A decade of Dolphin

I remember when I first saw Dolphin 6 and it was so amazing to me. Back then, I was trying to make my own social networking platform and programming things out using a hodge podge of classes. Seeing BoonEx had already done a majority of the work, I decided to use Dolphin instead.

It made me wonder how many here remember or are still around since the early days or Dolphin or if others have moved on. I for one am quite happy with what I've been able to produce with it. It's still one of the most versatile open source apps in my tool kit.

When I first discovered Dolphin, I was super happy because I wanted to have my own MySpace so I could use it to meet girls. In the past six months, I decided to look around and I tried wordpress with buddypress because of multisite and all of the available themes. However, wordpress and buddypress are missing some important features such as video encoding, etc. Even with media plugins, there are no thumbnails in the activity stream and you have to pay for the plugin's encoding service just to get a simple thumbnail. It's not worth the money and the quality of their encoding is horrible. The free encoding plugins created errors in my videos. Suddenly a free solution has turned into a paid solution that costs more than Dolphin because with wordpress, the plugins want me to pay every year for updates. I think Dolphin is better, but I just need more versatility and I can get that using the wordpress themes. Dolphin needs more themes / templates. I do not like using wordpress, but I feel like I have to. I wish there was a way to integrate Boonex products and wordpress together, that would solve all of my problems. Also, with wordpress, when using front-end blogging or article plugins, the media doesn't get deleted from the server when the post is deleted. Wordpress will fill your server up with orphaned junk files. I had to use internet hacks just to get my sites to function like they should so I just keep going back and forth between Dolphin and wordpress.

Yes and I always have my adult site with dolphin 6.1.6 :) -  With today 37383 members

been with Dolphin for many many years and hopefully many more to come.

Good to see some you guys chime in.

I know there are a many who are still working with Dolphin. I'm kind of looking back at the various sites from long ago and realizing how much it has improved. At this time I am doing updates and remembering when it was manually done!

I started with Dolphin 7.0.9 as the test site just before the move to 7.1.  Wasn't happy with some of the interface changes but over all there were good improvements.  I still maintain several Dolphin sites.  I think Boonex is concentrating more on UNA and that is a shame.  UNA needs a lot of work, for one, throwing away the horrible Studio (admin) panel.  Studio came from "Dolphin 8" when Boonex thought it was a "cool" interface.  It isn't, it sucks, it is just bad.  I will leave Dolphin if they incorporate all the bad horrible crap from UNA; such as Studio, into Dolphin.  I won't leave Dolphin, I will stay with the best release and work on any issues or security concerns myself but I won't use any future releases if they start moving all the horrible crap from UNA into Dolphin.

By the way, Boonex has already moved away from their mission statement about UNA; you will need to hire a developer to add some of the new features such as the JOT messenger.

I've been around since the 5.4 thanksgiving special days....  Still here some what from time to time.

I think you was the first person to answer my first question on here if i remember right.

Good to see your still around. 

@dolphin_jay wow you have been around longer than most I think! I guess you may remember those crazy slugfests at the expertzzz forum and the newly minted BoonEx site at the time. Some insane times that I now chuckle about now and again.

I've been clearing out and archiving files and I am finding some really old mods and knick-knacks that have reminded me of the last decade.

@geek_girl, while I do like UNA, I have to admit, I am still a big fan of Dolphbin :D

@wesways well hello there! Good to see you still around as well.

@danielmarseille Dolphin 6 was the one I started to get serous with and was when I launched my tutorials! Good times.

@mayzfieldtv I work with WordPress as well and have dabbled with buddypress, but like yourself, Dolphin was the one I chose.

...sip...this thread is giving me that reminiscing feeling today...ha ha ha

Looks like DatEx was dropped or renamed in late April or May 2006. The last reference I can find for DatEx was on 24th April.

The next Boonex site update to appear was for Dolphin 5.0 on or about the 12th May 2006. I was aware of the product then,however I was slightly interested in Barracuda at the time, but couldn't get it to run.

I'm sure others know much more than me, but it seems Dolphin didn't replace DatEx, but was based on a script called aeDating.

See screenshot attachments below

I spent untold hours trying to modify Dolphin into something other than a dating site/app. I learned so much in the process, I really can't complain. I wish the mobile app was better.

To those of you who are dissatified, would you (can you) sell one of your Dolphin licences or donate it to charitiy for a tax deduction? I just need one more. Please let me know. Thanks.

    David Anderson

I thought I had seen something about Dolphin licenses being sold or transferred but that may not have been on this site. Here is a lengthy discussion but several years old:

https://www.boonex.com/forums/topic/selling-sites-licenses-modules-needs-boonex-attention.htm

In view of UNA making its entry, is there any news about transfers or new pricing? Please clarify. Much thanks.

@johnk42 I remember aeDating. That's so vintage ...lol...