We are so glad to announce that we are starting to roll out Version 2 infrastructure. The first step is the all-new, completely redesigned owssoftware.com along with deeply integrated couponsdatafeed.com.   Both sites share the same design, features and have all tools that you need to manage your Deals/Coupons Website and Datafeed.

Some more functionality will be revealed as the Version 2 of the script become available.

If you would like to move your old account to the new site, please make an account on our new http://www.owssoftware.com/signup-free and then login and fill this form  http://www.owssoftware.com/old to transfer you old order’s info.

OWS Software on Social networks:

1. Free Hosted Edition. This is a very feature limited edition, that will be hosted on our servers. It will be paired with our free* datafeed subscription so anyone can have a place to start the deals/coupons website. There will be a separate post explaining “free” options in details.

2. Local Coupons Edition. It specifically designed for starting a coupon promotion site for your local businesses. You can  add local stores, create beautiful printable coupons with barcodes and custom designs, setup and manage subscription plans for the business owners, allow them to create stores and post their own coupons. Visitors can search or browse by the proximity to ZIP code or City and State.

3. Professional Edition. Pretty much everything that you might need to run a successful Deals/Coupons website and make money on affiliates programs. You can post unlimited amount of offers, categorize by dates, stores, tags and categories, import RSS/XML/CSV feeds with deals or coupons, retrieve product info directly from supported merchants or affiliate networks.

4. Social network Edition. You can turn your Deals/Coupons website to the social shopping community.  Users can have enhanced profiles with avatars and comment walls, submit coupons, post comments, interact with each other on community forums, vote for offers, report coupons as working/not working, add each other as friends, create and share lists of offers, and much much more…

So we realized that it has to stop. 1.3.6 is a very good and pretty stable version that could live for a while without new fixes. It is also a version that was a product of rapid 1.x.x. development when we cared more about adding new functionality then about how this functionality fits together. It has to retire. And we have to go back to the drawing board and create a brand new software that will be lightning fast, easier to use, and it should be based on our experience and your feedback from all those years.

So we did that, and we are so proud to announce OWS Software Deals and Coupons Website System Version 2.

Version 2 is a major update and it includes everything.

- It’s a completely new OWS Deals/Coupons Website script that is now coming in four different editions including the free one.
- It’s a new owssoftware.com where you finally be able download new releases, upgrade, and  re-new your support/updates package.
- It’s a brand new Deals and Coupons Datafeed management site where you can manage your settings and subscriptions. Yes, there is a free (well, sort of) datafeed subscription too.
- It’s an amazing “Links to the Affiliate links” transformation service, which will allow you to make your affiliate link from any link with one click right from the admin panel of your site.

.. and much, much more.

There is no release date set up yet, we are at the final development stage and we are doing a lot of testing, testing again and re-testing.

I will be revealing more details in the next several days, so stay tuned. Right now is the very first screen shot of the new OWS Deals/Coupons Website Admin Panel.

New OWS Deals/Coupons Website Script version 1.3.5 has been released.

1. New Datafeed server integration with multiple profiles support.
2. Datafeed timeout setting/fix for slow or time limited servers.
3. Deals from the datafeed could be imported as approved or could be manually reviewed before publishing
4. MySQL Null Default Date settings (i.e fix for 1901-12-13 default date)
5. Limit amount of tags for the user interface and admin panel.
6. (*)Admin panel editable Custom HTML Blocks. useful for showing banners, notices, etc..
7. (*)Choice of a SEO extensions (.html, .htm, .asp, .aspx, .php, .cfm, .jsp) instead of pre-fixed .html
8. Duplicate an existing deal/coupon or adjust publishing date so it will appear as just inserted.
9. Rewards functionality improvements: Log transactions and show the list of reward eligible transactions to the users, define and  show the reward amount for each store(revised), show user his/her total amount of accumulated rewards.
10. Free subscription plans for store owners.
11. smarty and jquery has been updated to the latest.
12. Numerous speed  enchantments and bug fixes.

(*) Requires template modification/update (existing customers).

My usual answer is ASAP, which is actually correct.  The best time is now when the economy is in a recession more and more people are starting to look for coupons online instead of driving to the nearest mall.

But …There is also a thing called “Winter holydays shopping” which happened every November-December. If you start your Deals/Coupons website right now you still have six month till November to promote your site.  Six month is enough time to put some good content,  become well indexed in all major search engines and do some link building to improve you ranks.  This is the time that you need to bring your site to its full power, so you can make some really good money on this “Winter holydays shopping” spree.

So, if you are still waiting for the right time, this time is NOW!

Stay tunned….