Many of our visitors has been enquiring about version 2.0 for the last few months. I am happy to announce iScripts Socialware 2.0 is finally out of beta and is released . You will find the new version at http://www.iScripts.com/socialware. Some of the main improvements for Socialware 2.0 over previous release are the payment gateway support and audio/video sharing.

Initially when social networking was introduced it was a free community. Over the last couple of years new business models for social networking communities have emerged to make paid membership community a viable option. So if you have an idea where you think members will pay you to join, iScripts Socialware is for you. Your job is to create value to your members so that they will pay youJ of course if you prefer the advertising supported model for revenue generation, Google Adwords and regular banners are natively supported. Another revenue generation avenue is the gift store. You can have either virtual gifts or physical gifts in the store and your members can purchase them with virtual money or real money. If you are making the community portal for your friends and family, you can make it completely free and without any ads. No problem.

Audio/Video sharing support is a natural extension that many of our existing users have been requesting. Your members can upload their audio/video content or link it from other sources like Youtube. The admin can decide if you want to host the videos on the server or you just want to let the users link to other sites or if you do not want anything to do with videos. Most audio/video formats are supported.

Another important improvement is increased flexibility for the administrator to create the unique community experience. Administrator can enable or disable around fifteen different features for the community. You can pick and choose the features to create unique community for your members. We have also added a number of different layouts for the users to select for the site based on the core theme of your community. Overall security of the product is also significantly improved from previous versions. For existing customers, there is an upgrade script for upgrading from previous releases to 2.0 version. New version is free cost for all those who purchased iScripts Socialware in the last one year.

The price of the product is still unchanged and is $99.95 for a limited time. As usual this is the total fees, no monthly/yearly fees. The product is completely open source, nothing is encrypted. So you can make any customizable . We are also available to make any changes to the product. If you require any type of customizing please let us know we will be happy to provide a firm quote.

Yes, there is YouTube for video sharing. Why leave video hosting and sharing left only to big boys. There is significant amount of money to be made from niche video sharing websites. And iScripts want to help you create the video hosting site. You can create a YouTube, Google video, Dailymotion etc.. type web community with iScripts VisualCaster. You want to clone the success a number of video hosting sites, this is your chance without spending big bucks to create something from scratch.

Thank you for all who helped us in the beta phase with your feedbacks. iScripts VisualCaster 1.0 is released this week. It is priced at $49.95 . As with all other iScripts products, VisualCaster is open source. So if you have an idea for a video sharing web site most likely you can use iScripts Visual caster out of the box. If you have some unique requirements you would be able to modify to meet your specs. Or you can contact our development team to make the changes for you.

You can create a video sharing website as a standalone site or as an extension of your existing community site.

Here is some of the main features of the script:

Simple site management - Powerful admin panel to manage all aspects of the site. No need to know programmingEasy to upload and share videos.

Supports Google Adsense and regular banners - Generate revenue.

Video Channels. - You can have multiple video channels.

Message Area. - Community users can communicate each other to increase return users

Groups. - Social networking groups can be created by users to increase stickiness.

Different layouts/themes to choose from.

Favorite List - Users can save their favorite videos into favorite list.

User Playlist Management .

Unencrypted source code for easy customization - You can customize look and feel of the site as well as functionalities. If you are not sure we can customize it for you. .

Friends Management - users can add/edit/invite friends.

User friendly installer wizard.

Free one year support and free upgrades .

Supports all popular video types and image types.

Supports tag clouds.

Copy embed video codes for social networking sites/ forums.

The video sharing site will be working from your server/ hosting account. Not ours. Only special requirement for the server is to have FFEMPG . Just check with your hosting provider if your account supports it. There a number of economical hosting companies that supports FFEMPG. If you cannot find any, ask our support team, we can suggest few options.

If you have any suggestions for new features to add to iScripts VisualCaster. We are always looking for ways to improve our products.

Aji Abraham

We have been getting more and more questions from our customers about hosting. A number of times clients web hosts do not allow specific features of the servers to be used. A key example is the FFEMPG for iScripts Visualcaster and iScripts Socialware 2.0 for video sharing. Number of customers have asked if we can recommend hosting providers. We are trying to be as neutral as possible when it comes to web hosts. A number of hosting providers are our distribution partners. So we do not want to promote some hosting companies vs. others. However it feels a majority of customers don’t care if the host with a third party provider vs another as long as the basic parameters like price, uptime, support etc.. are met.

 So here is the question.  If iScripts products are turned into a Software as a Service model, how likely you would use it vs the current Buy the script and upload into your servers.

 Making the product into a SaaS model have a number of advantages. First of all you as the customer can focus on what’s important to you. No need to worry about the server type, upgrades, backup etc.. All the geek stuff will be taken care of by folks who love those. 

You do not have buy the software. You pay a monthly fee for it which includes your hosting cost. 

We spend a lot of time making sure the software runs on different platforms.  With SaaS model we have controlled platforms. So we need not to spend our time making the product better, with new versions and new features

Piracy is an ongoing issue. With SaaS model it can be controlled very well.  We can focus our efforts again to making the products greater instead of fighting people who tries to pirate our products.

Of course if you require customizations we would be available to do so, even with the new model. I think its a win -win for our customers and iScripts.

What do you think. Let me know.

Aji Abraham

After months of hard work, new version of iScripts MultiCart is finally released. Many of you have been enquiring about the new version for some time. We wanted to make sure the quality of the web application does match your expectations.

This new version is adding to the feature rich iScripts MutiCart 1.1 . In addition to make many of the existing features more user friendly for administrator, sellers and consumers, we have added new functionalities to make this product a unique shopping cart to power online businesses.

iScripts MultiCart now supports digital good delivery in addition to existing physical product. Adding digital goods will enable entrepreneurs to start aggregate businesses to sell ebooks, templates, logos, software, scripts, music , other audio files etc.. This would work very similar to current model of Multicart. There would be a single storefront where consumers can view items from multiple vendors in the backend. Each of the vendors will have their own management panel to manage their digital products, prices, delivery etc.. You as the administrator will be able to control all aspects of the site through a powerful admin panel. It can also continue to power drop shipping and virtual mall type commerce sites.

Here is a comprehensive list of new features added in version 2.0.

• Customizable Fields – You can customize the fields from the admin side say a member registration form fields. The fields can be set as mandatory/optional and also the order for fields can also be specified.
  

• Gift Voucher – Visitors can purchase gift coupons like other products. For each gift coupon there is a unique code, which can be sent to others by email. Persons receiving those codes can purchase items by selecting the payment as ‘gift coupon’ and typing the gift code received in the checkout page. Increase your sales by getting into the gift market.
  

• Currency Types – MultiCart 2.0 supports different currency types.
  

• Template Management – The entire layout of the site can be changed by using some predefined templates. The templates can be changed from the admin panel. A number of professionally designed layouts are included in the product
  

• Shipping Methods – Integrated with UPS website for shipping calculation and tracking
  

• More Payment Gateways
  

  • worldpay.com
    

  • This is in addition existing gateways ( Authorize.net, Paypal)
    

• Digital Downloads – Supports digital products like ebooks, software, video, templates, scripts.
  

• Rating – Consumers can rate sellers
  

• Login Interfaces – Each seller has his/her own login interfaces. The login
  

  • interfaces lists only the details corresponding to that particular seller like categories added, products added etc.
    

  • Product Images – different views of product images like side view, top view etc can be uploaded. The number of images uploaded can be configured in the site settings.
    

• Rss Feed – generate rss feeds for the new product listings. Let your customers know when the new products are added.
  

• Banner Management –
  

  • Banners are uploaded from the admin side. The uploaded banners are resized. The banner size is specified in the site settings. For each banner display the banner display count is increment by one. Next time display the banner that has the least impression.
    

  • Google Adsense – display the Google ads in the home page based on the site settings.
    

• Detailed Reports
  

  • Products Viewed – This report displays the total number of times each product viewed from user side.
    

  • Product Purchased – Displays the product purchase count for each product.
    

  • Customer Orders Total – Generates a report of total order amount of each customer.    
    

  • Gift Coupon – Report shows who purchased the gift coupon, details of products purchased with gift coupon and also displays the gift coupon balance amount.
    

• Upgrade Wizard – existing users of Multicart 1.0 and 1.1 can upgrade to Multicart 2.0 using the upgrade wizard
  

With all these new features price of the iScripts Multicart 2.0 remains unchanged at $99.95 for owned license. You will receive 100% of the source code in a non encrypted format. Yes, its is a PHP web script with Ajax and mySQL as database. So you can make any changes you require as you please. As always we are here to customize the product to meet your specific requirements. If you feel iScripts MultiCart is close to what you are searching, let us know. We can modify it to meet your specific business model. We at iScripts is psyched about the new release.

Let me know if you have any comments for questions.

Aji Abraham

We created iscripts multicart almost 18 months back after 6 months in development. Initially the idea started out as a website for handcraft products. There are a lot of people who makes these cute little things with clay, clothes  and anything you can imagine. Most of them do this as a hobby or side business.  They are good in crafts.  Well… most are.  They never strike me as good marketing folks. So the idea of them managing their own ecommerce store selling these crafts did not make much sense. As a one man/woman show they can either spend time on creating new  beautiful crafts items or doing web marketing. It is a crime to ask them to do the marketing by themselves. if they hire they need fork over most of the money from the sales to the so called experts (including us) for any meaningful results.  It did not make much sense. So we thought wouldn’t it be wonderful if we create a co-op web store for handicrafters? All they need to do is list the products and ship out to the buyers. We would in turn take care of the marketing, technical aspects, payment processing, tech support for the handcrafters. in turn we would charge them a small fee based on the cost. as its a narrow vertical, we can market things well.

After talking to bunch of handcrafters in the summer fairs we created harcraftweb.com. Initially it was working out very well. but it turned out, we are very good in creating web software. Not very good promoting a website. It meant going to all those craft fairs and selling this idea to hard crafters. then visiting bunch of forums and magazines for crafters and advertising. It sounded too much work, in an area where we have not much interest or experience. So the site kind of slowed down.

then we got a call from somebody looking for a multivendor site for baseball cards. He asked if we willing to sell the software and customize it for his site. sure, why not? We did it and their business was doing pretty good.  Then we realized this is a good software for small industry niches, where it does not make sense for individual players to create their own stores. So this offers entrepreneurs an opportunity for creating a one stop shop for that niche. The niche could be handcrafts or baseball cards.  Finally we decided to make the software more customizable and make it an official iScripts product. so we created iScripts Multicart as a multi-vendor shopping cart.

I looked around and did not see many products competing with it directly. So I was happy we came up with something very unique and new.  Explaining this to customers who calls to find out exactly what this software can do for them. Most of them had some business model in mind and wanted to find out if this can meet their need off the shelf or can we customize to make it to meet their model. I used to explain it as a multi vendor system with a single store front. Then folks where confused about who handles fulfilment , who takes care of payment etc..  So to make things clearer we used to explain it as a virtual mall software. So as a mall, you would have a number of vendors selling their own things. But it would be under the umbrella of single entity(mall).  Most of the potential customers called during the time was looking for a business model where individual shops need to manage their payment processing as well as fulfilment. So I was looking for better ways to explain what exactly iScripts multicart do?

Last week when I was explaining the software to a potential customer for this script, she asked  if it works like the new Amazon.com. Well it is.. It was an interesting realization that Jeff Bezos settled on the same  business model for Amazon, as we did for handcrafters.  The only business model which made any money for amazon after all these years. If you notice lately(2006-07) amazon is not just selling products under their brand. They push cistomers to other vendors, even competitors, who does the fulfilment.  Only difference is amazon used their super weight brand to attract customers and then push to other vendors for almost everything under the sun. In teh case of handcrafters, we were focusing on a very small niche.

There a number of factors coming together for the breakdown of barriers to entry for industries. For web hosting industry it came with three aspects.  They were affordable servers and bandwidth, automation software, 24×7 technical support partners. Now it’s even easier to start your own web hosting business with iScripts AutoHoster.

iScripts AutoHoster is standalone application to help you start your own web hosting business. This application provides account management and billing service for your web hosting business. It has an integrated online site builder application. This allows your users to create professional looking websites in minutes and publish them to their hosting account. Another important capability is an integrated helpdesk application to provide customer support to your clients. An integrated affiliate program is also included to help you market your new hosting company.  iScripts AutoHoster allows real time domain name registrations for the hosting accounts. This is accomplished through integrating domain registrar enom.com api in the application. More domain registrars are expected in the coming releases.  iScripts AutoHoster is priced at $199.95 and it includes full versions of iScripts EsayCreate and SupportPRO SupportDesk integrated. A lite version of Autohoster is also available without either EasyCreate or SupportDesk for the existing webhosts with helpdesk or site builder application already exist.

If you run a small service business you know the difficulties associated with client management and billing. For non-service businesses, the clients and hence billing aer homogeneous. But for you different customers get different types of services. Even for same service, they get different type of billing. Some get billed every month. Some pay flat fees. Some customers pay different rates for the same service. Service businesses are at a disadvantage when it comes to invoicing and client management due to these complexities.iScripts Easybiller offers a cost effective solution to offer web based online billing and collections for service businesses. This is ideal for businesses like web hosting companies, ISPs, tech support/maintenance companies, web designers, graphic designers, child care facilities etc…. Pretty much any service company that want to offer online billing for recurring or one time services. iScripts Easybiller can be installed on your own server or hosting account. So you know the sensitive information will not be in somebody else’s servers. It can be integrated with your existing website.Some of the main features of the program are:

• Plan Management : Through the plan management you can add, remove or edit service plans. You can also provide custom plans for specific clients, which are not visible to any other clients. 
• Invoice Management : You and your clients can view the details of current and past invoice
• User Management:  Clients can self register or you can add them. Users  also provide other  relevant info you require.
• Integrated Helpdesk :Through the built in helpdesk software will enable you to provide better support to your clients, whether you have 4 clients or 40000 clients.
• Complete Billing Automation: Once its set up, it will charge your clients credit card automatically without any action from your client or you.
• Supports Recurring and One Time Payments : Your plans can be monthly bi-monthly or annual recurring or just one time payments.
• Built in Affiliate Program : Give your marketing plans a jump start through the built in affiliate program.
• Multi Payment Methods : Your customers can pay online through credit card, pay pal or offline check, money order methods
• Secure and reliable: We understand how important these information to you and clients. So we have taken steps to ensure they stay secure.

It is developed with PHP and mySQL. As with every other iScripts product, it is open source. It means you can customize it to meet your specific requirements. Of course it be used off the shelf also. iScripts can provide with a firm quote if your require any customizations.

iScripts Easybiller is priced at $99.95 and is available for purchase at iScripts.com

How do know, what somebody want? Ask them. It’s that simple. But ask yourself, how often you talk to web customers? How often you ask their opinion about the products you have? And about the products you don’t have?

Here is a small, yet powerful script for you to ask your customers, your site visitors what they want, how they like something, and what else what they want.

This script is called iScripts.com EasyWebSurvey. It allows you to create unlimited number of surveys. You can have any number of questions in the surveys. Any type of questions, only limited by your imagination. Once you finish create the questionnaire you need to contact your potential audience. You have two options. One provide a link from your web page requesting your customer/ potential customer to take the survey. Or you can send the survey by email.

You can import your mailing list from a database, excel spreadsheet or cut and paste. You send the survey to your mailing and ask them to take a survey. They can respond and submit from their email client itself. No need to login to your site for doing so.

You can have one mailing list per survey or share the mailing list from survey to survey. Once the survey is completed, you, the administrator will have the aggregate information in very nice graphic reports. Of course you can drill down to more details, with a click of a button.

There are a number of hosted survey solutions in the market field. They charge you for each survey. Why pay every time to talk to your customer? After all they are your customer.

iScripts.com EasyWebSurvey software is a free software supporting unlimited surveys. As always, the software is open source. So if you want to make any changes, you can do it yourself. Or we will be happy to make any customization you need for a very small fee. It is a PHP software with mySQL database.

Digg

The word social networking rose from obscurity to main stream last year. It could very well be the focal point of the second round of web. We see a number of companies creating huge virtual communities for social, professional and romantic interests. These companies like Myspace, Orkut, Tribe, LinkedIn, Friendster, Indiapage and Visible Path, rolled out new or improved services that let users create online identies with their circle of real-life acquaintances. The idea was mainly to let users build online profiles that advertised their interests and to help them connect with friends and friends-of-friends around one of those interests — whether it be finding a job, finding a new venture partner, making a sale, or finding a jogging buddy.

Majority of these companies except friendster and myspace had a sluggish start. However most of these companies grew exponentially recently due to the by nature of social networking. They have also incorporated a number of money making programs in these sites to make it viable in the long run. Today there is no doubt social networking is a real business with real business plan.

Most of the social networking sites are based on broad vertical markets today. For example LinkenIn as the professional group, facebook for college campuses etc.. We believe the next round of social networking would be for smaller closely knit groups. For example sites as part of communities exist in the real world. Examples are local youth groups, schools, colleges, business associations, and independent businesses. One of the main challenge has been the time and cost associated with the software required to create these web applications for smaller groups with limited budgets.

The user created content in the social networking sites is the greatest asset for the communities. Value creation at the edge is a great way to keep the user communities adding value to the main entity it serves, let it be a business or social organization.

iScripts has introduced a social networking engine called iScripts Socialware. This is a new open source software to create social networking sites in a few minutes. A highly customizable software which can be used to create social networking sites for different communities. The number of customizable themes are targeted for different communities.

This software is available for purchase at http://www.iScripts.com/socialware . An online working demo is also available at the site. This script is written in PHP with mySQL backend and is currently priced at $149.95.

A number of common modules like chats, forums, bogs etc.. are available. Also some unique modules virtual gift store etc.. are also available to make your site into revenue generating site. Few more of the modules are planned for the next product release, which are already into the planning stage.

Here is some of the main features implemented in iScripts SocialWare software:

· Private Mailbox

iScripts SocialWare provides a mailbox for all its users with this a user can compose, draft, check mails. This is to allow private conversations between users without leaving the site.

· Blogs
Create a unique blog using iScripts SocialWare. Users can share thoughts, opinions, stories, favorite music, movies, books and anything else with others .Admin can add different blog templates for the users to select from.

Chat
Have online chat with other visitors on the live chatroom.

Forum
Create any number of discussion forums and make comments on others forums

Groups
Stay connected to friends who share similar interests or affiliations by joining a group .This will allow members to create a community within a large community.

Gifts
Send real gifts to other users by paying the amount to the site owner if payment is enabled or virtual gifts to other users by paying virtual money if payment is disabled.

Events
Users can post events and organize parties and get-together quickly and easily by using this event management.

Classifieds
Users can post any number of classified ads on any categories .They can send responses to classifieds posted by other users.

Photo Album
Users can create photo album and add any number of photos to these albums.

Powerful search
The powerful search lets users to search and find users matching various search criteria.

Communities
Users can build comminutes using “invite a friend” feature.

Multiple Administrators
The site admin can create multiple admins with different permissions so that the site could be managed by various admins with varying powers.

Module Management
The site admin can enable or disable decide which modules needs to displayed to the user.

Centralized Site Management
The settings panel lets admin to predefine user approval type, album approval type , payment gateway information etc

Multiple Themes
The admin can set different themes so the site appearance changes. Currently there are 4 themes. These themes include social, professional, romantic etc..

Switch Mode
The admin can switch the mode between live and down for maintenance , so the user can understand if the site has been closed for maintenance.

As with all other iScripts products, iScripts SocialWare is an open source software product. This means customers can modify the software to meet their specific requirements. iScripts also offers customization services for customers. If you believe the software is close to your requirements, we can customize the software to meet your exact needs. This is true for both look and feel as well as functionalities.

A install wizard is available to install the software in few easy steps. However iScripts can install it for you, if you choose.

One of internet’s most successful area is in creating communities. Starting from the News groups in the olden days to the social networking communities at YouTube and Digg are the prime examples. Web allowed us to transcend the geographical boundaries when it comes to common cause.

Armia Systems, Inc introduces SonicBB , a brand new message forum software for creating your own virtual community. You can create this community for your business or social causes.
iScripts SonicBB is a user-friendly and fully customizable bulletin board package. SonicBB is compatible with any web server/operating system combo with PHP and mySQL. SonicBB is the ideal community software for all web sites. It provides maximum control for the board administrator without hindering usability of users. You can set up your forum in minutes thanks to the easy to use installer.


SonicBB allows you to effortlessly create, manage and promote your online community
SonicBB is designed to meet all your community creation requirements.

SonicBB’s major features include

• Unlimited forums and categories!
• Powerful search facility - find posts and threads quickly!
• Fully configurable, categorize your forums into categories
• Easy theme selection
• Easy HTML editor for posting messages (allows bolding/italics/underlining etc.)
• Moderator capability (can be used to monitor and prevent unwanted messages)
• Unlimited Message capability
• Smiley manager
• Create “Sticky” threads

Some of the main features in the pipeline includes integration of image galleries with the forum, so that users can display the images. You can find more detailed information at SonicBB.com web site. You can download SonicBB and other open source, customizable software from Armia Systems at iScripts.com
As usual SonicBB is an open source bulletin board software. You can modify it to meet your specific requirements. We would be happy to customize it if you would like us to modify the software for a small fee.