This weeks project: member matching

If you're running an actual dating site, or even if your Dolphin is for matching buyers and sellers or teachers and students, knowing how to use the matching fields for automatic "cupids" is going to be an important part of your set-up.

I've done the "oooooh, preeetty, make it look like the rest of my site" waggle, and it's mostly looking the way I want.  But now, I'm focused on the functionality of registration, log-in, and search/automatching.

ACP allows me to set the percentage of match to trigger an automatic alert for a member. I have it set at 70%.  Presumably, when someone registers whose profile data matches 70% of the chosen field parameters, the members matched will be sent mail informing them of the new member.  ok, cool.  Fabu!

Now, how does that work in practice?  Is that 70% an aggregate of all the fields in a profile?  ie, if our new profile matches   

State (20%) 

City (20%)

Age within 5 years (20%)

Seeking gender=male (20%)

  Is this new registrant an 80% match, Bingo! Alert all members seeking males 30 yrs old in same city?

OR...  Say a female profile checks "seeking male".  Now do ALL male profiles match =100% and all female profiles match = 0%  Woot.  Our girl is going to die under an avalanche of incoming males, being alerted every time one joins. 

Harder to parse is this..  does a "Match" mean the seeking field matches the other users data, or does it mean the seeking field matches the other users seeking data?  ie, if a gay male is seeking other gay males, does Dolphin matching see ALL male profiles as a potential match, or will it check to be sure males also have seeking=male instead of seeking=female checked off?

Ah. The mystery of it all.  I'm going to find out!  If you already know, please post.  If you're wondering too, check back.  We shall know the truth, and the truth will ..  erm..  lead to more questions. 

<grins>

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Where to find the option to set cupid matching:

  ACP->Advanced settings-> scroll 2/3 down, you'll find 3 settings:

• Enable cupid mails
• Enable matchmaking
• Send a cupid mail if the recently joined profile matches more than this percentage  [fill in 1- 100 without percentage sign]