Initial thoughts from a newbie

Hi All,

Found this site by searching on Google for a php CMS social network. This is the 3rd one we have tried now, first we tried BuddyPress and although it is very quick to get up and running we felt we where limited in what we could do, unless we thoroughly learnt all about the inner workings of it. Somewhere on the BuddyPress forums there is a wonderful example of what can be done with it, it's a site about restaurants in Germany and there is no way you would think it was BuddyPress behind the scenes, they modified it extensively.

Next we bought a script from CodeCanyon and although it worked, everytime a update came out the author wouldn't say what he had changed or fixed. He would only say what files, so we had to go through line by line and implement the changes. Also it was more of a FaceBook feed clone (no pages, events etc...)

So we kept looking and found this, looked at the demo site and loved it. It's now installed (FREE version) and we are playing around with it but documentation seems a bit sparse. For instance all the extra modules that can be installed, can't find a list with a explanation on what they do (single sentence for each one would be enough).

Found this for modifying the look -

http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/TutorialHowToFormatImagesAndFonts

Without that we would be lost.

Also can't find anything about creating our own theme, for now we have activated the ALT theme and we are changing that about but we are also editing the base CSS, which I know could cause us problems when a update comes out.

If we can get looking and functioning just how we want then I don't see any problems paying for it and we will want the mobile apps as well.

Any tips or tricks, please let me know.

Dave

Yes, search the forums here extensively for what to do; this is about all the documentation your going to get.

Welcome aboard..

On the template, leave the base alone, clone the UNI or ALT template by copying the directory to a new one with tmpl_template-name; where template-name is the name you want to give to your template.  If you need to edit a CSS file that is not in the template, copy the css file to your template, or copy all of them if you like.  Regardless of what others say, don't use @import; that was for an IE hack and it is considered bad form today.

A lot of the included modules are self-evident; like blogs, photos, videos, they are for what the name says.  If there is a module you don't know what it is for, ask here in the forums.  Now, you need to know that if you uninstall a module, you will lose all data that is associated with that module.  Some have not known this and made the mistake of uninstalling only to use data.  Always back up your database as well as the files for that module if you think reinstalling will fix something; usually it won't due to the way modules work.  In fact, if you think the files for a module have gotten corrupted, you just re-up the files for that module.

Most files for a module are stored within the module.  For example, photos are stored in the files directory of the photo module.

BuddyPress is a social networking plugin for WordPress; I don't even like WordPress for a blogging platform.

Thanks for the tips.

Will make a copy of the theme and copy over the files I have edited.

So can I copy CSS files from the base directory into my themes directory and they will be picked up instead ?

Yeah I agree some modules are obvious from the name and I have installed a few (news, articles, chat)

Dave

The way themes work is that if a CSS file or Template file is not in your template, Dolphin will use the one in the base theme instead.  So you only need to copy the css and template files that you want to change.

I have a feeling the site customizer is going to help many with this.