not to mention how customer support responds.
Thank you for the explanation. Seems clear after reading your post that you can’t be both encrypted AND open source.
This looks like a well thought out script - from the demo side. Does anyone have any experience with it? I’m tempted to give it a try but I’d rather not fly blind on one I’ve never heard of. Nice forums, clear design - though to blogs look like they’re part of the forum system (looks like a vBulletin/vBlogitin type thing…)
Joovili looks interesting, but I won’t be the one taking the first dip 
Are any of the scripts using Google Checkout? Are mods available? Does anyone have experience with it? Does it go well with this kind of business? Are any of the script publisher’s ready to integrate in order to expand options for customers, especially since some of the others can be comparatively expensive or possibly quick to reject a site? Is this easy to do?