How Many Members Really Do Care?

Many of you may not have discovered this page buried away in the vast Boonex repository:

https://www.boonex.com/about

The statement that Dolphin is used by over 150,000 webmasters also appeared on their home page as late as September 18th, 2018, but it's since been replaced with promotional material for UNA.

(See attached File) 

As I mentioned in an earlier forum post, only a handfull of people actually visit the forums, many important posts go unanswered and there are often times when posts are 48 hours apart.

As such, one can hardly say that the Dolphin Forum is a place where over 150,000 web-masters collaborate and help each other grow.

If 150,000 webmasters are about to lose 300,000 sites as previously quoted by Boonex, how is it that they aren't showing the same concern as the likes of you and I? Do they have their heads buried in the sand, are they all moving over to UNA which is hardly likely, or do they actually exist?

What concerns me is that there isn't anywhere enough noise. How can 149,950 Dolphin webmasters be that disinterested that their livelyhood is about to collapse around them? By that I refer to Boonex's statement that Dolphin will only be maintained for another five years and Boonex's resposes to concerns expressed in this forum.

In December 2017 I started a thread: "Who uses this Forum - A Survey of Sorts"

https://www.boonex.com/forums/topic/Who-uses-this-forum-A-survey-of-sorts.htm

Only seventeen people replied.

So how many people really do care, or are we just fuelling Andrew Boon's ego by suggesting that the demise of Dolphin and the shutting down of servers is really a big thing? Maybe it's only affecting a handful of people - maybe a very small handful in Mr Boone's eyes!

Let's be serious then: How many people really do care? It only takes a minute to say "I do" and if you host multiple sites, how about telling us how many? All your clients should have a vote.

I host or maintain five (5) sites.

I care, John. And the team cares deeply about Dolphin. We also know that it needs an update, which we are trying to organise. We know that it needs a new framework, too, which we have built and in some time it will be transitioned, but for all NEW people we believe that starting with UNA now is the best option. We made it MIT-licensed, created a great messenger for it, made it free!!!! and charge $50 a month for direct support and automatic updates of premium modules (are, $50 covers one hour of developer time, so it’ll take a while to become profitable, but we endure). We know about the problems of net users of Dolphin and know how diverse the issue may be, so we try to work with each one individually. 

Hello Andrew and Thank you for your reply. If I was a moderator which I'm not, I would be asking you to delete the last four and a half lines from you post because I think they're completely off topic. I'm not concerned about new users because they clearly have a choice, but I am interested in the other 150,000 Dolphin users or the thirty plus who regularly write about their concerns on this forum.

So please let us not try to up-sell another product at every opportunity. Let's keep this thread focused on the question How Many Members Really Do Care? and hopefully we'll all be happy with the end result.

I appreciate that you do care about Dolphin although it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to see that, but some really positive statements backed up by action would be helpful. Unfortunately you continue to say "after this or after that", but it's the after bit that's making people here nervous.

Of course those download numbers are a joke. I searched some default Dolphin text a few years back and found a lot of 'Powered by Dolphin' free set-ups with not a lot of customisation going on.

Many of those URLs have long since become 404s.

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Michel - Meta-Travel.com
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The forum was very active when I came in around 2012.  The problem is that the Boonex company has driven people away. 

I looked at a lot of social networking platforms; actually installed and used them, and determined that Dolphin was the best of the lot.  I almost went with ELGG but there was an issue with one, the stream table that held all content; bad idea, and installation of modules in the wrong order could break the site.  Plus, I was not too happy with the photo section of ELGG.

Short answer is, I DO CARE! 

When Andrew dusted off the old Trident code he was going to call it Dolphin and Dolphin was going to be Dolphin Pro.  If Andrew hasn't erased history you can find discussions about that on here.  Finally it became UNA and was suppose to be something different than Dolphin although I never really understood what exactly.  For one thing, I think it was suppose to be less demanding on support; no sys admins needed.  That changed with the JOT messenger and Chat +; both require you to know how to shell in at the root level and make changes to the server.  However, that is fine because the idea with UNA is that it is more of a service that is sold.  No problem with that of course; a lot of the companies seem to head in that direction.

What I am seeing with the changes in the boonex.com site is that it appears that the Dolphin name is now associated with setting up a UNA site; this is not by accident in my opinion.  I would not be surprised to see UNA platform become Dolphin which was Andrew original idea.  The Dolphin Solution is UNA; that is a clear statement about what is intended for the current Dolphin Pro.

As I said, I DO CARE and I don't plan on abandoning Dolphin.

GG, I really appreciate your passion and commitment. I hope I can somehow communicate that our intentions have always been to do what is best for the clients and I don’t pretend like I know all the answers. 

Hey, here is a question (to everyon)... not a promise, but just deliberating...

If we were to maintain DolphinPro as a community-driven platform, updating and supporting via community forums, MIT licensed and free (perhaps only offering a similar to UNA monthly direct support plan option). All while making UNA a more controlled option with audited Marketplace and dedicated implementation support options (kind of like an Enteprise-grade solution)... Do you reckon it would make good sense? 

See, on one hand we don’t want to upset or disrupt thing, but also understand that two competing platforms hurt each other. We can maintain a migration tool and a bridgeing solution of some sort, but ultimately the two would likely have to merge into one anyhow. 

MIT as in we can do what we want with it, such as re-releasing under a new name and license? If so, then yes, as I would be interested in that.

I realise a lot of features you have license agreements with such as the plugin for tinymce would have to be ripped out, but I am good with that.

Good to have you back Dean; and to see that your website is up and running again. Hope all is well.

With your good self and geek_girl on board, Dolphin does still have a future.

Jerome keeps an eye on his module support threads as well, so it's all looking good.

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Michel - Meta-Travel.com
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The suggestions here are off-the-cuff. They're no meant to be conclusive, but I've made them to generate healthy discussion.

@Andrew, I've said this before. Dolphin dollars must be getting harder to find and I'm sure your third-party developers are also feeling the pinch.

Dolphin may not be able to return big bucks any more, but your paid hosting and support services could be, and should be your bread and butter. Plenty of people seek full support as is evidenced in these forums.

You and I both live in Oz, so let's talk Oz dollars.

Three or four years ago Dolphin was under $200. Today it's closer to $800.

Similar scripts still sell for $250.

Obviously Dolphin became overpriced and that must have contributed to its current demise.

Most of the people you're dealing with today will be community organisations or start-ups.Most can't afford to pay $800 for any script, whilst others won't be interested in paying big bucks for a script that runs on PHP 5 and lags behind other compatible scripts on the market.

So how could you make Dolphin pay? maybe you could consider:

1. Making Dolphin and the basic modules free to everyone.
2. Charge only for Boonex developed "Premium Modules" such as a slick Photos module with all the bells and whistles, including the ability to turn most things off to make it super basic for those who want that.
3. Have a Premium Module to replace every basic module supplied. If Modzzz or Anton have these already, consider doing partnership deals and split the earnings. They do the work, you make the sales! 
4. Spend your energy improving the back-end as outlined in recent posts. Even a "Premium" back-end could be considered for power users.
5. Re-code it so it's easier to understand. Reduce the bloat from 65meg to 10 or 12.
6. Make it PHP 7 compatible.
7. Remove Flash ASAP.
8. Offer Installed Packages that are ready to run and make the pricing reasonable - $10 - $15 month up.
9. Develop a strong Community, get them to create the manual, create Youtube videos, contribute to "How To" tutorials.

This is the new approach to everything on the Net today. Let those with experience develop concepts and you act as a retail outlet. Have a look at Shapeways. There you have a site devoted to selling 3D printed items on behalf of thousands of people who have managed to create something worthwhile - to someone else!

9. Generate enthusiasm, excitement, worth! Become cutting-edge instead of someone fighting to save their reputation, because that's where you're at right now.

If you feel exhausted, ask for volunteers, but offer them something in return. Possibly a points system where they can contribute, gain points and eventually get free modules or whatever.

Alternatively make Dolphin a true community project by making it open source and allowing members as well as past and present 3rd party developers to contribute in some way. One condition may be that an opportunity exists for users to migrate to UNA should they desire to do so, but my guess is that the flow may go in the opposite direction.

I do care. Running 2 sites on dolphin. I am very frustrated how things evolved. I bought many modules to enlarge the functionality. I think it was a very bad decision to develop UNA instead of constantly improving dolphin. Which was always promised in the past. I can even see the advantage in UNA except from the sellers point of view to gain more revenue from monthly payments instead of a one time sell. But as others stated before, other means of revenue could have been established. 

Dolphin could have been able to use PHP7 months ago, UI and UX could have been improved, different modules from third party programmers could have been integrated into the core and so on. But resources were invested into UNA. 

Of course this decision belongs to the owner, but the consequences affect us, the user. It should be a mutual support and benefit.

I notice new guys coming to ask questions, they generally disappear after a couple of days and never come back.  Why is that I wonder?

I wouldnt mind betting its because of the way that one or two of our more vocal members treat these newbies.  I have rarely posted in the forum until lately as I've experienced a fair amount of uncalled for abuse and general rudeness and belittlement.  I have thick skin though and it will not stop me coming into the forum but can the same be said for all those new to the community or have they been scared off.

Before pointing fingers at Boonex maybe we should all (myself included) take a moment to read our posts and think how others might feel reading it.

@serskine I think there's lots of reasons for people coming and going. Firstly, lots of people discover a script, try to fire it up, make no headway, join the script forum looking for a magic wand and leave when they don't find it. From the outset, Boonex made their documentation very hard to find. Maybe they thought their users were all nerds, or maybe they didn't allow enough time to create documentation to make the script easier to use.

In the late 80's I wrote databases with a program called dBaseII. I quickly learned that a couple of lines of code could create countless permutations and writing a manual to cover them all was impossible. Dolphin is much more powerful than anything I ever wrote and the "ultimate" manual would run into many volumes.

Dolphin's documentation is far from complete, but in fairness, a lot does exist. Even so, there's not enough for the average user to create the ultimate site, so they come here hoping for an answer, wait days or weeks for an answer and eventually move on. I know, because that's what I did. I started here, went to Elgg, then Oxwall, then here, back to Elgg, back to Oxwall and then here again. That journey took a few years and I'm still asking questions and still waiting for a LOT of answers.

In all fairness, I could be considered responsible for being one of the first to be critical of Boonex way back when. I feel like I'm repeating myself, but I use other software which is equally as powerful that has a 300 page manual, countless tutorials and help files. It costs 40 bucks! 

The difference is that the developers of that program spend hundreds of hours writing their manuals, maintaining their forum and developing a strong community.

Andrew Boon on the other hand, became reclusive. He seldom contributed to his own forums, rarely or never answered a technical question if I can recall, yet expected his community to grow and grow and grow. The developer I mentioned above, answers "every" forum question within 24 hours. Nothing, but nothing goes unanswered. He alone often makes 20 posts a day.

About six months ago it became obvious to me that Dolphin had been dumped in the Ish-Bish (rubbish bin) and the community was left to its own devices. I wasn't alone in thinking this, but I do accept that I was responsible for dishing up a lot of the negativity you mention. Although I never created the statement, I've often said that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

Let's hope I've been cruel for all the right reasons, but you can be the judge.

If a question goes unanswered it could be because no one knows the answer.  Some questions require one to have access to the server and often that is not granted.  Some questions require complicated answers.  Actually the Boonex forum is one of the better ones as concerning noobs asking questions.

The unspoken rule is that you ask in the forum after you have searched the forum and the internet at large.  If a question has been answered a thousand times in the forum and then someone comes and posts it once again, it may trigger a response of, "Have you bloody try searching?"

Maybe they got that one question they had answered and were satisfied.  Some come in, get the problem solved and then go back to running their site.

For what it's worth, I've been using the Dolphin platform since version 6.  I've purchased a ridiculous amount of modules, paid for custom work with too many developers to remember and spent countless hours keeping my site up and running.  After all of these years, the entire Boonex community has about 4-8 developers that are active. 

My take on this entire project has been the lack of consistency delivering incremental development/code for the Dolphin platform AND regular communications to the community.  The lack of activity in these areas indicate a very low adoption rate on the platform.  Those marketing numbers for downloads & members needs to be taken with a grain of salt anyway; like any ad copy, exaggeration brings eyes, not necessarily customers!

When Raffael (IBDW) dropped off the face of the earth, that's when the death spiral began to accelerate on this platform.  Jerome is a tornado of module creation, but still, only one person that cannot possibly scale to support thousands of users.

I do follow all updated modules every week and I used to check Forum posts several times a week for things that may popup for my needs - however, I'm now trying to figure out whether I'm gonna throw the towel in or move to UNA, which has a long way to go before it can replicate what I've already built on Dolphin.

And add insult to injury with Zarconia shutting down overnight!  I had to jump through hoops to find a new host and move my multiple sites (prod, test, dev) over.  After all the work moving shit around, I find out that Boonex was rescuing Zarconia - ugh!! 

If you have been keeping up with the Zarconia to Boonex thing you made the right decision to move.

 +1

 Yes, so what you want. Rebrand, resell, use on multiple sites - whatever. Just keep the license notice in the code and make sure you comply with licensing of 3rd party components (or don’t use them. 

Thank you for the feedback and suggestions, everyon! We are now a couple of weka away from UNA 9 full release and after that we will have more specific plan on DolphinPro updates. We may be able to streamline some other issues that cause overhead and get back to active development. I’ll keep you updated. 

i have been with dolphin since 2008 and pre D6 and loved it since then and what the possibilities for it were, but TBH it has been a slow demise since D6, I do not post a lot now as as John42k says there are not that many who care anymore as Andrew/Boonex has driven them away slowly over the years. i only contact one developer here now for help with my site which will probably stay on 7.3 as i have know intention to move to una.

and andrew even after john42k says this post was about how many members really care you still try and promote una before addressing dolphin issuesI for one would rather pay private to update my site now than go una  or even better if dolphin got forked