Objective Social Networking Software Reviews

I tried PHPizabi's dating script and when I ran into a problem, Rubberduck (aka Dave) @ phpizabi.net, went right off the edge and accused me of things that were not typed in the email.

I did state that I thought he wrote the plug-in I was in need of support, but that was the only typed item that was wrong with my request for help. I had contempt in my email, but HE DID!

After a month of no-resonse emails, I spent another month requesting a refund from the Canadian group of the de-branding fee. NO RESPONSE!

I dropped their software and went is osDate, for now.

I googled 'phpizabi dating' and found this link,
http://chris.instantspot.com/blog/index.cfm/2006/12/15/PHPizabi-got-jacked

 

HI
I think that handshakes is the best with it's new version 3.2 .here are some site that contain many scripts
http://www.scriptmimic.com/scripts/scripts-like-myspace-10.html
http://www.scriptcopy.com/myspace/

THX for sharing opnions about other scripts

 

I just checked out abledating and their software looks better then anything i've seen so far.

 

I think you're referring to AbleSpace -- for Social Networking ;-)

Definitely a great product!

I retract all positive statements regarding phpFoX in this thread for many, many reasons.

 

I just checked it out and the site looks awesome, but it's pretty pricey compared to the others. I'm wondering if there's any reviews on this. Has anyone used this?

 

Another one is People Aggregator - It's Open Souce. I've been looking at it today. Seems interesting - but it's still beta.

Here's what I'm looking for.
Groups
Music
Video
Comments
Ratings
Friends
Blogs
CMS's for groups
News and Articles for Groups
Event Calendars for Groups
Document support
Advertiser/Sponsor system with pay intergration
By Invite Only
Authorized to join groups and such.
Source code available


There a ton more - but stuff I can program in. Just need a good base.
Handshakes and E-Friends looks good from the specs.

 

I just tested it, and it looks great.

One major problem, it doesn't allow folks to use MySpace layouts. This is a key feature IMHO. Users want to be able to customize their profiles easily. If they can't do that, it's really not "their page". It's your page with their name on it.

There are literally thousands of MySpace layouts on the web for free. This is what SN developers need to be thinking about. Apparently, Buddyzone is the only app that allows MySpace layouts to be 100% effective.

So, I would never use it, and I would never recommend it. Creating a social networking site that does not allow users to easily design their profiles is an exercise in futility. It's just doomed to fail.

~C

 

Why would you do this, why are you abandoning phpFox now that all the users are flooding the fix ticket system? By the way you supported and defended phpFox's when it first came out, I would almost bet my mother that you are the onwer of phpFox, and recently came across the company that coded AbleSpace. AbleSpace is your product.

You were part of the moderating team at phpFox, and nobody ever met or knew who the owner of phpFox was, he never even posted a blog or posted in the forums, how strange? The only person everyone knew from the phpFox forums was you and 2 graphic designers, why is the owner not defending his product like many other product owners do? you can see some examples in this thread itself, you are the owner of phpFox.

If you are not the owner of AbleSpace stop promoting it like it's yours, I don't see any AFFILIATE ID in your AbleSpace signature link.

You even have two links in your signature that aren't provided by ABK-Soft LTD's website? buyablespace.com and Bestsocialnetworkingscript.com who other than the owner of the software would know these links?

So now that everyone is flooding the fix it ticket for phpFox, you run way from that worthless product and contact a programming team to code AbleSpace for you, so when people start flooding ablespace's fix it ticket are you going to run away again and start another social networking product like you what you did with phpFox?

Many people spent their hard earned money on phpFox and now want the support that they paid for, for example 2 of my clients have submitted several fix it tickets and NONE have been answered, 3 weeks now!!! With Ablespace you now charge $600!!! you will rip a lot of people off their hard-earn money again and then run away.

AbleSpace is your scapegoat, I don't trust you, nor I do trust your new software and even though it looks like a great software that even I could had use for my clients, knowing the history of phpFox I don't doubt this will be ANOTHER SCAM of yours!.

AbleSpace it's a SCAM!

 

The wording is getting kind-of harsh.

Let take a time out and breath deep blow out breath deep blow out

Do we all feel better now.

 

Dating Software Reviews: To Believe Or Not To Believe?

So you have decided to start a dating or community site. First of all you begin crawling the Web in search of dating software reviews, good or bad, you google for the dating software titles to see something about them.

I would like to share my ideas on this very interesting topic: can you find an objective dating software review online or not when you are going to buy a dating software package.

First of all, about myself. I am a web marketologyst from one of the Chech cities, not long ago I was fired from one of the dating software development companies. I am not angry at them at all, so there will be no bad words against them and so on. I will just tell you what I know about dating software development process, also dating software reviews and so on. I will categorize my ideas and put them under numbers. Sorry for my English by the way.

1) All good dating software reviews are written by the dating software developers.

It may seem strange at first, but it will not seem strange if you think about it. Imagine you have bought a good dating software package. You have set it up, it works ok, you have gathered 600 000 users and you earn 10 000$ a day on this site. You know that competition in this branch is very severe, there are thousands of dating sites.

Are you sure you will be posting good reviews about your dating software? So that more and more people started sites like yours? And took members and money from you?
I am not sure you will. Moreover, answering questions like: what dating script are you using on your site? you will tell some other titles. Imagine finding a gold mine, will you try to lead more and more people to it? No. Never.

2) All so called "independent" dating software review forums are backed by dating software developers.

If you look closer at most of the "independent" dating software forums (will not give names or links), you will see that there is a definite emphasis on one or two dating software products. They are praised and discussed eagerly. The others are either almost not discussed or discussed, but in so bad words that after reading it you will not want to buy it in any case. So this is their goal actually. And they achieve it. Please just look at the forum more closely and you will understand what I mean. There are NO independent dating or dating software forums. Never.

3) All bad reviews are written by the dating software developer's competetors.

Imagine you have tried a dating software package and find it absolutely bad. You buy another one and are completely happy about it. Are you sure you will post bad dating software reviews? Or you will want more and more people use this bad software and lose hope in dating business and go out of it completely? Or you will tell everyone please do not use this bad dating software please use this one I have bought it is good I earn a lot of money on it? Never. And imagine now you are a dating software developer. Will you post bad reviews about your competetors? Sure! It is much simpler than inventing new features.

So what should you do? If you want to understand which dating or community software is good or bad the only way is looking at the demo. Just walk all around it, ask questions, look at code samples. Look at as many dating software demos as you can, compare features, design, usability. Or ask your close friend if the dating software he has bought is ok.

But are you sure you are such close friends that he will share his income with you?

 

There are so many Social networking scripts out that the hard part is figuring which one to use... I've been wanting to start a little site using one of these scripts but haven't found one that offers all the features I'm looking for.

 

Which scripts are closest to LinkedIn?

 

Since I am a new member, I cannot post links, thus, I cannot link to a previous post I made in another thread.

So..reposting here..since I am looking for as much feedback as possible.

------------------------------
Been reading forums for almost 2 days...as I am currently in the process of identifying "SNS" for a project we are working on. Wondering if anyone has heard of, or have experience with Web Scribble?

Since there isn't a leader in this field so to speak....besides functionality, my concerns are:

1) Well written/expandable code.
2) Good features.
3) Good customer service

Having a hard time deciding what direction to go. Since this is kind of in its infancy, this seems like a crap shoot as far as deciding which software to choose. But for now, I am kind of narrowed down to these (in no particular order):

Web Scribble
Handshakes Professional V3.3
PhpFox
PHPizabi

Concern is investing in software that has sloppy code, poor support....no real growth as far as adding features, etc......

Any thoughts/feedback would be helpful.


Thanks!
RR

 

i gave phpfox a shot for 2 weeks, a couple months ago and there were so many flaws and errors and support ticket being slow and unresponsive as hell i had to give up. Their forum is slow with many many unanswered questions that will probably never be answered. The extensions and addons/fixes are mostly developed by third party people who charge at least $60 for every little fix.

You want a video addon? no problem pay $60, you want a login fix? no problem i got the fix for it but im charging $70 for it.... "someone fix this bug for me! me too i have the same bug! me 3! would someone fix this damn bug already" i got the fix, come to my product page its only $80...

Stuff like this shouldn't even be considered but thats the reality of phpfox the devlopers are just too damn busy or something to get to fixing these little problems. and it goes on and on. Refunded that bitch gabage. Handshakes i avoided because its not open source. Im stuck with trying to find a developer.

 

Hi RR,

I have been following several threads on this subject on this forum and others. There appears to be several issues relating to good social networking platforms:

1) Customers are unwilling to pay the freight for what it really costs to build and support a stable, well designed, well supported platform.

2) The designers of these platforms seem to miss the boat. A design "perspective" is very important to attracting and keeping members coming back. The organization and presentation of content tends to be chaotic and haphazard and does not lend itself to members finding new "friends" in a social network. The design perspective is the key "revolutionary" point about a good SNS. People do not come together randomly. There must be a "process" to get them together.

3) The develoeprs of these platforms, unfortunately, do not seem to have the necessary design/development expertise, which would be quite a bit given the problems associated with a good SNS platform. There must be very good user interface knowledge, database design and optimization expertise, program design, program coding, security and spam protection (who needs a lawsuit), administration know-how, etc.

4) Good marketing and advertising expertise to properly present a new platform.

All of this takes money, time, and expertise, and lots of it. Who is going to pay the freight? I am quite willing to pay for a good platform, if it exists, but unfortunately I do not think it does. As a consequence, I am stuck in a bind. I do not want to shell out lots for a customize platform (especially since the results are problematic) until I know that the idea really has traction on my site. On the other hand, there is no good way to try out an idea unless there is a decent platform to test it out on. So it is a Catch-22.

I've decided that it is no worthwhile just throwing up a platform on my site that is bound to fail because of technical, administrative, or security issues. It would be a waste of time and energy. What I think I will do, is try to seek out a consulting company that has done this type of work in the past, and possibly get up a semi-customized site to try it out before going a fully customized route.

Hope this helps explain my view of things,
Rich

 

for having so much information on various social networking scripts out there. After reading up on things on this forum for several weeks I ended up biting the bullet on phpfox.

I'm new to phpfox and only came aboard with it about 3-4 weeks ago. In this time I've modified a custom design to my needs and then quickly setup fox with little to no problems.

Everything has been great. So now to one of the big tasks; integrate phpbb and coppermine. With the assistance of a developer, everything was up within a few hours and it's working great.

Now to the video section; I'll update everyone soon on that. Bottom line is, make sure you have some honest and dependable developer resources that won't cost you an arm and a leg and if you're savvy enough to do things on your own, you can minimize cost on your end.

Honestly, it's exceed my expectations and I've been a joomla diehard for some time. Btw, i'm on 1.5.1 and looking to upgrade soon.

If anyone has any questions i'll be glad to try and help, because I know how tough of a decision this is.

thanks,

www.castnshoot.com

 

Thank you for your review.

 

I'm sure a lot of you have already read this. For those who haven't, it's an objective review on social networking solutions written by TechCruch:

Part 1
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/24/9-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/

Part 2
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/14/34-more-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/

I'm not a programmer so I don't know how to evaluate the codes. Could someone tell me which solution is the cleanest and loads fast? I'd like to launch a niche community for my company later.

Thanks.

 

Hi EJRaven, could you please write a summary for this whole thread. I think a forum should have a feature where you can write a summary.

I looked into elgg, PHPiZabi and Dolphin. PHPiZabi looks good but need to spend for the mods to have those cool features.

 

We downloaded the test script from phpfox about 10 days ago and uploaded it to our server, when this script run it stated all of our settings were correct for the install.

We paid for the monthly license in order to try out phpfox about 7 days ago. Since then I have tried to install the software about 9 times. Each time I get a blank page after I enter the sql information. I have emailed the support team over 7 times so far and the issue has not been resolved....

Not impressed so far.

Will let you know what I think of the software if and when it gets installed.