Joomla for Dating site?

Birdsnwildlife1 · Post by **Birdsnwildlife1** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 8:25 pm

Can joomla be used as a dating site? has someone managed to do that?

Post by **pe7er** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 9:13 pm

Maybe you could use a 3rd party extension from the Joomla Extensions Directory,
category Personal Life: http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/

e.g. JoomlaDate (Commercial Extension for Joomla 1.0 Native)
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/

hazman · Post by **hazman** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 4:35 am

pe7er wrote:Maybe you could use a 3rd party extension from the Joomla Extensions Directory,
category Personal Life: http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/

e.g. JoomlaDate (Commercial Extension for Joomla 1.0 Native)
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/

Hello,

Commercial, I thought you guys were enforcing the GPL!

Birdsnwildlife1 · Post by **Birdsnwildlife1** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 6:45 am

Thanks for the info but $150 is miles to much. I was looking at using it for my Christian dating site which currently uses osdate.

Thanks anyway

user deleted · Post by **user deleted** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 10:57 am

hazman wrote:
pe7er wrote:Maybe you could use a 3rd party extension from the Joomla Extensions Directory,
category Personal Life: http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/

e.g. JoomlaDate (Commercial Extension for Joomla 1.0 Native)
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/
Hello,

Commercial, I thought you guys were enforcing the GPL!

Hi Hazman,

Software with a GPL license can still be sold, think of payed services around a product.

Scottmacrae · Post by **Scottmacrae** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 10:23 am

any one done this yet i am using osdate 2

Birdsnwildlife1 · Post by **Birdsnwildlife1** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:28 am

I don't have $150 spare so will stick with osdate if it was $50 then i would go with it.

Scottmacrae · Post by **Scottmacrae** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 12:38 pm

Thank you it should be free

Birdsnwildlife1 · Post by **Birdsnwildlife1** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 1:57 pm

Scottmacrae wrote:Thank you it should be free

I agree

Post by **pe7er** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 4:28 pm

Birdsnwildlife1 wrote:
Scottmacrae wrote:Thank you it should be free
I agree

Personally I think that if you earn some money (via subscriptions or advertising, or from a customer)
or save some money/time (you don't have to (let) develop the component yourself)
with the work (the component) made by someone else,
that it would be fair if the developer got some financial reward for their efforts.

If you would have to develop such a component yourself,
then it would cost you more than that component.

Most important is that you can work with an open source product
that you can (let) adapt to suit your needs.

Birdsnwildlife1 · Post by **Birdsnwildlife1** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 7:54 pm

I kind of agree which is why i said i would pay $50. There are free scripts like osdate which are good but there are also better paid scripts which are cheaper than this extension.

Scottmacrae · Post by **Scottmacrae** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 9:47 pm

I donate all the time
I do not charge for anything on my site except advertising to cover home broad band costs I belive in keeping it free?

So I still think it should be free and I would donate if i made any money from script at all from donations that was up and beyond my costs. Unfortunately the true days of free have gone there is catches

RAGEDBULL · Post by **RAGEDBULL** » Tue May 26, 2009 9:48 pm

Hello guys, I am the developer of Joomla Date, so I will just add on this conversation, to give you the developer’s perspective.
JoomlaDate is not a trivial piece of software; I worked on it for over a year, and probably well over 200 hours. This is not just a profile system, but it is also the messaging system, membership system, the picture gallery, etc - all integrated with membership-level based access control. You could probably weave some other components out there together, but you would need some serious programming knowledge and would be doing a lot of hacking. You are getting many components in one here. Joomla is a content management system, and it really lacks any kind of good user management or role based access, this all had to be done to make JoomlaDate work.

It’s really nice when people give away software, but if you look there are only a few extensions of any substance that are free. It’s really unrealistic to think you can build a website for free, even if it is for your church or a non-profit. Last time I checked, people who worked for non-profits still get paid (just less, obviously I’m talking about full time people, not volunteers). Do you have a free domain name or web hosting too, you are very lucky. Beyond building the software, which takes time and money, there is the advertising and time you need to spend with customers. When you give away software, people still contact you, and expect you to just tweak and change everything for them free as well. My free time is valuable to me, and I do like to eat as well every now and then. With any piece of software, you need to weigh the costs and benefits. Are you doing this as a business? How serious are you, can you afford all the other costs? Do you want software or do you want a relationship with the vendor for when you need things tweaked? Really guys, if this was so easy and could be done for free, don’t you think that by now someone else would have made something that is free and has everything put together?

I think a lot of people turn to Joomla and think they can just pop out a website with no web experience or skill. If you had the time and skill, I am sure you could write your own dating system – or go with a system that isn’t integrated into Joomla. Everyone has different motives when they write software, for me I would like to eventually make some profit versus the initial development and customer support time. The software isn’t intended to be swept up and be the most popular Joomla component, it was written as a business decision to fill a missing part of the market. I am sorry if it is outside your budget. If you are just looking for cool things to jazz up your site then you should consider other options. If you think it will be a useful feature for your audience then you need to decide how much something is worth for them or for you in terms of profit. For example, if you are a church, ask your members ahead of time if they would pay $5 each, one time, to have a church based dating service; you can then see how many people are really interested, instead of just putting up a dating section when it turns out no one ever really uses it.

As for the donation model, it really does not work. When I first released JoomlaDate in alpha, I made it free with source code and asked for feedback, after 2 weeks and 2000 downloads, I received no input back, though I did see some Hungarian website selling that version of the code last year. Donation only works if you don’t need or expect money. I think my product does enough to justify its costs.

Reading forums like this does not encourage me to release a 1.5 version – people will download it, trade it, and still come back to complain to me. It’s a lot of work for very little financial or spiritual reward when I go that path. As they always say, if you don't like what I am selling you can always go elsewhere. Maybe in the future I will make a more minimal version with less features that can be sold at a lower price, since price and not features seems to drive the market.

Darren-E · Post by **Darren-E** » Tue Jan 12, 2010 4:17 pm

I couldn't agree more. If you can't afford a measly $150.00 for a product then don't buy it - but keep your opinions to yourself.

Imagine if your customers all complained that you charge them to develop websites and expected you to do it for free. You wouldn't be in business.

Come to think of it, if NOBODY else has anything like it, you should be thanking the developer that he's not charging MUCH MORE!

RAGEDBULL · Post by **RAGEDBULL** » Tue Jan 12, 2010 7:30 pm

I am curious if anyone is interested in a 1.5/1.6 version of this kind of software.

I don't think JomSocial or CB really ever go this done. A Social network is not the same as dating site, and needs to function differently,
with a key emphasis on search.

I actually wrote a 1.5 version then scrapped it. I wanted to offer a more robust underlying system that would put JomSocial and CB to shame.

However, I am not sure if there will be a big push on 1.6 and when - and this effects alot of architecture.

The extension would be commerical, but GPL for 1.5/1.6, but would focus more on the core system.

I am really inspired by FlexiContent right now and may begin development on a new dating/matching platform in the next year.

The big difference would be that it would be alot more abstract, which is good for developers and creating somehting like a nanny-family matching service, but may be too complex for Joomla Users. I recently attended a live Joomla users group meeting and found that those in the "advanced" section were clueless..."beginners" were defined more as people who can't follow and find buttons on a screen and answers questions like how to install an extension... Therefore the Joomla market is very difficult.

And, as we can see JomSocial has plenty of bugs and apparently has bad support from what I read and they are doing just fine as a big name commercial non-GPL application. I think overtime as the number of business users starts to overtake developers and techie people in the Joomla community, you will see less people complaining about "Everything in Joomla should be free"

v2interactive · Post by **v2interactive** » Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:05 pm

Invectra wrote:I couldn't agree more. If you can't afford a measly $150.00 for a product then don't buy it - but keep your opinions to yourself.

Imagine if your customers all complained that you charge them to develop websites and expected you to do it for free. You wouldn't be in business.

Come to think of it, if NOBODY else has anything like it, you should be thanking the developer that he's not charging MUCH MORE!

Exactly.

There are MANY extension I've used that are free, and I mean MANY. However, there are times when a complex application such as a dating site or social networking site (Jomsocial) where if you take the hours it would be to custom program and how much is worth your time you're exceeding over $1,000+++

These are darn near professional programmers and they have families and mouths to feed. Plus, in the time it took them to develop this extension, they could have been hired by a client at a rate of $150/hour. Just keep it in mind next time you complain about commercial software.

If you can't put up $150 bucks, I'm sorry but maybe you're doing the wrong kind of websites.

There is a saying, you get what you pay for...

RAGEDBULL · Post by **RAGEDBULL** » Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:12 pm

Thanks for the nod.

It's interesting how the opinion in our community is changing.

v2interactive · Post by **v2interactive** » Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:14 pm

RAGEDBULL wrote: Reading forums like this does not encourage me to release a 1.5 version – people will download it, trade it, and still come back to complain to me. It’s a lot of work for very little financial or spiritual reward when I go that path. As they always say, if you don't like what I am selling you can always go elsewhere. Maybe in the future I will make a more minimal version with less features that can be sold at a lower price, since price and not features seems to drive the market.

I think I speak for all of the professionals on here when I write this...

Very well written. Please retract your last statement though (about people like this not encouraging you to continue your work). Please don't use this as a model of customers/developers/designers.

All of your points are valid and very true, which I agree with 110%. It's coders and developers like you that keep me coming back to this community and buying/supporting both commercial and non-commercial code.

RAGEDBULL · Post by **RAGEDBULL** » Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:15 pm

The kicker with the $150 price tag is that if you ever read to the bottom of the FAQ, you got a 20% discount...

Also known as the "idiot tax" in my book, because if you are not going to read the documentation or even a brief FAQ, you are not doing your homework and will be a support pain. If you look at my Total RSS extension on the JED, you will see all too often people don't read. As I said above, the Joomla community has all types. I think anyone who has genuinely sat down and though about their website as a "business" can make an informed decision on how much they should pay.

RAGEDBULL · Post by **RAGEDBULL** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 5:34 am

Well, in general Joomla is used for a lot of niche or specialty communities. It might not make money, but it might be a good service for churches or other types of groups as a service to their members. Its not an outrageous price tag even for these types of organizations when you look at the complex and expensive specialized membership software they use in their backoffice.

I have actually told this to many customers in the past... you really can't go after the national (one potential wanted international geocoding...try hiring a few programmers full time for something that ambitious).

Generally, I would say the people who actually have a business plan or some idea of how what they were actually doing usually already had a community that needed the feature. Perhaps they are a local gay activist group, religious group, hobby group, sports fan group, whatever it may be.

The other thing that you have to remember with the price tag on the first version I released was tight user access level controls. I wrote my own messaging system and pokes/action system that you could control based on whether or not they were paid members.

While I love the ease of programming and great logical organization, overriding, etc in Joomla- groups and ACLs still suck because they are still focused on Joomla as a publishing system, and not a platform for communities. I had plans to release a better system, but its still unclear where they are going 1.6 forward, and I am not going to replicate or start working on something that will not get used.

And to more directly address your question (I was writing an article on social media vs search engine advertising):

On search engines you target keywords, on Facebook you can target individual people. The same concept applies for niche vs national carrier. With eharmony/chemistry you are usually primarily concerned with location or profile, but lets say you live a vampire lifestyle or something niche like that, you have a better chance of connecting with someone you want through a niche dating service. There are a lot of opportunities, but probably not a lot of visibility to an outsider. Trust me, I had people contacting me with really specific things and specialized groups- and they already had a member base.

sarahberra · Post by **sarahberra** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 6:13 am

I guess you could have a section on dating, but that is not the initial reason for the site. There are a lot of really good dating sites out there like match.com. My sister found a man on line. I married my high school sweetie 11 years ago so I have never had the chance to date.

RAGEDBULL · Post by **RAGEDBULL** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 6:20 am

The software was written because there was a demand...whether or not they could find success from the business standpoint or other objectives is beyond my knowledge. I have tried to talk people with no idea what they were doing out of buying actually ( don't want to deal with the headache they would give me for $150), but people will dream and have ideas.

The future version of my software will not be just dating, but a better profile system. I was going to give up, but I recently found flexicontent and I am in love...I want to apply the same management to my profile system I built to make an awesome system. I also have a very primitive groups management and ACL system I want to implement as well as membership system, but I am waiting to see what is happening with Joomla.. frankly the only change I want to see at this point is getting rid of mootools 1.11 which causes me hours of pain... search mootools 1.11 all you find is joomla references... sorry no more ranting about that right now...

The idea would be for other types of match making like nannies, b2b, freelancers, etc.

mangoman · Post by **mangoman** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 4:55 am

I do hope you develop JoomDate for J1.6 - you're correct that JS & CB don't address the distinct interactions via a dating site. I actually *do* need an extension like yours because users will also login not *only* to date but to use other functions & services in the site.

I feel your pain - not just the rantings (misunderstandings? ignorance?) about price but also about the weak ACl in J1.5; it prohibits admin control AND user participation. Oh, how I'd love to delegate certain backend functions to several moderators, editors and users - but I'd rather not install 3PD hacks/extensions in order to delegate/assign responsibility until J1.6 is out. Like you, I'd rather not duplicate my effort.

Don't get discouraged, RagedBull. Cater to the growing % of Joomla developers that do have sense of business economics and will invest in your extension. Good luck.

John

RAGEDBULL · Post by **RAGEDBULL** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 5:08 am

From what i've seen, J1.6 ACLs are still going to be weak and tied to content editing, useless...

Also, incase any other developers read this - here is one request from everyone. With hierarchies, stop using parent id and go with nested sets: http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/art ... -data.html

A lot of stuff, especially things like ACLs and categories should be nested sets. Why? Because updates take a lot of work, but to get the hierarchy and children can be done in one command. Joomla makes enough DB calls, caching is not enough. With the ACL system I was developing, I was using nested sets and boy can you do really cool things that are a pain with normal hierarchies used by Joomla core and 3pd devs.

nickjason · Post by **nickjason** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 11:09 am

Most "dating sites" I'm seeing that are currently running on Drupal aren't that elegant, they all follow pretty much the same pattern, and just don't seem as "unbloggy" as they should (I know, I made that one up). Drupal can be pretty customized, it's just a matter of how much work you want to put into it.

However, Joomla has one powerful add-on in it's corner: Community Builder. CB is a huge project with it's own plug-ins that enable all sorts of community/social-type "secret sauce" to be poured into the site. I used CB for the member functionality on the art project, and it was a life-saver. That being said, it's still pretty rudimentary, and changing it around and having CB interface into other non-CB compatible modules can cause some bugs, or even site breakage, so it's not perfect.

RAGEDBULL · Post by **RAGEDBULL** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 6:07 pm

I had so many requests to write a CB module for dating...

Alas, I want to build next to other extensions, not on top, because then I don't have to worry about two upgrade cycles or vulnerabilities in the middleware platform. Perhaps I will make a very very simple version of the dating software so there is something that people can use.

willow370 · Post by **willow370** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 11:16 pm

The same argument goes with everything that’s purchased when creating a site, the more you spend, the more serious you are about the website, tell me one professional/successful dating site that was setup for under $150?

That being said, i think you’ll find that, if you do find free or cheaper dating software, and the site takes off, i guarantee you’ll be happier spending the cash, so in the end, you have to be sure your serious about paying the big bucks for software, and know your going to keep going till it is successful enough for the $150 to become worth while.

I have put about, $50 into my website, and its just a hobby website, but if it becomes successful, ill certainly be funding it a lot more.

My 2 cents

Bink · Post by **Bink** » Sat Feb 20, 2010 8:56 am

RAGEDBULL wrote:The software was written because there was a demand...whether or not they could find success from the business standpoint or other objectives is beyond my knowledge. I have tried to talk people with no idea what they were doing out of buying actually ( don't want to deal with the headache they would give me for $150), but people will dream and have ideas.

The future version of my software will not be just dating, but a better profile system. I was going to give up, but I recently found flexicontent and I am in love...I want to apply the same management to my profile system I built to make an awesome system. I also have a very primitive groups management and ACL system I want to implement as well as membership system, but I am waiting to see what is happening with Joomla.. frankly the only change I want to see at this point is getting rid of mootools 1.11 which causes me hours of pain... search mootools 1.11 all you find is joomla references... sorry no more ranting about that right now...

The idea would be for other types of match making like nannies, b2b, freelancers, etc.

I do not see JoomlaDate available as a download. Is it no longer available? If it has moved to another location can you tell me where that location is and if it is still available for purchase?

If I purchase it, will it still be updated?

Thank you.

Post by **mandville** » Sat Feb 20, 2010 9:22 am

Bink wrote:I do not see JoomlaDate available as a download.

try the posters signature line for a location for downloadsbut

Editor's note

This extension has been unpublished for the following reason:

* This extension using a non-GPL license (Learn more).
* This extension is not compatible with Joomla! 1.5 (Learn more).

RAGEDBULL · Post by **RAGEDBULL** » Sat Feb 20, 2010 4:35 pm

http://webdesignhero.com/store/Dating-S ... -Date.html

You can read about it, but I am not currently selling or supporting it for new customers because J!1.0 is not really supported that well.

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