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