Hi,

Is this macro enough to get profiles on my home page?

{%GEO_CITY%}

Or do I need thsi one as well...

{%newMembersBlock%}

When I put the new members macro on it's own it just says no new members. Is this because I haven't got any new members myself or is it because my site is geo targeted for america and I live in the UK so I can't view the members?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Jason

Hiya Jason,

With the new members macro, did you add the number of new members in the little box on the top righthand side?

Hi Robert,

Yes I put 4 in, but it said no new members. Does it have to update?

Do I have to use both macros or will the geo one on its own show members?

Thanks for your reply.

Ok I found it, and it still says no new members.

Thanks Robert.

It wasn't your fault you couldn't help.

Hi Jason,

The reason why it's giving you no results is that the criteria that you put in for your site in Member Criteria section are too narrow and there are no members with good pictures that are approved by our team for the front page and at the same time meet your criteria.

Our moderation team is looking into this particular issue with your site, and they must fix it by Monday, so I would recommend trying again on Monday.

Best wishes,

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for your reply, I'll try again on Monday.

How does Robert put his on the page manually. Profiles really make a difference.

Jason

Jason, on monday when the profiles appear, you can edit the url the new member pics link to which will be to the registration page from "/registration/step1.do?nickname=" to "/viewProfile.do?nickname="

That will send surfers to the new members profile page however it means the new members will not be updated.

To do that manually, you log into your site and look for members you'd prefer to see on the front page, save their picture and upload it to your site in file management, then just replace the image url in the HTML to replace the ones you want.

Yeah, all surfers will be able to view the profiles but there's also a link in there for them to register.

I set it for members in Boston then never touched any of the other criteria.





Before I set the site up I emailed support and they told me there were 1500 gay singles in the databse from Boston. Is this not correct?

Jason

Jason,

Think of it in the same way as where you live, you may live in or around a town or city, but that city may have surrounding areas that are close by.

Just like if i lived in london and someone asked me obviously i'd say i lived in london.
But london covers many areas so it might be worth looking up surrounding areas in boston and highlighting them in the criteria to cover a wider area.

I asked support for members in Boston. That wouldn't have included the surrounding areas. They only had to see how many singles put Boston in their criteria.

When I go into teh site admin I can only narrow it down to the cities. I can't see any towns.

The one marked with a * is the Capital city. There's only one with a * for each state.

ok my mistake lol

But as you can see, Boston covers a wide area with many suburbs that members prefer to tick in their criteria, to limit yours to a city center will obviously give you limited results as it would in any city which is why it would be better for you to include suburb areas of Boston.

It should show up new members to the system rather than a specific site.

I'm not sure if they show on GEO location with you being in the UK though, i manually add the profiles myself on my sites and link them to the profiles as this seems to work better.
Gives the surfer a better insite into what they may be looking for.

Might be worth contacting Lisa to see if there are any problems.

How do you manually ad profiles?

I contacted support last night, haven't heard anything yet.

Which site is it for Jason?

ok, this might be worth a try, remove the {%newMembersBlock%} from the HTML and then switch back to WYSIWYG editor in site settings.

Click on front page layout and then click change on the new members block area, it should have the plugin for new members so click on that and approve.

Switch back to HTML editor again and change the "/registration/step1.do?nickname=" to "/viewProfile.do?nickname="

The one thing i've just remembered using the {%newMembersBlock%} macro is it will stack the profile pics vertically instead of horizontally which will look odd on your site.

Thanks for your reply, but there is no new members block in the wysiwyg view.

ok, the {%newMembersBlock%} macro seems to work differently on all the sites as i've just tried it on my gay site and it seems to be working with them horizontal.

Probably best to wait for a reply from support as they can fix the problem directly.

Sorry i couldn't help more Jason.

Thanks Robert.

If they haven't signed up will they still go to the members profile page?

Thanks Robert.

I've just done a search on my site with no criteria so it will give me as many profiles as possible. I get to see 3 profiles. Is this how many there is on my Site?

Jason

Hiya Jason,

I think like Lisa mentioned, your site member criteria you set in site admin is too narrow.

Have you just got it set on gay men in Boston or have you set other certain criteria for members?

Hi Jason,

It depends on your profile criteria as well, if I login to your site with my UK profile I am unlikely to find anyone according to the criteria you specified.

Generally, before the database builds up for your particular niche (in this case it's gay males in Boston) I would advise to widen your site criteria to a state at least to give people more chances of finding someone.

Best wishes,

Boston is a big city with 590,000 residents, and it's the capital city. If Boston only has 3 members then the surrounding areas might push it up to 5. They could arrange a speed dating party then.

I need an answer on how many gay singles there are in the database from Boston so I can move on.

Jason

But members who have signed up may have been more specific in their location being as there are many towns/areas that would come under Boston.

I know if i search for local contacts where i live, there are also surrounding areas i could highlight that come under the same town.

Have a look at Boston on Google earth, look at the area it covers and the different parts of Boston, when you look at the member criteria in site admin you'll see all those areas that make up Boston, just in the same way you may live in the suburb of a town, on your address you'd put the suburb plus the town it's in.
Obviously the US is much larger and many areas make up one major city but still come under the name of that city, they're just an option for people to be more specific when they register.

Cities are marked with *


Edit: here you go..

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Boston,+Us...ap&ct=image

Look at the suburbs of boston, they should all show up in the member criteria.

Boston isn't the city center, it's the whole city. If you put into you're criteria that you live in East Ham, Mile end or Tottenham they would still be listed under London. They wouldn't be seperate would they.

Every member who lives in Boston should be listed under Boston no matter what town in Boston they live in.

If that's what I've got to do for every city then I've just wasted a ton of money on domains because I can't be bothered to do that. I shouldn't have to research a city to see what towns and districts that are in that list that are part of that city. That should be done for me in another seperate list that comes off of that list. So when you choose your city the next list is all the places in that city, they shouldn't be in the same list.

What's the point in having a city list if the list also includes towns and districts from those cities, and just to make it difficult you have to find out yourself what towns and districts are in a specific city.

I'm doing this to make money not have a geography lesson.

Unfortunately, that's the way it is, especially in the US, look at NYC, you would think new york is new york but i can set the criteria for queens, manhatten, long island, All areas of New york.

Why would anyone target a city without researching the areas that make up that city? we are controlled by the members that sign up to our sites and many of them like to be specific in their searches to include areas and districts, it's upto us as webmasters to know the niches we have sites for.

There's no easy ride in this game, setting up a site expecting everything to be done for you won't get you anywhere.
The only way to succeed is to know your market and work it.

Why is the list called a city list if it isn't really a city list?

I don't expect everything to be done for me, but when I ask support how many members there are listed in Boston I expect the members that are listed in Boston to be given to me. At the moment it's 3 when I was told 1500.

If support had said we have 3 in Boston, but there's another 1497 in surrounding areas but you have to discover those surrounding areas for yourself I wouldn't have created a web site for singles in Boston.

WDP could easily set up a forth list with all the places in that particular city instead of putting them in the same list. It's not about knowing your market, that's common sense.

I've bought 24 domains based on cities that I'm not going to use now because of the way they give out their stats compared to the way you have to create your web site.

I can't answer why they would say 1500, maybe they did mean surrounding areas aswell.

As for a forth list, WDP do listen to suggestions and maybe that's something for them to include in the near future.

Sometimes we have to expand our site criteria because of the limited results of our main targets, remembering the total system membership is global.

To make life easier, set the criteria State wide as Lisa said untill you build up your member base.

No problems.

City targeting is a good niche but unfortunatly sometimes the member base can be quite low which is why targeting them can work well with an expanded criteria, giving members an option to search wider areas can also help.

I'm not sure if you got the newsletter WDP sent but i'll quote it..

Do you know where the "My crowd" link is. I'm trying to delete an account so I can join another site. I'm not going to set up a new email every time I want to look at one of my sites from the inside.

Jason

If you have an account in the Gay system then you can login into any site in that niche, same as adult and non adult sites.

Thanks again.

Thanks for trying to help Robert.

I will do the state but that's another site as I have the state domain name already.

Jason

I am still confused on "where" in the code to put the New members Block

Also, is there a way to get "adult" members pics for my Adult site?

Thanks