Cynthia Perla

Create Your Own Online Dating Site Using osDate – Part 7 – Tips

This is part of the osDate 7 part blog series. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for links to the other parts.

Here are some random tips that aren’t in any particular order. I will add more when I come up with new ones.

– You should protect your site as soon as possible by adding lines to your .htaccess file, which sits in your root directory. This is the htaccess thread on the forum that you need to read to make your changes. The explanations are also very helpful.

–  If you need to know only one link, it’s the TuFat osDate Forum. osDate has a very supportive, helpful community. You can read about many problems and solutions in the forum. If you can’t find an answer to your problem, post a topic and you’ll get a response within a day or 2. I suggest you do a “search” for your problem first; it’s very likely someone has had the same one in the past and had it solved already.

– If you want to change the text on your osDate website, 95% of it should be in the language file: language/lang_english/lang_main.php

– You should also create a blank index.html file and place it in your templates_c folder. You should also delete the files in there regularly, otherwise you may not see certain changes you’ve made on your site. Same goes for the cache folder.

– You need to also process your city/county/state and load zipcode files in Admin. They’re all under the “localities” heading.

– In Admin, click on “optimize tables” (near the end of the navigation menu) to improve the performance of your database.

* This concludes the osDate 7 part blog series. If there are any spelling errors, and anything that should be revised, let me know. I wrote this all in one afternoon with a few fruit breaks in between. Now it’s done and I can relax! Good luck.

Create Your Own Online Dating Site Using osDate – Part 6 – Sites That Use osDate

This is part of the osDate 7 part blog series. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for links to the other parts.

If you made it this far, good for you! I know it’s a lot of information to digest, but I hope it has helped made your learning curve less steep. So by now you should have installed osDate, optimized admin settings, figured your way around the tpl files, and maybe even looked at a few themes you want to buy.

This part is about showing you which sites out there are using osDate. You can see there are a wide variety of sites that use this script, and for some, you can tell the owner has put a lot of hard work into customizing the design of the site.

The key to online dating site success is differentiation. What do you have to offer that other larger, general sites like Plenty of Fish don’t? There are plenty of free online dating sites out there. Don’t create a new one without a plan unless you’re doing it just for fun. But I suspect that if you’re reading my blog, you’re probably someone who’s interested in making money online, and seizing opportunities to deliver value.

Like the optimal admin settings post, this is a list that I transferred over from an old blog. My personal notes are in brackets.

Sites that use osDate

* updated Nov 16 2008 Jan 12, 2010 (some of the sites are gone so I have crossed them out)
* Note: If you are uncomfortable being showcased and listed here, please drop me an e-mail and I’ll remove it. It’s not a problem.

http://www.african-love.de (One of my personal favorites because I simply think the web design rocks. Looks really professional.)
http://www.52ons.com (52ons is also one of the top osDate sites out there with a nice design and 10,000+ members. The site is based in Hong Kong.)
http://www.datemymate.net (One of my favorites because of its unique concept. It’s a dating site for people to match up their single friends without them knowing you placed an ad on the site for them.)
http://www.handiscuter.fr (Nice, welcoming layout.)
http://www.sleeplessinthecity.com (This site shows up 3rd page on Google for the keywords “free online dating.” Very impressive considering how hard it is to rank for those particular keywords. Great domain name as well, but unfortunately the owner didn’t spend too much time customizing the design.)
http://www.Italianisingles.com (I really like this site; it looks good design-wise.) Using Dolphin
http://www.cheatersexpose.com (Another unique concept of creating profiles for men who cheat.  The site’s not very active, so the concept probably didn’t take off.)
http://www.vestdating.dk (Listed for showing variation of design.)
http://www.ozlounge.com.au (This is an active gay community for Australian Youth.)
http://www.hispanicinternetdating.com (Doesn’t reveal number of members, BUT I wanted to highlight this one because it does something that no other site I’ve come across has done so far. If you register, you get a FREE copy of 101 Romantic Ideas by Michael Webb.
http://www.getfitbuddies.com (Find people who are into fitness as much as you are.)

After you’ve settled with a template, you can move onto tips…Create Your Own Online Dating Site Using osDate – Part 7 – osDate Tips

Create Your Own Online Dating Site Using osDate – Part 5 – osDate Themes

This is part of the osDate 7 part blog series. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for links to the other parts.

Create Your Own Online Dating Site Using osDate – Part 4 – Layout

*** UPDATED AUGUST 4, 2009: The screenshots are BACK! Found them on my computer ***

This is part of the osDate 7 part blog series. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for links to the other parts.

The hardest part of learning a new system is understanding its layout and which files to edit to change something on a page. Lucky for you I’ve made screenshots to help you figure out which tpl files to edit to change certain parts of the site. This visual guide should make it a whole lot easier to modify your layout.

The default osDate template files are stored in templates/default/. If you want to use other themes, the templates folder is where you want to move your files to. To activate a specific theme, go into Admin > Site’s Global Settings > Site theme / skin. The screenshots below are taken of the default osDate template.

FRONT PAGE SCREENSHOT - click the image to enlarge

LOGGED IN SCREENSHOT – click the image to enlarge

PROFILE SCREENSHOT – click the image to enlarge

When you’re not sure which tpl file to edit, here’s a tip. Open up the PHP file of the page that you’re on. Scroll down to the very bottom where it says:

$t->assign( ‘rendered_page’, $t->fetch( ‘xxxxxx.tpl’ ) );

The x’s of course will be different depending on the file. This is the file that you need to edit.

Onto Part 5 for themes: Create Your Own Online Dating Site Using osDate – Part 5 – osDate Themes

Create Your Own Online Dating Site Using osDate – Part 3 – Admin Settings

Create Your Own Online Dating Site Using osDate – Part 2 – Installation

*** UPDATED AUGUST 5, 2009: Recovered screenshots. Found them on my computer ***

This is part of the osDate 7 part blog series. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for links to the other parts.

Now that you’ve decided you want to create an osDate site after reading Part 1, here are instructions on how to install it on your web server. I’m assuming that you have basic knowledge of uploading files to your web host, logging onto cpanel, and accessing your mysql databases.

1. Download the latest osDate version here.

2. Unzip the files into a folder on your computer. You should see a folder titled “osDate_v214” and inside it, there is a public_html folder, and 2 text files.

3. Upload all the contents inside the public_html folder to your web server via FTP (I currently use Filezilla). You can upload it to your root directory, or a subdirectory (for example – http://www.yoursite.com/dating). It’s up to you. If you already have a site, and want to offer existing visitors an online dating experience, you could upload it into a subdirectory.

4. Open your browser and go to: http://www.yoursite.com/install.php. If you uploaded osDate into a subdirectory, then you would have to browse to: http://www.yoursite.com/some-subdirectory/install.php

5. You should now see this:

If you see some No’s, refer to Tufat’s instruction page here. Scroll down to Step 2 – Installer. You may need to change the write permissions for some of your folders.

6. After clicking continue, it’ll ask you to specify your MySQL database login settings. You will need to create a database on your web server first.

• Login to your web host’s cpanel and click on “MySQL databases“
• Enter a new database name. I recommend “osdate” (without the quotes). Click “Create Database.”
• Go down to “add a new user.” For the username, I recommend “osdate.” To protect your database, choose a password carefully. Click “Create User.“
• Scroll down to “Add User to Database.” Select the osdate user that you created, and then select the osdate database. Click “Add.”

8. The next step is optional. You can always change the mail settings later. By default, if you skip this step, osDate will use the PHP mail() function, which usually uses sendmail. This will work on most web servers.

9. You’re done installing! The next screen should tell you to remove the “install.php” file and the “install_files” folder for security reasons. Click on “reload osdate” after you’re done.

10. Now login to the admin panel at http://www.yoursite.com/admin/ or if you installed it into a subdirectory – http://www.yoursite.com/some_directory/admin/.  I don’t remember if it asks for your admin login or not during the installation process, but if it doesn’t, the default username is “admin” and the default password is “pass.”

After logging into admin, you may be overwhelmed by all the options in the menu. Here is a great guide to understanding what each menu item is for. I suggest you take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with it.

In Part 3, I’ll tell you what are the optimal admin settings that I use. Note that these settings are for version 2.0.8. They should be similar to the newest version. Create Your Own Online Dating Site Using osDate – Part 3 – Admin Settings

Create Your Own Online Dating Site Using osDate – Part 1 – Introduction

If you ever wanted to create your own online dating site, but weren’t sure which dating script to go with, I highly recommend osDate – a free open source dating system. In this 7 part series, I’ll walk you through the pros and cons of osDate so you can decide whether you want to use it, how to install it, what to do after you’re logged in as admin, which files to edit to change the layout (it can be very confusing for people starting out), where to download themes to make your site look better, and which sites are currently using osDate. I tried to go into as much detail as possible to help you shorten the time it takes for you to learn osDate.

If you’re confused or lost at any point, please post on the forum for an osdate developer to help you out.

Ok, now to be clear, osDate is a dating script not a community script. What’s the difference? Community software like Boonex’s Dolphin comes with many features that you usually expect a community to have: blogs, photos, videos, groups, classifieds, events, polls, forums, chat, etc. Communities are focused on user-generated content and group interaction, whereas a dating website’s focus is more concentrated on one-on-one member interaction through email messages, winks/smiles, and instant messaging. It’s like comparing Match.com (dating site) to Myspace.com (community site).

OsDate does allow your members to also upload photos and videos, create blogs, post events, create polls, add a forum and chatroom, and you could add functionality to turn it into a community, but in my opinion it’s best suited for creating dating websites. Now you can be as creative as you want, of course. But it’ll make your life easier if you treat it as a dating script.

Here are the main pros of using osDate:

• Free, open-source – This means you have full control over the source code. You can do whatever you like with it. There are no fees associated with using it unlike other scripts that require you to pay $100+ upfront.
• Extremely supportive forum – This is the single most important criteria when deciding which dating script to go with because when you’re starting out, you need all the help and support you can get. The people on the forum are really responsive and helpful. You should still do a search on the forum to see if your question has been asked, but if it hasn’t, you’ll usually get a response within a day or even less.
• Free upgrades – When an update is released, you’ll find it in the Announcements section of the forum. New versions are thoroughly tested for months before release. If there are still bugs after the release, “patches” are posted so you can download and upload them to your site to fix them right away.
• Free mods – Mods add functionality to your site, such as one that integrates Skype into a member’s profile or send new mail notifications to a member via SMS/text message. Some mods will cost you, but the majority of them have been generously shared by osDate forum members.
• Cheap themes/skins – You can buy a variety of themes for only $5. They’re not the most professional looking, but what I suggest is buy one with a layout that you like (do you like the sidebar on the left or right?) and then modify the hell out of it to the point that’s it’s unrecognizable. It’s a good starting point, trust me.
• Paypal payment module & membership access – You can set different membership levels (you can create new ones like Premium, Gold, Silver) that give members access to different features. You can specify how many pictures a member can upload, how many emails they can keep, how many emails they can send, how many videos they can upload, etc etc. If they want to upgrade, they can pay via Paypal themselves. All they have to do is logout and then login again to update their membership status.