{"id":25,"date":"2007-04-20T22:49:28","date_gmt":"2007-04-21T03:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/?p=25"},"modified":"2019-09-04T19:57:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T00:57:41","slug":"running-an-online-dating-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/?p=25","title":{"rendered":"My experiences starting an Online Dating Site"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><meta name=\"GENERATOR\" content=\"OpenOffice.org 1.9.104  (Linux)\" \/><meta name=\"CREATED\" content=\"20070421;90000\" \/><meta name=\"CHANGED\" content=\"16010101;0\" \/><\/p>\n<style> \t<!-- \t\t@page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } \t--> \t<\/style>\n<p>I started running an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cupidpost.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">online dating<\/a> site 2 years ago, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cupidpost.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">www.CupidPost.com<\/a>. I wanted a new hobby, something to pass my spare time with and the only thing that interested me was starting a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cupidpost.com\" title=\"Dating Site\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">dating site<\/a>. No, I was not single at the time, I was in fact married and my wife was expecting our first child. It just seemed like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cupidpost.com\" title=\"Internet Dating\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">internet dating<\/a> was becoming the norm and there was a demand for it, so why not try and make some money at it.<\/p>\n<div style=\"float: right;\"><div style=\"margin: 15px 15px 15px 15px\";><script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-3319935785736004\";\ngoogle_alternate_color = \"FFFFFF\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 234;\ngoogle_ad_height = 60;\ngoogle_ad_format = \"234x60_as\";\ngoogle_ad_type = \"text_image\";\ngoogle_ad_channel =\"\";\ngoogle_color_border = \"cccccc\";\ngoogle_color_link = \"cc0000\";\ngoogle_color_bg = \"ffffff\";\ngoogle_color_text = \"000000\";\ngoogle_color_url = \"008000\";\n\/\/--><\/script>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\n  src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\n<\/script><\/div><\/div><p>Anyhow I had a choice between hosting the site myself or using an ISP. I choose to host it myself because of past bad experiences with bad ISP. The ISP wanted to increase the monthly fee by 200% for hosting the website of the company I use to worked for, at the time I was still employed by this company. I refused to pay and the ISP held the database at ransom, this database contained hundreds of applicants resume, the company I worked for was one of the world\u2019s largest employment agency. Long story short, we decided to scrape the database and recreate a new site with new database. It seemed that although we had an online database of applicants, that information was never accessed by anyone, think about all those poor people seeking a job and wasting their time.<\/p>\n<p>The next thing I had to figure out was Linux or Windows server? I have many years of working experience with Microsoft Windows servers and have the MCSE certification. I favored Windows automatically because that was in my comfort zone. But I picked Redhat 9 Linux, because it was free and came with Mysql, PHP, SMTP and more for free, you do not have to pay a single dime for it. Although I must say that I had no prior working experience with Linux.<\/p>\n<p>I debated between buying a server off the shelf or building it myself. I eventually decided that I could assemble a much more powerful server myself for the same price of a brand name server. I put together an Asus mother board capable of SATA RAID 1, Intel Pentium 4 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 3 Mhz CPU, 2 x 300G Maxtor SATA drives, 20\/40G tape drive, CD drive, floppy drive, 2 x 1G memory, 1G network card, 420W power supply and 4 cooling fans with neon lights. All right the neon lights were not required but it looks cool.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\">I downloaded Redhat 9, burnt the ISO files onto 3 CDs and started the installation. Redhat was able to recognize the SATA raid 1 configuration and loaded the raid drivers appropriately. After 4 hours the server was fully installed and configured. Now I had to figure out how to configure Apache, Mysql and PHP. I found all kinds of articles on the internet but I decided to go to Chapters book store and purchase a Rehdat 9 bible.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in\">After many more days of reading the book, messing around with the configuration and few reinstallation of Linux, I finally had a fully functional server.\u00c2\u00a0 I then proceeded to load up my dating database in Mysql and the webpages into Apache.\u00c2\u00a0 My internet dating site was up and online on the web.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I started running an online dating site 2 years ago, www.CupidPost.com. I wanted a new hobby, something to pass my spare time with and the only thing that interested me was starting a dating site. No, I was not single&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/?p=25\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1025,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/1025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamescheat.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}