 I am looking at putting together a community portal for my town and am looking between Dolphin, a modified WordPress installation, or e107.
My main features are going to be: Forums Blogs Event Calendar Classifieds Business Pages/Reviews Dining/Reviews
I am sure other functionality will come out of the woodwork as I build, but was curious if anyone else had some knowledge of existing geographical community pages built on Dolphin that I could take a peak at?
Thanks! |
I have worked on a localised community site before, no longer online though so nothing to show Im afraid! However, I went through a lot of testing to find the right platform for it, Wordpress has lots of plugins that are good quality and allow lots of customisation, however, the community side of it didn't cut it for me. Buddypress is the leading 'community' plugin for WP, while it has a slick look to it, it just doesn't offer the profile/membership control in admin that D does. However, the biggest function that made me stick with using D is the ability to easily allow users to post content from the front end, along with excellent linking between profiles and posted content. Much more suitable for a social community based site in my opinion.
Not seen e107 before but having had a quick look it looks a little messy on their own site for finding the right plugins / templates etc... couldn't easily see what each plugin does - therefore not so easy to figure out how everything will interact on the sites front end when things are installed without installing them all and testing!
I did a lot of market research with end users, both public and shops for the local area I was building for and all found the D based site I put together very easy to navigate and straight forward in how and where they would interact on the site. Financially speaking, I had businesses offering to pay up front to be on the site in some cases based on the demo I was showing. However, things didn't go ahead with the launch due to other commitments and issues so never ran with it.
My choice would definately be Dolphin for a future project along these lines though... |
Thanks for the reply. I would love to see someone running this in a similar instance of what I am wanting to put together. I have used e107 in a lot of other installations. Their plug-ins can be a pain in the butt to navigate but they are good. The management dashboard is solid as well. It does have its drawbacks, but I am certain it would do what I needed it to.
I was just recently introduced to Dolphin, however, and although it seems to struggle in the template department, looks to be a pretty slick and versatile system thus my looking further. I don't see a lot of sites running it though which makes me nervous about putting it up for production. I am nervous that I will get everything up and running and find a critical flaw since I am unfamiliar with it. |
