Dating Services

A concerned visitor sent me an email the other day asking what has happened to the Plenty of fish forums? Did they shut down? I was like oh no not again, they have done something to the forums on POF. I still noticed the forums coming up in the search results so I visited forums.plentyoffish.com directly and was greeted with a nasty server run time error.

Now I know a bit about web servers and this is a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) error. This is not good (see the full explanation below) because it indicates to me that the files for the Plenty of fish forum website has been removed. After further investigation it looks like this may have happened at least a week ago, since visitors have been searching our site about the Plenty of fish forums being removed for that long.

I am surprised that POF hasn’t addressed the problem. They must know about it as I am sure a large number of people have already complained about the issue as it has been a week now already. Also the POF forums are still very popular even though they are not directly linked to the main POF.com site anymore (I think POF wants to slowly kill the forums). What has me puzzled though is if they had plan to stop providing the forum, why not remove the website and domain record all together or at least display a nice message about the situation and the reason for the removal (which would take 2 minutes to do). Displaying a runtime error isn’t very professional. Heck even a redirect to the main POF dating site would have been better.

Update: After checking the POF forums off and on for the last hour it appears that this is an intermediate problem. About half the time I get a runtime error, about a quarter of the time I get some other one line text error and for the other quarter of the time the forums actually work. As I said before this has been happening for at least a week since others have reported on it.

I have a thought, let’s start a campaign to see if we can get Plenty of fish to fix the forums. I am going to tweet about this story on Twitter using the hashtag #FixForumsOnPOF. If you want POF to keep the forums alive like I do, then re-tweet my tweet or post your own using the hashtag. Maybe if POF is listening they will do something about it and fix the problem with the forums. 😊

In the meantime since you can’t use the POF forums all of the time you are more than welcome to post your relationship and online dating questions and observations in our dating forums. We have a number of forum categories you can post in about a whole pile of different topics.

So, what does the runtime IIS error mean that most people seem to be getting? It actually is 2 errors in one. The web server is complaining first about their not being a custom error file in the location specified to display to visitors when an error happens. The second error actually triggered the first error. The second error is harder to figure out since the current error message is all about the first error. The second error is some sort of application error which could be anything from the actual website files not being available to a coding error in the requested web file. Since an error message is displayed it does indicate that webserver is working properly and that there is nothing wrong with the domain record.

If you are looking for a popular free dating site to try and want some more information then you should read our Plenty of fish review.

The Business Insider did an interview with Aaron Schildkrout and Brian Schechter who co-founded the dating site HowAboutWe. The business was launched in Dumbo which is an up-and-coming area for startups in Brooklyn, New York. The dating site launched in April of 2010 with the slogan "Go online to get offline".

Note: Unfortunately the source to the video and/or image which once was displayed here has since been removed by the authors for an unknown reason.

To find out more about how this online dating site works you can read our HowAboutWe review.

A eHarmony free communication weekend (FCW) is happening right now in the U.S. and Canada. It started today and runs to 11:59pm PST on Tuesday April 16th. No credit card is required and all members can communicate with their matches for free during this 5 day event.

If you want to take eHarmony for a test drive this 5 day FCW is worth checking out. You get to create a profile, review your matches and communicate with them all for free. This allows you to try out most of eHarmony’s services for no cost and it will give you a good idea of the type of matches you will receive and how the whole online dating process works at eHarmony. This dating site calculates your highly-compatible matches based on their algorithm which has years of research invested into it. The only things not included during this event is viewing photos, skip straight to mail and Secure Call.

eHarmony’s last free communication weekend happened in March (see Story). For further facts on this dating site you can read our detailed eHarmony review. Comments and user reviews are also available from this page.

Christian Mingle has partnered with a Dallas, Texas ministry called H.I.S. BridgeBuilders. This ministry helps restore low-income urban communities through economic means, education, health and spiritual development. With this new collaboration Christian Mingle's first project will be to help plant gardens in underprivileged communities located in south Dallas. These gardens will offer healthy food options to people who need it.

Christian Mingle and H.I.S. BridgeBuilders also plan to host charitable events to raise money for this and other projects. For more on this story you can read the press release and to find out how Christian Mingle works as a dating site you can read our review.

I found out the other day that eHarmony is offering a new feature called “eHarmony Access”. It is just in the test phase at the moment so it is not available to all members yet. When you are canceling your eHarmony membership you now will have the option to choose to become an eHarmony Access member. As part of eHarmony Access once your full eHarmony subscription expires you still will be able to receive matches and most importantly view all photos of those matches. Sending Icebreakers will also be available to you as well as the guided communication (at least on eHarmony.com). Being an eHarmony Access member does require a monthly fee but it is much less than the cost of a full membership. This feature is a great way for people who do not have the time to be a full fledge member of a dating site but still wish to see what their matches offer just in case you see one that really sparks some chemistry.

To find out more about this dating site you can read our eHarmony review.

One of our reviewed dating sites Positive Singles, has been mentioned in a New York Daily News article on dating sites and sexually-transmitted diseases. Like other STD dating sites Positive Singles match people based not only on interests, location and personality but also on the same STD infections.

Positive Singles currently has more than 700,000 members since it launched and has over 15,000 people visit the site every day. From our investigations it is the largest dating site that caters to members with an STD. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports in the United States that in a given year there are over 110 million cases of sexually-transmitted infections reported. About a third of the US population is single so this would mean that at least 33 million singles have a STD. I would bet this number is significantly higher since a single person is most likely to have many more sexual partners in a given year than someone in a long-term relationship and/or marriage. I could see this number being as high 60 million.

You can take a look at our Positive Singles review here.