I had a good conversation yesterday with a developer who works with various dating and social networking scripts. I ended up venting for a good part of the call which led me to do some thinking about the status of online dating scripts.
I get many calls an emails from startups looking for the best dating and social networking scripts and I’d like to have a stable of people to call on when it’s time to build a site. I know what I’m talking about when it comes to the strategy, marketing and branding or a site, but when it’s time to help a client select a system, my knees buckle and I start to mumble.
Dating scripts are not doing their part to make it easy for me to recommend their system over the others. It’s been like this for years. I’m the first to admit that I haven’t built a site on every main dating script out there, but I feel like I’m in the trenches with the hundreds of people who email me about their problems with scripts or inability to choose one for their projects.
This is the reality of the situation from my perspective. Yes I have dating software companies as advertisers. If they disagree with anything I say, let’s turn it into a discussion. In 2008, I’d like to see dating scripts address the issues surrounding their products and services and stop sweeping problems under the carpet.
- Dating script providers spam blogs with canned messages.
- Support is usually nowhere near as good as it should be.
- For basic dating sites that will not see much traffic, most software is ok. It doesn’t really matter what you use. What matters most is the developer you hire. A great developer can negate many of the problems you will have with dating scripts.
- It’s near-impossible to easily figure out which solution is best for your scalable, heavily-customized dating site.
- Dating scripts should cost more. It’s a perception thing. I would never recommend running a dating site on a free or cheap software. I’m a big fan of open source, but paid support and standing behind a price tag says a lot about the maturity of a company.
I started writing this post this because someone sent me a link to the AbleDating software reviews. A review site created by the company that’s being reviewed. How backwards is that? These are testimonials, not reviews.
An entire blog full of positive testimonials is absolutely useless to the scores of people I speak with weekly who are looking for a solid and dependable dating script solution. If these things work, then why do so many people have no idea which software to use? And not a single negative review!
Why is it that I keep hearing social networking software is so much more robust an the support tends to be better?
Given the current state of most dating scripts, it’s becoming easier to recommend white label dating services for most startups, with a few caveats, of course. Believe me, white label solutions have their share of issues and problems as well.
What it comes down to is figuring out if a script or white label solution based on your unique circumstances.
Depending on your answer, then it’s time to understand the functionality of your site. Then you want to find the absolute best developer your money can buy. If he’s booked for a month, you should wait for them, because a lesser-experienced developer will spend a month learning the software and end up costing you more money in the long run.
Dating script providers:
Why not share how many concurrent people your script can support on a a generic web server?
Why not provide clear and concise direction on how to edit templates?
Why not make it easier to understand how to customize the signup process?
These are problems I, and the many people who contact me, have come across during the last year. I’m not pulling this out of thin air. These are real-world people with money in hand, dying for someone to tell them what to do next.
Dating startups need:
Rock-solid software. Some are better than others. Companies that focus too much on extra features like forums and chats are not focused enough on the prize. Give people a base platform thats easy to customize and change the look and feel. Stop adding features and get the ones that have been broken for years right before you expand your suite of services.
I’ve had developers do code reviews of several major packages, results were mixed. I don’t know if people from different countries code differently, but what I do know is that most are not spending enough time focusing on what real users require in a dating script. sometimes it feels like the software was built in a vacuum.
It’s time to call out the dating script companies and make them accountable for the problems they are causing dating startups. This is not rocket science, it’s pretty basic programming for the most part.
Here’s what dating script developers can do. Hire an outside consultant or set up a peer review to go through your code and make recommendations on ways to refactor and clean it up.
Have a UI developer go through your templates and do the same. Just look at WordPress. Thousands of templates to choose from, all based on 15 or so files. Creating a WP theme couldn’t be easier. Installing one takes about 30 seconds. Why is it so difficult with dating scripts?
Ignoring localization for a moment, it should not be difficult to make changes to the CSS or the graphics on a site. Hundreds of folders, redundant code, legacy cruft sitting around from three releases ago and the dreaded “we stopped supporting that feature” have bitten me on the @$$ several times over.
Upgrading dating software after you have customized it is almost impossible. Do you know how many dating sites are out there with gaping security holes because the site they launched in 2003 hasn’t been updated since then? Scary.
And compiled PHP code? Why the secrecy? Do you have something to hide or don’t you understand you lose more business than you gain by doing this?
I’ve said enough for now, hopefully the dating script providers will leave comments and we can start to move things forward. I’m always available to talk privately, but let’s open the lines of communication and look towards making 2008 a better and more profitable year for everyone involved.
