How is everyone doing?

Hi Everyone - I haven't been here in years - maybe three or four years?  - I have lost track.   What is amazing is this site never changes.  Not to be negative, but it is a slow, downhill decline that never ends - always with some complicated technical solution that will save everything but never does.  This site should have been fully open sourced years ago - it really was great stuff at one point, and the original business model - a flat $100 per licence was perfect. 

I came back because an old Dolphin 7 site I keep around - mostly for nostalgic reasons - apparently has been hacked and is now sending out Russian spam.  It was a good site - but now I will have to shut it down - they never provide an upgrade path - just endless promises of 'the next big thing".   I left when Dolphin Pro was just getting going - but it was obvious the development time would take so long that it would be a waste of life to hang around.  I briefly thought it might be interesting to take a look and maybe use it for some possible projects, but a quick look at the forum tells me that would be a lost cause. 

So what is going on with you guys?   Are you keeping your sites running using Dolphin or are you headed to greener pastures?  Looks like this has been a rough slog - I do hope everyone is doing well. 

Nice to see you drop by for a looksie. I was browsingt Caltrade just the other week.

It had the makings of a good directory, but the workload is huge.

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Michel - Meta-Travel.com
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Hi Michel - really?  What inspired you to do that?  - I also abandoned the CalTrade site for the reason you mentioned - the workload.   The directory on that site was really good but was not developed in Dolphin - that was in PhpLinkDirectory and something very similar happened there - a site that had been open source that while still technically open source got taken over and controlled by a few guys who only wanted to milk it.   

The Dolphin 7 site I was somewhat proud of was http//world-startups.com  - had great functionality but I couldn't maintain and develop it by myself.  I am just using it as a portfolio site now.  So are people here migration to other platforms or developing their Dolphin sites on their own?  May i ask what is considered to be the 'go to" platform now?

I had a number of Dolphin sites bookmarked, to see how people were using the software. Yours was one of them. Didn't the members section use Dolphin?

Most of the sites were pretty non functional, so I deleted the bookmarks.

May those whose bookmarks were deleted find further inspiration and realise that owning a website is not a get rich quick scheme and most of us have to put a lot more hours into its maintenance than could ever have been imagined.

Sadly, when relying on other people's software there is a feeling of being held to ransom; even if it claims to be 'open source'.

I looked at a number of other software bundles but they are all pricing themselves out of reality, for what they offer. They all have a learning curve and will all have bugs and need constant upgrading. Even a number of Showcase sites are no longer 'live'.

At the end of the day, it's not all about the software but how the admin uses it; which often means understanding how much of the code works behind the scenes and finding ways to tweak it.

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Michel - Meta-Travel.com
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You could fix the hack.

I still think Dolphin is the best platform to develop social sites, including community portals.

Dolphin is still the best social platform and it will become a whole lot better. Just let us figure out a few things and we'll bring a major update. 

I too love Dolphin. Have been away for awhile yet the site was still ticking along successfully. Due to some recent ideas, I am doing a complete redo of my site as well as creating two more using Dolphin. I love the fact that I can almost change anything I want and get the results that I want with minimal issues. If you all (boonex staff) ever do decide to focus solely on UNA and abandon dolphin - let me know and I will gladly pick it up and run with it. I have even recently told a few people about dolphin because they are interested in creating social media sites for whatever reasons they have and was proud to recommend dolphin to them.

Great post, Andrew.

What are you trying to figure out?

We will be staying with the product.

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Michel - Meta-Travel.com
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@Geekgirl - do you know how to fix the hack, or short of that does anyone who has been around for a while know how to prevent a D7 site from sending emails?  I thought I had it fixed but I just got one this morning. 

Sending out Russian spam?  How, maybe some details.  What server is it on?  If it is sending it out through the server's mail server then the first thing to do is to shut down the mail server until you know what is happening.  Is it through Dolphin's notifications, newsletter, etc?  Or perhaps a script was installed on the server.  Just not enough information to offer any solutions.