Golffreunde Case Study: Building a Golf Parship Site
I searched for a membership-handler software to realise an idea I
had once registering on a parship (partner finder) site ;-).
One of my main requests from the software I wanted was to have users
registering really quickly and easily, but to have the possibility to change
mostly all first input data - except login name. Some of my friends told me
to use a PHP community board and customize this to my site design but,
sorry, all PHP boards look the same. I wanted to have the same powerful user
features as these boards offer by being totally different and be guaranteed
to have no platform difficulties at all.
So after some tests I decided to let Profile Manager Premium
run on my site,
a parship-site for German speaking golf players living in Germany (of course;-),
Austria and Switzerland. Also since version 2.0, it will be used for golf teachers
out of this area to offer their ads, their locations, teaching area etc. as
multiple membership types became a base feature using these great template rules.
With template rules, it is very easy to let different user types use different
member templates which means they use the same actions but resolve different
result pages. Also by this you can offer a test user account with maybe minimized
options to let possible member know what they can expect with registering.
I try to keep this service as a free advertisement to user, so the price of the
partner finder software was also a thing I had to have a look for and found
Profile Manager Premium to be a really good deal.
I defined many database fields so a seeking member have a good chance to be
found by someone else, for these fields are mostly all accessible by built in
search routines - which again are nice customizable. Users are able to contact
each other or golfpros very simply by accessing the built in messenger system,
the favorites feature helps to keep virtual relationships for a long time.
Also the blog feature helps user to generate a really interesting profile.
The built in chat is running but I decided to implement a different one.
I use lots of JavaScript windows to display member profile or locations
inside member area. I know JS is not loved very well but it has many qualities,
as i.e. a way to have a quick look at a user profile maybe out of the search
results without leaving result page. Now, maybe after a quick look at an uploaded
image and some base data, he can decide to have a further look at that person or
maybe better not. ;-) For this it was lots of work to change all the links in
search results and all loaded templates to JS code but then it works as I want it to.
The screenshot shows my search template inside member area. You can see a quick
preview of a users profile and his second picture which can be much larger
than the first one. Note that users firstname (here: Michael) is displayed to
him only, other member can see users login (Theo).
PMP is really nice scalable and is the right tool to built a site as you like.
You can use and modify existing features very simple as you like or need - also with
some 'tricks' it's sometimes possible to use existing features for results they are
not really thought for, it depends of your own ideas. You can totally redesign the
html-files to make them 100% fit to your site style.
All in all PMP for me today was the right choice I made about 1,5 years ago.
You can use it "as is" or also request new wishes. The author is a helpful guy
who helped me very often. You can even take part of the growing PMP community,
which becomes a great think tank around this piece of software.
