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Advanced Search system for dating site? | Forum

Topic location: Forum home » Support » General Questions

Pages: 1 2 »

Toby Apr 11 '14

Hi folks,

I have only just joined this forum. I am looking for some info on Oxwall to try and determine if it's a suitable choice for a Dating Site I want to build.

I have carried out various searches in this Forum, and in the Plugins area, but haven't yet found what I'm after.

Basically, I want to know if Oxwall has an Advanced Search system typically used on popular dating sites - for example: Ethnicity, Location, Age between 18 and 36, etc.

This is the problem I've found with some other "social/dating site" systems: Users can type in their "City" location, so they'd be found in searches for the city... but, this doesn't really work if people live outside of a major city, because the database doesn't know if a small town is near or far from a specific major city - no Geographic brain in the db! ... so rural users would rarely show up in a search.

Ideally the search system I'm after would have good geography in the database, so that the users would enter a location in their searches, and the search results would also show users that were nearby... like with 25 miles, etc.

Alternatively, I could use a system that would enable my users to choose a country... and then select a Region within that country from a dropdown menu (US State, UK County, etc.), so they would at least be able to see the profiles of users living in villages or small towns.

... The "region" dropdown would have to change to match the "country" that was selected.

I have no idea if this is doable with Oxwall, but if you could give me some guidance with this - I'd really appreciate it.

Thank you for reading :)

The Forum post is edited by Toby Apr 12 '14

John Apr 12 '14

Hi Toby, You should try Fetlife.com. It's not quite a dating site, but the closest you can search for someone in Australia is in the same State. I'm 1800km from the nearest capital city so you can imagine how useless that is.

To answer your question, Oxwall doesn't have a geographic search, but that doesn't matter. There are workarounds but what you really need is a search within a search. For example, this forum does that. You can search for a topic, then search for something inside the topic. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the commercial plugin "advanced search" may offer that facility. You'll have to check.

Here's what I do on my site and it runs circles around most dating sites I know of. Create fields for:

Country:
State:
City: (Nearest major City to where you live.)
Town: (The town where you live.)
Post Code: (If you must, but it's not important.)

Make all fields searchable and people can literally find someone living two blocks away.

Good luck.

Toby Apr 13 '14

Hi John, thanks for replying to my post.

I've just taken a look at the sign up page of the site you mentioned. You can choose a country, and then a sub-menu of regions/places within, which seems to be a curious mix of cities and counties (I selected the UK). Is fetlife made with Oxwall?

Your search system sounds ideal. Ideally I would have a system where each field could be left blank (set to "All") to enable users to search either broad or specific. Can your site do this?

Also, I am assuming that you use Oxwall, in combination with the plugin you mentioned. Is that right? - If so, I'd be grateful for a link, as I can't seem to find what you described in the Plugins page.

Thanks for reading :)

The Forum post is edited by Toby Apr 13 '14

John Apr 14 '14

Hi Toby. I've already PM'd you but here's an answer for the general public.

I've decided the way I do my searches isn't ideal for your needs. I have a smaller database of users who wish to contact each other but not to date. A proximity search works fine with them, but you probably need a Locality Search which works from post codes and probably uses lat/long coordinates. Oxwall and Elgg don't have this in the way of a plugin but Boonex Dolphin which can cost big bucks includes it in the core program. It's horses for courses and this is yet another great plugin someone could develop instead of creating another boring facebook option. Ho-Hum!

Good luck.

The Forum post is edited by John Apr 14 '14

Christer Apr 14 '14

Hi there
I have some Oxwall sites and I would say a lot of work to make it work good as dating site.I also have a bunch of skadate lite sites and there is all you need for dating. look at there page
lite.skadate.com. its easy to make nice designs and change as you want and all Oxwalls plugins fit as skadate lite is based on Oxwall. Well so far all I have works but there is no garanti for that but I have around 20-30plugins and all is good for Skadate lite-I have 14 dating sites, Skadate lite so ask anything here or in pm and I will try to help you if you need.And I also have great help of my designer and all around knowledge guy called Krunch here on the forum so if you need design etc he is your man.Good luck

The Forum post is edited by Christer Apr 14 '14

Silvio Apr 14 '14

Hi toby... i've tested several "free" social sites and imho oxwall was the best... i'm currently running 2 dating sites and there are some problems that you could overpass with some workarounds...

Search is quite ok... to have a global search u must have a same global question valid for all profiles.. for example.. hair color is ok for a women or a man.. but is not ok in case of a couple... in that case you could not realize a global search. About the city i've solved the problem with che CAP (or Postal address).. for example Rome is 00100.. so i let people enter the Cap Code and i let it be reserchable... but.. you could not work with neighborough or proximity... maybe in the future, if the site works, i will ask for a plugin for that.

another problem of oxwall is, imho, the user credits.... pratically is the only automatic system to be paid otherwise you must enable manually a customer to a premium profile after receiving a payment.

There are a lot of other things missing like "suggest friends" but i just told you the bad things of this application and i repeat.. i've tested 8 differente programs and i'm sure oxwall is the best supported and in good develop phase.

If you want something that is unbeatable you could try Dolphin that is ready for everything.. but are u sure it worth the 800$ (the one with support and market access) ? i think that with the same money you could hire a professional here and let it work for all the plugins u need :)

these is just my 2 cents ;)

John Apr 15 '14

@silvio, you raise some good points. Even the money spent on the cheaper $450 Dolphin can buy a lot of Oxwall plugin development if only you can find someone to do it. I'm considering a "Plugin Support Group" where people request a plugin and pledge (say) $5 to $10 towards development. If 50 people at say $10 supported a plugin, that's $500 the developer will get immediately the plugin is finished. He can then place it on the Oxwall Store for the same price and possibly make more money. A Search by location Plugin would be a great start.

This method of funding software development is becoming popular. I have a Simulator program and the developers wanted to create a totally new engine (core) to drive the program. This is a costly and risky business, so they asked for pledges. They raised the necessary capital of almost $200,000 in a couple of weeks and the new program is now being developed.

Such a system could see several exciting new plugins reach the Oxwall store within a couple of months. As Oxwall is a core program that literally depends on Plugins, they could even change the face of Oxwall. For example, the Profile page could be completely rewritten and include dozens of fantastic new ideas. The person who develops that plugin could make a lot of money provided the pledges are there and the selling price is right.

Silvio Apr 15 '14

there are some professionals that are able to develop plugins.. I let a friend programmer give a watch to the oxwall core and told me is not so hard to develop plugins, it's just matter of time. There are a lot of coders (look at freelancer.com) that would work for it... if you want to organize a buying group for a plugin take me in consideration :)

John Apr 15 '14

I've tried a few places such as freelancer but most of the developers I can afford are not interested. I'm a pensioner and can't afford to commission plugins for myself, nor am I interested in on-selling them at the Oxwall Store.

I'm seriously considering the buying group. In fact I've been doing so for a long time. In Australia, a programmer would consider $500 to be about five to seven hours work and the job wouldn't attract much attention. In India for example, $500 could be a lot of money to someone skilled in PHP programming.

Oxwall Accessories Apr 15 '14

We develop Custom plugins for many oxwall customers. Feel free to send us a pm and we can get you a quote for almost any custom job.

#10

John Apr 15 '14

@OxwallAccessories, I'm personally not interested in custom plugins because I'm a pensioner as already stated and I don't have the money to finance a single plugin. When I do purchase the very odd plugin, I only deal with developers who put one or two free plugins in the Store. They are the ones supporting Oxwall and I support them. Thanks.

The Forum post is edited by John Apr 15 '14

#11

Toby Apr 17 '14

@John, Christer, Silvio, OxwallAccessories,

Thank you for getting back to me - much appreciated, and sorry for my delay - for some reason I wasn't receiving email updates every time one of you guys posted - thought I'd subscribed to new posts.

$400 sounds a lot for using Dolphin (and $800 with support) - but as it has an advanced search with location - this does make it a lot more tempting.

As for the Oxwall option; I think the plugin support group sounds like a great idea. And so does the idea of users chipping in to co-invest in a good Advanced Search Location plugin!

... One plugin like this could really make a big difference.

The Forum post is edited by Toby Apr 17 '14

Attachments:

boonex-dolphin-adv-search.jpg (36.94Kb)

#12

John Apr 17 '14

Hi Toby, I never get email notifications from any site except Fetlife. Not sure why.

Will PM.

#13

Silvio Apr 17 '14

Oxwall is still uncomplete.. Dolphin is running by a lot of years and obviously is more stable and reliable but it is also true that... is always the same... i saw a lot of dolphin sites and are pratically identical. Right now social networks are easy to realize and everyone is making one new every second. I've choosen Oxwall because the team seems really involved in the project hoping more coders will arrive developing plugins and making it more appetible to customers. about dolphin i think spending 800 + some more plugins is too much in consideration that i could hire a coder and realize something new with joomla or getting skadate (oxwall) and having everything i need.

Oxwall imho lacks in advanced search location, premium user management (i still have not understood how credits works) and payment gateways (too much expensive). The real question about commercial software and opensource in developement has to be ranged in the discussion about "what you want to realize and how much you are ready to invest in the project". In my case i realized a couple of testing social just to see if they work... if it goes ok then i will invest some money to make it better.... if you believe in something and have money to spend and you have programmed and projected a good business in that case is better you go commercial or try to realize something on you own hiring a coder.

About hiring someone to make the plugin is a good idea and , count on me, but about searching area is quite difficult to realize. think about someone that lives in Paris... same city is easy... but if you consider province you could suggest a user that is 300km away from paris. A plugin have to consider the distance.

If the oxwall team wants to bring this social to a new level should work (maybe with us) in realizing an advanced search, if not we (I) could think about hiring a coder to realize it but.. if the cost , for example, is more than 400usd.. at this point i would go with Dolphin :)

my 2 cents ;)

#14

Toby Apr 18 '14

SkaDate and Boonex Dolphin are both $400 at the bottom end, and they both seem to have Location searches with "Search-by-distance"... which is good!

Tho I wouldn't use any of these unless I could customise the template... at least as much as being able to customise a Wordpress theme by editing the custom.css file. ... I am wondering just how possible it is to edit the CSS of these sites.

The free alternative that I found before coming here, is Etano (datemill.com)

I have been told by a user that it has a good Location search also.

It might not have "Search-by-distance" but there are location dropdowns that can be added (or are already there) within the Country, to make it effective enough.

- Tho I believe that it isn't Responsive.

As anyone here used the Etano script?

The Forum post is edited by Toby Apr 18 '14

#15

Silvio Apr 19 '14

i've tested datemill and personally i didn't like it for 3 reasons (maybe my inexperience). No good search on location. Very difficult in case you set something different from man and woman (for example couples) and the template is not so much customizable.. i've seen the template they offers and are always the same.

#16

Toby Jul 4 '14

Hi guys, I'm back on this project again.

With regard to location searches, let's put the search by distance to one side for a moment...

Does Oxwall have the ability to enable Locations that are 3 levels deep?

Example;

1. is there be a dropdown menu for Countries ...

2. and then once you've selected a Country there's a dropdown menu underneath it for States/Regions ...

3. and then a third dropdown menu appears where you can choose a City/Town within the Region?

... and all these can be edited / created by Admin in the CMS control panel?

Thanks for reading

PS: Etano Datemill is able to do the above, which is great. However, I would consider using Oxwall if it was able to do at least the same.

#17

tammy harris Jul 4 '14

no oxwall does not have that
to me the easiest way would be to use something like the zip code database from
http://www.geonames.org/postal-codes/
it has long latitude of zip codes so could use as a distance rearch

#18

Toby Jul 5 '14

Quote from Tammy no oxwall does not have that
to me the easiest way would be to use something like the zip code database from
http://www.geonames.org/postal-codes/
it has long latitude of zip codes so could use as a distance rearch

Hi Tammy, thanks for replying.

How would the zip code data be implemented into Oxwall? ... Is there a CMS control panel for this sort of thing, or is it a matter coding in PHP or something?

#19

tammy harris Jul 5 '14

you would need to make a plugin that inserts the zip code databass then hook it to a enter zip code profile question, on users submit zip code will give you the long latitude of that users then a php script to select users a set distance form that zip code ie 5 miles 10 miles etc

i would love to see a plugin like this i had it set up on another script by a developer and worked great but on asking him set it up on oxwall he was lost at to how oxwall worked
i still have the select script somewhere

#20

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Advanced Search system for dating site? | Forum