We are glad to announce launching a new version of SkaDate Dating Software – SkaDate 8 Engage.

This time our goal was to make SkaDate a platform for an interactive dating/social networking site with a number of ways to communicate and have fun. The new version features games, speed-dating, new templates and usability improvements.

We have not made any global changes to the software core. This is good news for the existing SkaDate customers who can upgrade to SkaDate 8 Engage without having to restore site modifications from scratch. That’s also a matter of stability – SkaDate 7.5 platform has been polished up, major and most of the minor bugs have been eliminated, so right now we are talking about stable and robust dating software that promises flawless web site operation along with a bunch of exciting features.

Here is what you will find in in the new SkaDate Community and Dating Script:

New dating and community templates.

We’ve prepared two more attractive themes for your web site, because we want you to be able to choose something great for any concept. We hope you will like Moonlight and Bubbles – despite being very different they both are stylish and eye-catching. Yet more colorful themes to come, so stay tuned.

Games

We do keep up with dating software industry trends, because that is something our customers’ success depends on. Lately we have been receiving a number of requests from our potential and existing clients to make SkaDate Dating Script more interactive by integrating multiplayer games. We could not object the urge of this feature suggestion, because these days one can hardly find an Internet user who wouldn’t have a farm or a fish tank on Facebook.

We have added a few games into SkaDate (can be enabled/disabled via the Admin Panel): PentHouse Pool Single Player, Domino Multiplayer, PokerStar, Learn Texas Holdem, Domino Singleplayer, Texas Hold’em Multiplayer. Now users have even more reasons to come back to your site, and have fun together.

Speed-Dating

This long-awaited feature is now available to all the SkaDate Dating Script owners and their members. It allows to get your site users to a new level of online dating experience.

The series of short online dates gives your users a chance to get to know each other better in casual atmosphere. This is a fun and easy way to meet a bunch of new people and make friends.

Here is a brief description of SkaDate speed-dating feature: A site moderator creates a speed-dating event that appears in a special events section. The users willing to participate should mark themselves as ‘attending’, and be online on the site on the date and time of the speed-dating event. An attendee gets randomly connected to each of the online event participants, who meet his particular matching criteria, for a time-limited conversation. Each chat session lasts just long enough for members to make a first impression, and decide if they want to meet again after the event is over. A user-friendly interface allows your members to bookmark the noteworthy profiles during the speed-dating session, and get back to them later on.

Speed-dating feature can be used with our default Ajax text chat, or with audio/video chat add-ons. You can configure the feature access to be membership-dependent.

Possibility to modify the MemberHome page content via SkaDate Admin Panel

One of the most demanded features that makes site customization easier for those not having explicit coding skills (but still, be advised that basic coding knowledge is required to perform code modifications). Until now, this feature had been available for the Index page only.

The Admin Panel interface allows you to add/delete/move the MemberHome components, and play with HTML and styles without accessing the server and going through the software files.

Simplified interface for converting your site into a social network

We call SkaDate Community and Dating Software because its templates, and amazing range of social networking and dating features allows you to build a professional competitive web site for either concept. We can see that the world is changing, and so do the networking trends. This is why we want you to offer your members a little more than they anticipate. We believe that a hybrid of traditional dating and overwhelmingly popular social networking is the most potentially successful site conception.

However, we do understand that you know better what’s right for your online business. And so we’ve made it possible for you to choose whether your want your site to be purely dating-oriented, provide both social and dating features, or be a feature-rich social network. Now the Admin Panel interface allows you to easily disable the major dating features, such as:

Matchmaking

Quick Search

Advanced Search

Speed-Dating

Hot list

Photo verification

Bookmark Profile

No need to modify the code by yourself, or go for support team assistance. Now changing your site concept is a matter of a few simple clicks.

Possibility to sign up with mobile site version

SkaDate ME (Mobile Edition) has been gaining popularity among our customers, because these days almost everyone is carrying a smartphone or a PPC, and it means freedom of access and communication for your site members. SkaDate 8 Engage has come up with another significant ME improvement – possibility to register on your site right from a mobile device. A simplified registration form will make a sign-up process fast and easy. And we hope this will encourage even more people to join your SkaDate-powered community.

Option to choose European or US date format on the site

Good news for our European customers – now you can choose a date format that’s best for your site target audience.

Categories for Virtual Gifts

A site Administrator can now create categories for Virtual Gifts to make it easier for site members to choose just the right gift for any special or casual occasion.

Password protection for Photo Albums

Now instead of setting a password for every photo a member wishes to keep private, one can password protect a whole album. This saves time, and surely adds usability.

Option to delete a profile along with member content

We were asked to add this option by our customers who have to deal with spammer profiles on a daily basis. Usually, it’s not enough to unregister the malicious profile itself. A site moderator should also go through a user’s content and manually delete all the messages, forum and blog posts the spammer added to the site. If it’s not appropriate for you to have to approve every piece of added content before it becomes available to other site members – you can selectively delete undesirable profiles (if they are obviously spamming, or violate your TOS in any other way) along with all of their content. We hope you will find that time-saving.

Don’t forget there is also an option to delete a profile, but keep their comments and blog posts.

Comments summary

Most of us like reading what others think of our profile, photos, uploaded videos and blog posts. Because every comment is important, we’ve made it possible to look through the comments overview in one place, not to miss a thing.

Photo tags

Tags are a great invention that makes content-browsing a lot easier. Now your site users can tag uploaded photos to sort them in the most efficient way.

Clickable links in forums, blogs and comments

No HTML – the links added by your members to forum, blog posts and comments will automatically become clickable.

New secure image (captcha)

We hope you will love the new captcha, because it finally looks more user-friendly, which doesn’t make it less secure though.

A sound signal on incoming IM message

Now whenever your site users are having a private conversation in our text Ajax chat – they won’t miss a word from a person they are talking to thanks to a sound signal on every incoming message. Those who like piece and quiet can easily disable the IM sound.

Possibility for a site moderator to manage group content

Before we implemented this, no one but the group creator had a power to moderate the group content. But we all understand that sometimes what is posted within a group may conflict with the site TOS. A site moderator can now manage the group content without being a creator, which is definitely less drastic than deleting the group itself.

Besides adding the range of new exciting features, we also worked on making SkaDate Dating Software more stable and user-friendly, which resulted in a few fixes and significant usability improvements.

We are proud to watch SkaDate Dating Script become better with every build. We are proud to see it take the leading positions among the most advanced and robust dating and community software solutions. And we are proud to share our success with you, because we wouldn’t be able to make SkaDate what it is without your great ideas and feature suggestions.

Check out the Live Demo of SkaDate 8 Engage, and feel free to ask your questions from our support and pre-sale operators. We are always glad to assist.