AbleDate Review

One of the most impressive social networking software packages created for dating is known as AbleDating.  AbleDating is a technologically advanced and very powerful dating networking platform that is based on the PHP/MySQL framework.

While other social networking sites offer most of the basic features that users of social networks expect to see - AbleDating's focus on the dating niche offers users a variety of some very powerful and unique web technologies. 

AbleDating provides webmasters seeking to create a dating social network or business site with a wide array of applications that provide users more options to communicate, flirt, and chat with other members of the community than just about any other dating service on the internet.  All features of AbleDating provide webmasters a wide variety of applications to choose from to integrate seamlessly as possible with your website, and to offer as much functionality to your users as possible.

AbleDating is a very unique social networking software package in that its focus on the dating scene gives it a vast advantage within this niche.  Not many other social networking software providers tailor their software for romantic encounters and dating services, and so far AbleDating is clearly the leader within this area.

AbleDating Social Networking

The first thing that's noticeable when reviewing the website for AbleDating 2.4 is the fact that the features never end.  The second thing that's noticeable is the price.  This is certainly no open source solution.

However, if you believe that you get what you pay for - AbleDating is certainly a good example to point to.  Starting right with the installation, AbleDating offers two options, either free installation provided by the company for you, or manual installation that you do yourself.  In either case, the software company, abk-soft, will provide assistance.   

Free Installation - abk-soft will perform the full installation of the dating network for you.  Obviously this doesn't include full configuration and customization, but it does include uploading all files, setting up your MySQL database, configuring appropriate file permissions, and setting up your payment processor.

Manual Installation - Even if you want to install the software on your web account yourself, abk-soft provides an installation "wizard" with step-by-step instructions and prompts with only five steps.  The initial setup is so simple that even a non tech-savvy webmaster could easily perform the installation. 

Requirements

Most social networking software packages that need to be installed on your web server have a minimum set of requirements for your hosting service.  In the case of AbleDating, the minimum requirements are as follows:

1. 35 Mb web space and 500K MySQL DB space
2. Apache Web Server
3. Minimum PHP version 4.1
4. Minimum MySQL 4.1
5. Cron Jobs, ionCube Optimizer

Major Features

The power of AbleDating is that its focus on the dating niche within social networking means this software offers some of the most advanced components created primarily for "dating" activities such as romance, flirting, and searching for a date.  There are several major features that give AbleDating a competitive advantage.

3D City Second Life Virtual Chat - This amazing component allows your visitors to enter a virtual online world where they can move around the world, find fellow visitors to meet, and chat with them.

Myspace Style Flash Profile Editor - AbleDating does away with difficult coding required to create a profile.  Instead this free editor allows the user to simply draw a profile.  No knowledge of CSS or HTML is required.

Romantic 3D Chat - In addition to the virtual chat above, another module provides the ability for visitors to enter a chat room where chat room visitors are portrayed with avatars they've selected and within a fun and quirky backdrop.

Template Based Design - One of the most impressive features of this social networking software is that the entire design and layout of the site can be changed immediately simply by selecting a different template in the administrator panel.  If you don't want to use a template that anyone else might be using, you can even create your own.

Additional Features - The features offered by the AbleDating software are too numerous to count.  This is impressive software that provides every feature and component that you could imagine needing within a social networking website that is focused on dating. 

Other Features:

•-          Free Video Chat

•-          Video Sharing

•-          Free VOIP Phone

•-          Multi-room flash chat

•-          Flash Games for multiple online players

•-          Personalized greeting recordings

•-          AJAX-Based Software

•-          Hot-or-Not Rating

•-          Forum

•-          Photo Gallery

•-          Personal Blogs

•-          Much more...

The list of features goes on for pages.  One item of note is the fact that while the software is costly, abk-soft also provides the software as 99% Open Source, with only "several files related to the license" encoded.  This is a unique method of combining licensing with offering customers the freedom of customizing the source code to suit their particular needs.

Performance

Downloading and setting up AbleDating is extremely easy using the provided installation instructions.  If you are nervous about doing it yourself, however, definitely take advantage of the setup assistance provided by abk-soft.  It is free after all! 

After quickly configuring the site and choosing a template, integrating it with the website was extremely easy.  Performing a standard five-user test, the software ran well.  However as we added on more and more features, we noticed a very slight impact on speed when multiple users were using multiple components simultaneously - in particular the video and virtual chats which are resource intensive.   However the difference was negligible and overall remained very fast and responsive.  There were no bugs that we could determine from our brief test, and the components we tested (video chat, 3d city, and VOIP) all worked seamlessly.

Overview

AbleDating is one of the most powerful dating-focused social networking platforms available within this niche. 

AbleDating provides an impressive volume of features and components that are sure to satisfy the needs of most webmasters and even dating service businesses.  AbleDating is clearly making inroads into the online dating scene.  The price is a bit high for an independent webmaster, however for a business that caters to clientele who are actively involved in the dating scene, the features and online interactions that AbleDating provides would become an invaluable part of any brick-and-mortar dating service anywhere in the country.