pH7Builder: An Open Source Social Dating CMS | Hacker News Reader

pH7Builder: An Open Source Social Dating CMS

github.com

54 pointsarnoldro19 comments

Honest non-loaded question: What is the point of this? Assuming this open-source software and accompanying premium software (https://ph7cms.com/pro/) exist to meet some demand, why is there demand for more than a handful of dating sites? I would imagine that everyone wanting to get a date online would only try the most popular sites. Why would they try dating services created quickly with this software?

> why is there demand for more than a handful of dating sites?

I think there is an extremely wide range of attitudes toward dating and a lot of sub-groups of people who want to date within group, so that leads towards a lot of sites.

Plus the nature of dating can mean that one group can find another group's approach to dating morally offensive, so not want to be associated by being on the same site.

Because why not? There are people who like to run dating sites, therefore there is some demand for these. As for users themselves, it's the same as with all services: you need to win them over somehow. The one who does, wins. Currently, the winner is IAC, but sooner or later it will change, just as everything else changes.

> Why would they try dating services created quickly with this software?

Maybe it's aimed at niche interest groups that are not comfortable with mainstream sites, like some small religious communities that need full control for managing their rules.

Or large ones.

why is there demand for more than a handful of dating sites?

Dating sites are like programming languages. People have very different ideas about what 'good' means, and often the popular ones are objectively terrible and you can't understand why people use them.

But (if I used dating sites) I wouldn't use them for the software, I'd use them because of the people. People use them because other people use them. My confusion is why anyone would use a newly created dating site with initially no people on it.

You’re thinking way too much about this.

If you were to deploy this with some good branding, maybe target a niche, set up some starter profiles, and do some marketing, you could probably be making a few thousand dollars a month or so within a year in subscriptions. That’s why.

But why would you make a few thousand dollars? That's part of what they're asking; how is there enough demand for so many small dating sites, many of which don't seem to differentiate themselves particularly strongly.

In a lot of ways, the answer is "because the big ones are terrible for most users".

Dating is like recruitement (in regard to your question).

We haven't come anywhere close to solving one-way discovery (finding the right movie for you on netflix, the right app on whatever store, the right game on steam, the right book on amazon).

And we're even farther than that at two way discovery (the employeer need to please you / you need to please him, the other person need to be attractive to you / you need to be attractive to her, ...).

And self-filled profile are terrible because we don't want to exclude ourselves, so "better keep that for the interview / first talk".

So dating site are splitting for the same reason job sites are; to specialize. You want a christian girlfriend, or maybe an asian one, or a rich one, or an educated one, or an artist, or ... Well there is a site for that. It offers a pre-selection that their algorithms are terrible at doing, and self-filled profile are lying about.

Eg look at the cupid network, it's artifically split between a lot of sub-sites specialized in a specific kind of love interest.

Feels like i traveled almost 20 years back in time

Really, and some of the killer features:

Hot or Not

Fake Profile Generator

Beautiful Code: Very thoroughly commented about what's happening throughout the PHP code

These sites are mostly maintained by webmasters who have a little grasp at programming. This does appeal to dating sites.

> How Powerful Your Social-Dating App Will Be?

> - Fake Profile Generator

Just as shady as I expected it to be

Many 'dating sites' are scams. This has legitimate uses but this makes it also decidedly a tool for running such scams. Also, lol:

> - Anti-Scam Tools

ETA: If a good organisation wants to run a dating site, they could use this legitimately. It's not going to force them into a scam, it seems.

Maybe the fake profiles are just for testing purposes.

Just unfortunate marketing copy.

A GREAT social networkibg software. Have you launched your social (or dating) webapp?

Are people still using the web for dating? I thought mobile was taking all the pie.

I've seen users to prefer web-based services because they can use them comfortably from both mobile and desktop.

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