Is Dolphin Dead or Sleeping

At this time it has been about 3.5 months since Boonex posted anything about dolphin.  Is that normal or is the project going dark? 

Noticed that some major developers are no longer "listed" with their products. Deano and Rayzzz are inactive it seems.  What is going on here?

I think this active threat pretty much covers it.

https://www.boonex.com/forums/topic/A-New-Beginning-.htm

Boonex's main focus is UNA.  If you go to UNA.io you can see activity there.

As for forking Dolphin, if Boonex said, yes, fork it, remove the licensing server connection, remove the visible branding, remove the cripple code (the cripple code really burns me but does not seem to bother anyone else) then I would join on the forking team.

That was probably a result of the big Market purge.

Thanks John and GG. 

There was an update released not too long ago. BoonEx shifts their focus (it's a small team) between Dolphin and UNA. The announced plan was to focus heavily on Dolphin again once UNA stable is out the door.

Which I think is a mistake from a business standpoint.   Dolphin and UNA are too similar of products to warrant having both; both are aimed at building some type of social platform; the marketing hype for UNA as something else is just that, hype (Let's not forget when UNA shared the same name as Dolphin).  I think all the resources that was put into UNA should have been put into the Dolphin product.  In my opinion, I think the idea was that Dolphin would be eventually dropped and everyone would move to the UNA platform.  The problem is that too many of us have invested too heavily into the Dolphin platform; which is why there is so much talk of forking Dolphin.  The only reason we don't is because of the confusion over exactly what we could do with Dolphin.

@Nathan, as you say, it's a small team and we all know UNA is an exciting new kid on the block - for some!

The update you refer to was nothing more than a minor patch to fix the recaptcha. Even then, it was released so late that several people were compelled to purchase a third-party module so that their Dolphin site could remain open. 90% of the changes to files were just for the version number, so all that was needed was a single patch which would have meant replacing 1 or 2 files.

I think it's very RUDE for any organisation to effectively say "We're using all available energy to develop another product that will compete with our existing product and may well make it obsolete.  Please don't worry because we'll refocus our attention on you, the breadwinner WHEN the new product is working and we eventually find time. "

They didn't say that, but they may as well.  To be honest, they haven't said anything and it's as if they expect us to feel sorry for them!

R&D is an essential component of any business, but when R&D consumes so much of the company's time that it forces it to totally neglect it's existing client base, that company is doomed to failure.

In all seriousness - what in the blazes is the use of UNA to the people using Dolphin? I'm sure that many of those who paid, feel duped in knowing their money is funding a competitive product.

I'm also sure that most Dolphin users would prefer NOT to hear the word UNA again.

@geek_girl and @johnk42

Excellent post. UNA is NOT brand new idea with different features when compare to Dolphin. In turn, they are putting efforts in to a product only to compete with its own product (how many businesses does not?). Currently, I believed, the team is in a difficult spot (their own doing).

With UNA.io, they have over a thousand accounts (according to Andrew back in Jan 2018) and the software is just like any other software with many bugs. They can not slow down because they need to shows their investment and commitment to the product, therefore, they will continue providing support and be active in that community and invest their time and effort.

With Dolphin, they have a bigger user based accounts but it is not the money maker due to their current lifetime updates. The software is aging and in desperate need of a complete modernize updates which require time and effort that they don't have. Charging user like UNA.io scheme to have the financial support for the development will cause an out cry from the users.

On the other hand, if the team take their time and effort from UNA.io and focus on Dolphin, they will receive an out cry from UNA's users for slow support and updates.

My solution for Andrew as I mentioned in previous thread, which many Dolphin users will disagree, is to switch Dolphin into a pay-per-release plan. Simple security and bugs release are free. Major improvement should be pay-per-release. This is the incentive for Dolphin to continue to evolve and modernize. This plan, of course, will drive many Dolphin Users away and cut down on the number of Dolphin accounts but at the same time, this will strength relationship with Dolphin users that have a successful Dolphin sites. Quality over quantity.

Pay per release will kill Dolphin.

Here is the problem with pay per release.  Currently updates are handled through an update release.  You have to get each update release because you can't skip between updates.

Pay per release could be tolerable if the product was rock-solid and remained usable if the user owner decided not to continue paying. Such is the case with CorelDraw where people are still using much older versions. I know of people successfully using Version 7 and earlier, even though the current version is X8 or 18.

Before we get excited about Pay Per release, let's remember that Dolphin is one of the most expensive scripts on the market and having to pay for it every year would amount to extortion.

Over recent years, Dolphin has multiplied in price and decreased in effectiveness. If Boonex kept it at under $200, maybe some kind of annual fee could be justified, but to expect people to part out AU$800 a year for a has-been product without support or documentation is ludicrous.

What Boonex could do is this: 

• Leave the people who paid big bucks alone and say "We got that lifetime update thingy a bit wrong".
• Forget one-off pricing for the rest of us altogether and consider some kind of licensing fee.
  • This could be an annual fee of (say) $50 payable after a trial period of say 90 days;
  • Or a free Core with the photos module thrown in, then an annual licensing fee or one-off payment for all other modules as they're doing with UNA. They would then need to be very competitive with the third-party offerings and Boonex would need to produce half-decent modules to get the lion's share;
• Or find another job.

Sadly, Dolphin is only as good as the third-party module developers supporting it. The stock modules are either short on features or very complex to use. If a developer like Modzzz was to progress to another platform, I'm sure a lot of people would follow him.

I have a feeling I would.

Dolphin pro is not a social networking platform, it's social dating. At $599 USD for a lifetime license, it certainly is not the most expensive platform out there. Skadate, which is a social dating platform, starts their pricing at $999 for a basic lifetime license. To get the feature rich version, however, you're going to shell out $3,000. Social Engine, which is a social networking platform, is $300 for a lifetime license. 

If you seriously want to support Boonex on a recurring fee basis, sign up for one of their hosting plans. 

At one time, una (aka trident) was supposed to be Dolphin 8. But then something happened - mobile phones. I believe Una is going to be marketed to those who want a social mobile experience. So it makes sense to have two platforms - one for desktop, one for mobile.

To tell any business they cannot or should not work on a second platform because the users won't like it, is both ludicrous and pompous - you do not speak for every user. Let each user decide which platform is best for them. 

@tdsranger, your comments about UNA being a mobile phone platform is exactly what I set out to discuss in this thread:

https://www.boonex.com/forums/topic/A-New-Beginning-.htm

Somehow the thread we're reading has taken over. A bit like UNA vs Dolphin!

If you're referring to me, I never said that Boonex cannot, or should not work on a second platform. What I said was:

R&D is an essential component of any business, but when R&D consumes so much of the company's time that it forces it to totally neglect it's existing client base, that company is doomed to failure.

If you read my thread, you will see that I offered a suggestion that may allow both products to work in total harmony and make Dolphin PC and Dolphin Mobile the best social networking or dating scripts around.

To my knowledge, SKAdate is nothing more than Oxwall with a few added bits which aren't necessary for a social networking site. Oxwall is free, but they too have started to sell hosting packages.

I ran an Oxwall site for a long time but opted for Dolphin because it does have a few more options. Had I known that Boonex was going to let it die an unnatural death, I would have stuck with Oxwall which at least has a future.

Criticism levelled at Oxwall by its users was or is that the development team were hell-bent on producing features needed by SKDate, possibly because that crowd are major sponsors of the Oxwall Foundation.

It's also possible that Boonex is being sponsored by someone similar who is desperate to see a mobile phone friendly script, because most dating clients use mobile phones.

Sadly, nobody knows because Boonex refuses to talk. No announcements, no newsletters, infrequent support on the forum, almost no written support since early version 7 and documentation that could be considered useless.

Finally, Boonex is an Australian product, but it's priced in US dollars and that means Australian customers suffer poorly. After paying a 10% tax, plus facing a miserable exchange rate, the product here costs almost $900. It just went up 10% last week, not that we can blame Boonex for that. If it was slick, state of the art and streets ahead of the rest, $900 could be seen as money well spent, but with Elgg (free), Oxwall (free) and Social Engine at US$300, Dolphin doesn't shape up too well at all.

So why do I persevere? Because my colleague and I have in excess of $1,000 invested in the product and none of the sites are designed to collect any money.  That's NOT our aim.

I did not say that; what I said is that they have two platforms that are basically the same and that is bad from a business standpoint.  If UNA was a platform for business collaboration then that would not be the same as Dolphin.  UNA competes with Dolphin; Dolphin competes with UNA; it is not a wise business strategy.

 Not to mention deleting all the data in Trac; that was one of the most stupid things that Boonex; and Andrew who is the head guy, did.  We lost all that information.

All of the money and time spent on UNA should have been spent on Dolphin.  I really don't understand the thinking of Andrew Boon on this.

 I did not mention yours or anyone's name in my post. 

@johnk42 Oxwall died 2 years ago. Since then there has been no activity from the staff nor the owner.  People have decided that oxwall was offered for free as beta testing and when the software was fine tuned, it was abandoned. There are currently two forks in active development.

I do not see Una and Dolphin competing against each other. One is more desktop centric whereas the other is more mobile centric.  Eventually Una may prove to be a better choice for those wanting to run a mobile friendly adult site as you'd not have to submit your site to Apple or Google as you do for the native apps.

First of all, UNA is NOT a mobile phone platform, I know because I have worked with UNA.  Now, it might be better in some ways to use on a phone but it is not a mobile platform.

I have enjoyed reading these post the past couple weeks... I'm starting to assume we all have adult sites!!! lol go figure...

Dolphin actually works really really really well on mobile devices after you rewrite a whole sh*t ton of the css and make some core modification to how things display.

Wrote some about this little more than 2 years ago > https://www.boonex.com/forums/topic/hiding-page-blocks-on-mobile-devices-.htm

-really have expanded on all that as well... i should do a mobile af write up

Basically my site works way better on mobile devices than desktops...

***photos main page with fixed nav menu closed and open***

 [content and navbar logo blurred] images show in 3x4 responsive grid and only text overlay is the uploaders username. very clean looking :)

actually, the video home page, users albums, etc, looks about the same too...

Very good.

hi @arkane220. My site is community based but I do maintain an adult site for a silent license holder. a poll on his site indicates that 15% of members use mobile phones, thus it's essential that we maintain a site which is PC friendly. Despite this, the 15% are very vocal.

I'm very interested in your comments and also impressed with your results, but what impact does all this have on PC and laptop users? Will they suffer to make the minority in our case, happy?

I'd love to see PC screenshots of the corresponding pages if you can find time. Also, has the coding you prepared in your link changed much since then?

I'm not sure, but I think Oxwall had both a mobile and PC option as a template in their script and I guess that's all you need. By selecting one or the other a different set of CSS gets triggered. I see to recall clicking the mobile option once and all hell broke loose.

Rather than hijacking this thread, it would be great if you could start a new one and develop your ideas a bit more there. Rightly or wrongly, I believe Dolphin can be rejuvenated if (a) there were more meaningful tutorials like yours; (b) more code snippets that didn't disappear down the abyss and (c) the third party developers all contributed at least one module in 10 as a freebie. Those modules may well be code hacks and to see what I mean, just look at some of the excellent free stuff Anton provides.

The whole place is tired and needs an urgent face-lift.

 Could u tell how to implement the menu and other features on mobile devices?

@johnk42 - basically the only difference between desktop and mobile how blocks / content show or hide... no impact on either users, almost looks like 2 different pages, i will explain all that in a post...  here in the U.S. I have around 80-90% mobile users at any given time, sometimes even 100% mobile users, per the google analytics... the codes

@sureandhraindia - my fix nav menu is actually hard coded. on mobile, everything from the sub menu up gets 'removed' and only the fix nav menus displays... we tired dozens of different ways to do this but hard coding it was the easiest without breaking dolphin. (will post this as well)

anyhow, I will put together a guide and files in the next few days covering how to make dolphin mobile friendly.

What are your thoughts about creating a different template just for the phone so that all users can get all the benefits? Looking at the code in your two year old post, I can't see why it can't be done.

You do realise that you would be famous!

 Thanks for reply.

Seems u made alt style template submenu with less items. Hope it is responsive.

When someone hijacks a thread or posts off topic, it makes it very difficult for future users to find things.Can we pleeeasssse start a new thread for this. It's a great concept that a lot of people may want to use. Arcane220's last ovvering 2 years ago had over 200 downloads so obviously people want this.

Earlier boonex team members used to reply on forum once in week. Leonids used to be frequent. But, I haven't seen them recent days.

Agreed! I read every post, but I can't recall there being more than two "team" messages in the past several weeks. It I recall, one from Nathan and one from Alex.

I think we may be on the Costa Concordia and are here to fend for ourselves.

Admittedly I haven't been in the forums very much lately. But BoonEx is actively handling support emails, and I'm also on there from time to time. If you have a license, I would recommend opening a ticket: https://www.boonex.com/help/contact

Nathan, I think you missed the point, this is not about getting support for a particular problem.  It is about Boonex listening to the member's concern.  Hey, why don't you ask Andrew if we can really fork Dolphin and remove all Boonex stuff, including bx_ BX_ DOL, dol, dolphin, as well as disconnecting it from the Boonex licensing server and making it truly open source.  Then Boonex can spend all their time on UNA as they appear to be doing.

I think we can confidently say that Dolphin, this forum and possibly Boonex are all  D E A D.

 Here we have a wiz-bang script which boasts of powering more than 300,000 web communities and social niche networks and over 150,000 web-masters (who) collaborate and help each other grow.

These statements actually appear on the Boonex home page, yet this forum struggles to get 10 posts a week from an estimated 30 members.

In all honesty, a forum that doesn't see a single post in 48 hours, can hardly be a place where over 150,000 web-masters collaborate and help each other grow.

I see about ten people helping. I wonder where the other 149,990 are hiding?

Boonex isn't dead; Dolphin possibly is.  All attention from Boonex is on UNA; visit http://una.io to see.  They are banking on UNA and their support packages and hosting packages of UNA which you can see when you visit the web site.  There was some talk that Dolphin would eventually be moved  in licensing to the UNA model.  Looking at GitHub I do see some, a slight amount, of attention to Dolphin but it is very slight.  Also, any improvements to Dolphin won't come until LEAP is released.

 I'm just here for the free coffee and donuts ...

There is free coffee and doughnuts?  Where?  

 Sorry, I think I took the last ones ... but I don't mind sharing with the class. 

Over the last couple of years, UNA development picked up pace and Dolphin slowed down a lot. Initially, we meant to produce a new “version” of Dolphin and even called it Dolphin 8 and Dolphin U, etc. Yet, the development had to deviate from the old Dolphin so much that there was no way we could offer a direct upgrade path. Flash-based modules like Chat and Messenger had to be rebuilt entirely, URL structure changed, UX builders and Forms builders changed, support for multiple profiles also required an entirely different approach to Accounts authentication, etc. The new version amounted to a new platform, eventually named UNA.

For a while, UNA severely lacked in features compared to Dolphin, and we didn’t have enough modules to even transition the default-set of Dolphin site data to and UNA-based site. Most of the UNA development went into the core restructuring, and only the last year or so was focused on actual features and frontend.

Now we are approaching the point of feature parity between the default Dolphin and default UNA packages. The first Dolphin to UNA migration package is released, and many Dolphin users have switched their licenses to UNA already.

The biggest challenge is in the compatibility of the 3rd-party modules. Dolphin has a lot more of them than UNA, but most would be either incompatible or obsolete if you switch across. So, switching is still not (and never will be) an easy decision. We realise that only too well and we keep discussing various options. In this message, I’ll share some decisions we’ve made and the context for why we choose to make them.

We are a small team, and ideally, we should focus on one platform, one demo/sample site and one support site (powered by the same platform) to provide the best possible product and service.

The most important consideration is that our mission was always to “unite people”, not “sell as many licenses as we can”. In that, we are open to the possibility of working with whatever software best suits the mission. UNA was created as an inclusive framework, where integrated software can be used as part of the site (like, say, RocketChat app for UNA) or even comprise most of the site functionality. We anticipate and plan gradual inclusion of inclusion of Dolphin as part of the UNA ecosystem.

Decisions & Timeline

The following steps are most likely to happen in the order presented. We will are open for suggestions eager to adjust the plan if circumstances change, but the current outlook looks like so:

• UNA 9 Final release (early October) is the current priority with the aim to provide functionality matching Dolphin and SSO between Dolphin and UNA to allow for simultaneous operation. RC10 and RC11 will be released before the final. UNA 9 will include most of the apps needed to import Dolphin data and will come with iOS and Android apps based on ReactNative. Dolphin data migration app for UNA is also available and will be updated alongside with both platforms.

• Dolphin X1 Solution. The Dolphin X1 is planned to be an UNA-powered package. In effect it is a stock UNA with all PowerApps included and available as a single install with instructions on how to configure it to work the same way as ONLINE.ME (reference site). It will come as a free download with an option to subscribe for automatic updates via UNA.IO Professional plan. Dolphin X1 will be focused on social networking and other upcoming solutions will be targeting other types of community sites (dating, educational, business, etc).

• All current holders of Dolphin Permanent license get free lifetime access to the UNA Professional plan. This makes permanent Dolphin licenses a really good value proposition, but we do plan to stop selling them around mid-September. All current Dolphin license and hosting plans subscribers will be transitioned to equivalent or higher-value UNA Plans to grandfather all previous commitments.

We will continue maintaining the Dolphin Pro 7.x development, support forum and services updates while there is demand for it and while we have outstanding obligations with paying customers. Our co-licensing and security obligations do not permit us to release Dolphin Pro under MIT license as it is now, but we will continue to evaluate this option.

So there you have it folks, Boonex is going to kill Dolphin.  Yes, you have to read between all the crap but the final thing is that Dolphin is dead.

OK Andrew, remove the co-licensing; which I think is the File Manager, and let us have Dolphin.  As for the security obligations, I think that is just BS.  There is now no reason for developers to work on modules for Dolphin because there won't be a future to sell them.  I am betting you figure they will move over to UNA but why should they?  UNA is a shitty platform, you can dress it up all you want but it is a shitty platform; I have used it, had to work with it, and it is a shitty platform. What is to say that UNA won't be a wash up and Boonex will just fold up altogether?

Hey folks, remember when Andrew said that they were working on neat things in UNA that would then be added to Dolphin?  I guess that is out the window.  Boonex could have took the time and resources spent on the UNA crap and worked on Dolphin, improving what is already a great platform.

And by the way, UNA started as Dolphin 8 with that crappy admin panel.  Due to business restructuring, Dolphin 8 ended up just sitting for years and years.  Be honest Andrew.

By the way Andrew, are you going to put up a notice on the Boonex.com front page that development of Dolphin is going to end and that licences won't be sold starting in September or are you going to just let people continue to invest in Dolphin unaware?  I hope your business ethics is good enough to inform the public at large.

Wonderful.

I just wasted 4 months developing a New and drastically improved version of Deanos Tools. I was going to be done with that in a couple more weeks. Guess i should not bother now.

Maybe i will just start work on my own CMS like i wanted to.

 Please let me know when that is available as I'm certain *your* CMS will work as it should. 

BTW: In the interim, I would be glad to buy your updated block tools module should you choose to finish it. 

Please continue with it Deano.  Just because Boonex is focusing on UNA doesn't mean that some of the thousands of people using Dolphin are going to quit.  If it was a module for pay then you can still make some money from it.  I am NOT moving to UNA.  I will stay with Dolphin even if 7.3.5 is the last release.  There are countless others that have invested too much that are not moving either.

I can tell you, there are a whole bunch of folks that wanted your Deano's Tools.  If you are close to finishing it, please do and put it on the market.

Deanos Tools was my very popular FREE module.

It will still be free, but reworked to allow me to make some money.

1) The previous version of my tools had ads at the bottom that i ran for myself advertising my own modules. This has been redesigned to allow me to sell ad space to other developers to advertise their products. Now that dolphin may be dying, this may not be as useful as i was hoping.

2) Also redesigned to allow those that want to shut off the ads can purchase a license to do so.

3) All of the individual tools within Deanos Tools are now designed as plugins. This feature is not yet finished, but when it is, it will allow other developers to easily develop plugins for Deanos Tools.

The whole goal of all of this work i am doing with ads, an ad server, license server and other tools i plan on offering on my website was to be able to generate a decent steady income to allow me to get back into module development full time and quit my current job. But i looks like this may not do as well as i had hoped.

Oh, and i also will be staying at D7.3.5 if it is the last version until i finally develop my own replacement for it.

I will rip out the licensing if i must to keep it working if they should shut those servers down.

We have been trying to push Boonex to fully release Dolphin.  The co-licence is easy enough to break and Andrew knows that.  I am guessing it is the file manager agreement he made with Moxie.  I don't know of any other licence agreement he made.  I think Andrew wants to keep Dolphin around just in case UNA is a big flop.

wow!

Kinda sad :/

Thank you for your amazing support and passion! I do not pretend to know the right answer and definitely don’t want upset the most loyal and invested users. 

I explained that supporting 2 (actually 3 with BoonEx.com) platforms is challenging indeed and we have to find the way to merge everything, but one thing we value more than anything is the fact that Boonex and Dolphin have been in business for 18 years, full time. We’d like our clients to rely on the prospect of at least another 18 years of continued availability and continuity. 

Dolphin will be MIT-licenses eventually, but not to be “given away”. I don’t believe that just passing over the development responsibility is something our clients would expect from us. When I talk about colicensing I mean not only moxiemanager but also agency partneships, hosting partnerships, continued updates in auto-installers, and obligations to clients relying on BoonEx-reviewed updates. 

Note that even now nothing is stopping developers from making pull requests and committing improvements for review to Dolphin repo. Licensing under MIT will only make it possible to remove “Powered by” badge without a Paid license. 

Anyway, apart from all that we had a certain organisational contingency dragging for the last 2 years, which should finally unfold this month, preventing us from making serious chnages in Boonex business. I will be posting about it later this mont, whichever way it resolves. 

I appreciate your feedback very much And assure you that we have very open mind about what needs to be done as long as it is in the best interest of the Boonex community. 

I agree with Geek Girl. Una is badly thought out and really already HAS BEEN compared to its most famous competitors. Dolphin was a good product that has evolved badly. The templates are disastrous and heavy. We should simply rethink the ergonomics of the Dolphin so that everything becomes coherent. We must also look at competitors and adapt. 10 years ago, Boonex had a team. Where is she today? Do you have the ability to raise? Forget UNA, I tested from all angles. It is badly catastrophic and unusable by serious professionals. Save and restart the Dolphin while it's possible. Otherwise, the castle will collapse. We believe in you ... But choose clear and achievable challenges.

Also test the ADDONS that are sold. It is not enough to flood the store to have good products. Currently, some sell products full of bugs and it is abnormal. Just look at the support forums to understand it. We stopped our purchases for more than 2 years. Except for AntonLV and some other serious ... Courage, we capitalize on you.

The best is the enemy of good. Stay simple and effective.