Personals Mod

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https://forum.snitz.com/forumTopic/Posts/59371?pagenum=1
05 November 2025, 12:59

Topic

zinpin
Personals Mod
10 September 2005, 23:35


Has anyone finalised any Mod that can handle online dating?<

 

Replies ...

Shaggy
12 September 2005, 07:41


Speaking from experience, I have found it better to build this up from scractch with the features I required which in turn has made it easier to tweak and expand the site to meet members' needs.
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MarcelG
12 September 2005, 07:53


zinpin ; there's no mod out there that takes care of buying flowers, building up your charmes and taking care of stalkers.... bigsmile You will have to woo the gals yourself by means of poetry, heart shaped boxes of chocolate delivered to the door, and tons of red roses.

Sorry..couldn't keep myself from posting this wink hehe<
zinpin
13 September 2005, 01:15


Originally posted by marcelgoertz
zinpin ; there's no mod out there that takes care of buying flowers, building up your charmes and taking care of stalkers.... bigsmile You will have to woo the gals yourself by means of poetry, heart shaped boxes of chocolate delivered to the door, and tons of red roses.

Sorry..couldn't keep myself from posting this wink hehe

Marcel you seem to know SO much about this...bigsmile he he I thought my best chance of finding a partner would be to set up my own dating agency... How can I go wrong then :)

Seriously though, I've started with the base code and I'm going to dedicate a few months on this. I think there's a chance that others might find it usefull aswell.
PS Shaggy have you done this b4?<
MarcelG
13 September 2005, 04:13


PS Shaggy have you done this b4?
zinpin ; check out woo.ie and see for yourself. I guess you can answer your question fairly easy after a second or 2. wink<
zinpin
13 September 2005, 04:54


thanks Marcel :) I should have looked at his sig ... :) I wonder if he's in the mood for sharing<
Shaggy
13 September 2005, 05:41


Unfortunately not as the site doesn't belong to me but I'm certainly willing to help and provide code extracts & samples where I can.
Bear in mind, though, that the market is staurated with sites like ours and if you want to succeed, you're going to have to offer your clients something a lot different to what they can get anywhere else on the interweb so spend some time thinking about what you can offer, what you can do differently, is there a niche clientelle not currently being catered for that you can target, etc.
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zinpin
13 September 2005, 06:42


Very true Shaggy, saturated to say the least. As for Niche unexplored markets ... he he that's right up there with winning the lottery. If you do have some code that you could share though I would love to see it.<
Shaggy
13 September 2005, 06:56


Being as Woo.ie was built up from scratch completely, including an extensve rewrite of the forums, any code I simply throw out isn't really going to be of much use, better to make a start on it yourself and ask for help where needed so it's relevant to your needs.
As for a niche clientelle, we found a pretty large one here in Ireland with the lesbian and gay community who aren't really catered for on any of our competitors sites. We still have a bit of work to do to meet their requirements fully, but we're getting there. There are always niches there, no matter how small, that you can use to get yourself off the ground. Once you're up and running, you'll then find it easier to expand outwards, catering for a larger audience.
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zinpin
13 September 2005, 07:14


did you start with snitz as your base? and just expanded the db to fit the rest of the fields required? or did you start with one of the existing portal solutions and take it from there?<
Shaggy
13 September 2005, 07:24


Ay, pretty much started with a Snitz base and a design along with a detailed plan of what was to go on top of it and where we wanted to end up. Database and existing tables (primarily members tables) were expanded as needs be with additional tables and fields. Some elements of MeTV (such as the custom, additional member level) were pulled in to speed things up.
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zinpin
13 September 2005, 07:31


sounds good :) just curious, did you expand the members table with all the extra "personal detail" kind of fields or did you use a new table and link it with the original members?<
Shaggy
13 September 2005, 07:47


Just expanded the members tables to add the fields I needed. Having said that, though, they probably could do with being cleaned up a bit with some items (such as personailty, etc.) moved to a seperate table.
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zinpin
14 September 2005, 10:48


Shaggy got a question for you. With questions such as "interests" where you have multiple checkboxes with choices do you handle that as one field in the DB or is it better in the long run (ie search etc) to handle that as multiple fields. <
Shaggy
14 September 2005, 10:53


At the moment, it's one field which stores a comma seperated list of all selected insterests (or whatever it may be). However I do plan to change the way they're stored either by having an individual boolean field for each or (more than likely) to create a table for each one of those lists with another table linking them to MEMBER_ID where applicable. Going to take a bit of testing to see which is the more efficient from the point of view of searching and probably more than a few headaches!
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zinpin
14 September 2005, 10:58


mate that was quick :)
I guess in terms of coding ie search entry and editing, it would be easier to have each one as an individual field but in terms of speed don't realy know if it would be faster to have em all in one table or in linked multiples. The bagger of a thing is that there's so many of them.<
Shaggy
14 September 2005, 11:13


Ay, that's where it's going to require a few tests. Also, you should plan ahead to be able to expand those lists upon suggestion from your members.
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zinpin
19 September 2005, 05:51


Shaggy I've come across a problem I hope you can give me an idea on how to solve. A number of fields in the table are storing a number of answers in a comma delimited text. Now I need to somehow be able to search those fields within a query, any ideas on the best way to do that. If you have any code examples would be great.<
Shaggy
19 September 2005, 07:20


Again, it's not the prettiest solution, for each selected item in our search form, I've added to the WHERE clause of the SQL pulling the records from the database something along the lines of:
Code:
... AND '"&selecteditem&"' IN (MY_FIELD)
Told you it wasn't pretty!
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zinpin
19 September 2005, 07:28


he he that's OK if it works what more do you want? smile wonder though if it works the same if "selecteditem" is a comma del list: ie "01, 22, 23, 18, 13"

edit... sorry mate most probably it does... he he what am I thinking. sorry about that

it's been a long day today dead<
StephenD
19 September 2005, 07:33


Originally posted by zinpin wonder though if it works the same if "selecteditem" is a comma del list: ie "01, 22, 23, 18, 13"


Hey Zinpin, hope that list isn't the duration measured in hours of your past relationships!tongue
Sorry... couldn't resist. Fun aside, I'm following your progress here with the code and hope it works out mate.<
zinpin
19 September 2005, 07:36


BTW are you working with access or sql?
he he Stephen... good pot shot bigsmile Hopefully soon might have a mod for other people too....<
Shaggy
19 September 2005, 07:57


Originally posted by zinpin he he that's OK if it works what more do you want? smile wonder though if it works the same if "selecteditem" is a comma del list: ie "01, 22, 23, 18, 13"

edit... sorry mate most probably it does... he he what am I thinking. sorry about that
Actually, it won't as that will be a string, not a list.
We're running off the latest version of MySQL.
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zinpin
19 September 2005, 08:08


Oops, so let me see if I've got this right, you convert the string over to an array and then cycle through that to see if any values match data in the field? <
Shaggy
19 September 2005, 08:18


Exactly smile
There are better ways ofdoing it, I just haven't had the time to implement and test them yet.
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zinpin
19 September 2005, 08:35


Just taking it one step further and hope I'm still with you on this, this would mean that a large number of records would have to be retrieved from the database first and then run the list code so that it can disgard the ones that are not exactly matching. Then build a second list from these then finally run a new select statement just to bring up the final selection. If this is the case it sounds like a slow process. I'm only guessing but it sounds slower than having all the fields as individual values in the initial select statement? <
Shaggy
19 September 2005, 08:52


No, you can do it all in one, single statement. If your initial statement is:

SELECT [FIELDS] FROM MEMBERS WHERE [CRITERIA]
Then just loop through the items selected by the visitor an append them on to that statement so you end up with something like:

SELECT [FIELDS] FROM MEMBERS WHERE [CRITERIA] AND "&selecteditem1&" IN (MY_FIELD) AND "&selecteditem2&" in (MY_FIELD)
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zinpin
19 September 2005, 09:00


Got it :) Thanks Shaggy. Ive got about 2 fields with about 20 answers in each one and a few others with about 5. Ill try this method and time it. I will also insert the actual fields in the table and try the normal way too and see which one is faster. I think it will be interesting. If anyone on the other hand has done something like this please let us know as this will save me about half a days work and about 10 coffees ;)<
Shaggy
19 September 2005, 09:10


What I plan on doing when I have the time is creating two new tables (lets work with interests for now), the first one (INTERESTS) to hold the complete list of interests each with a unique identifier. The second table (MEMBER_INTEREST) would then have two fields, one for the MEMBER_ID and one for the INEREST_ID. Instead of an array of the items the visitor selected when searching, you'd just need a comma seperated list now. Working that way, the SQL staement would now look like this:

SELECT M.[FIELDS] FROM MEMBERS M,MEMBER_INERESTS MI WHERE [CRITERIA] AND MI.MEMBER_ID=M.MEMBER_ID AND MI.INTEREST_ID IN ("&selecteditems&")
That's all just in my head at the moment, though wink
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zinpin
19 September 2005, 09:21


It sounds to me that we're on the same track trying to accomplish the same thing... for now though I think it's time for me to shut down for the night :)
Once again thanks mate and chat to you soon.<
Shaggy
19 September 2005, 09:23


No worries, man, good to see your project moving forward. Bear in mind though that when we eventually launch Woo.ie in Australia, we're going to be running all our competitors out of town! tongue
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zinpin
19 September 2005, 09:32


Originally posted by Shaggy
No worries, man, good to see your project moving forward. Bear in mind though that when we eventually launch Woo.ie in Australia, we're going to be running all our competitors out of town! tongue

bigsmilehe he ... good to see you're going global. but bare in mind there's some serious competition over here. There's a couple of sites that seem to be the bees knees. Not only in membership but in coding too. Actually one thing that grabs me from them is nifty piece of code they have for their Java Menu. You know the problem with select fields disappearing or appearing in front of the menu. well they have something that replaces the actual select field with simple text field so that the content remains on screen. I am planning to research that side of things soon but if you have any ideas regarding that I would love to hear them


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Shaggy
19 September 2005, 09:41


Here you go smile
We're aware of the stiff competition we'll have over there (Aus' is just that wee bit bigger than our small isle, after all wink) but we're confident we can make an imapct on the market. [^]
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zinpin
01 October 2005, 09:26


Cheers Shaggy, I was away for a few days... call it a mini break :)
I am familiar with that menu and it's very good. Anyway back to work now and on with the gallery side of things. Actually checking out the various solutions for "thumbnailing" (not sure that's a word he he:)) images. Got a few here and trying to find the fastest one. P.S. Hows the global expansion plans going ? smile <
Shaggy
03 October 2005, 08:49


Ticking over nicely, think we're going to start with the U.K. and expand from there.
Let me know what you come up with on the thumbnailing side of things as we've been looking into a few different solutions here as well, but haven't taken it too far as yet.
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zinpin
03 October 2005, 19:08


Sure, Ill be testing a few live hopefully in the next few days. Will let you know the results. At the moment I'm working on the extensive search page and as for the thumbnails tossing between having same name thumb but in a different folder or adding an extension to the filename and having it the the same folder... I think I am opting for the second method. It would be easier to manage in the long run. Plus also making space for a private Gallery. Once these three parts are done, then it's the chat and it's ready of uploading ... Here's hoping that something good will come out of this He he questionclown
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zinpin
12 October 2005, 21:25


Just an update on the thumbnail thing. Tried a few free scripts out there plus the one in the photoalbum mod, somehow though I decided on a .net framework script. I haven't had time to really test it live yet but I think it should work OK, it tests great locally. Ill provide the URL for testing once I've uploaded it.
What I really need help with though is the chat side of things. As I have no cash to spend... (story of my life :)) I'm going with ConquerChat.I downloaded the latest v 4.4 and 99% of this is now done but what's really setting me back is passing a few snitz variables over to the users window. I'm trying to integrate them within the conquer chat session but for a day now I've been chasing my tail.... :)
For example I'm trying to get it open the snitz profile display page instead of the chat one. Another thing is gender icons. Another one (if I have time) is to continue a topic in chat. Has anyone got something like this done? I mean passing variables into the Chat session ie users.snitzid or users.gender etc... Oh and Shaggy if you happen to read this, can you tell me which chat program did you go with? <
Shaggy
13 October 2005, 05:35


Built me own while we looked into the various alternatives and ended up just sticking with. Not too familiar with CC so I can't be of much help there. A search of these forums, though, should bring up a rake of topics about it and you'll also find the CC forums themselves of use.
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zinpin
13 October 2005, 06:19


Wow build your own that's impressive. Is your's real time or does it work on the same principal as CC? As for what I'm looking for, I've searched here and over at Theill's forum but found nothing ... I guess Ill just continue with the trial and error thing :)<
Shaggy
13 October 2005, 06:36


Similar princiapl, I have a hidden frame which refreshes every x seconds checks if ther have been any new posts since the last refresh and updates the HTML in the main chat window if there are. If you saw my code, though, you wouldn't be that impressed! wink Which is the reason I haven't released it as a mod!
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zinpin
13 October 2005, 07:26


he he... I think I know exactly what you mean. Anyway good news, finally worked out the problem with passing variables to and from CC... I think Ill reward my self with a cold one tonight, wish I could get you guys one too... he he that will really improve my code skills smile<
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