I literally found Dolphin by accident so I am very new to this but it has gotten my attention. I own a company called the Speed Sports Network that is home to various motorsports related websites and other forms of media. The primary site for us is www.SpeedNews4U.com which is running on Joomla 1.0.15 and we are in the process of building a community based/social network site that will house all the interactive member base and activities. We will be moving our forums, other communications, and adding various other things that will include free email accounts, fantasy racing games, ability to have individual members create groups for fan clubs (and other misc groups where they will have private forums for those groups, calendars for meet and greets, etc). Also from this site, members will be able to contribute to the Fan Blog which is then pulled via RSS feed to the news site (SpeedNews4U). Members will also be able to create their own "Speed Zone" or personal profile page which is fully customizable (like MySpace or other SN sites). There are a number of other functions that go along with this site. For the most part we had this all planned out and we already have memberships for commercial extensions for a number of Joomla and Community Builder production sites where anything we are not developing on our own we will purchase from them. I do development for a number of other sites so even if it is not used on that site it wouldn't be a waste. I say that because after seeing Dolphin, I am interested in knowing if this would be an option or alternative to using Joomla and Community Builder. The downside to going the route that is planned is that CB is fairly heavy and bulky especially after adding a lot of the plugins we have in our development plan. We already have this developed on one of our sites that is part of the Speed Sports Network called SimWizards.com which is a site based around online racing. Here our members are able to do a lot of what was listed above including their own pages called "PitStop Pages" (see one here www.simwizards.com/mypitstoppage/flash24) ***NOTE*** If you try to visit it tonight you will not be able to, we are transferring to a new server and had a hardware issue in the process, should be up and viewable by afternoon of 4/23 (knock on wood, lol).
Anyway... Here is the question/questions. Based on what I have said (and if you can view the last site I sent you to), can I accomplish the same thing with Dolphin. I have looked at other systems, CMS's etc over the last few months. I am very familiar with Joomla and have used it for many of the other sites I have built for my customers. I have also used it for the SimWizards site for the last three years and that was more or less the reason I was just staying with it. There are a lot of CMS's that come and go but this is one that had a lot of support and extensions. At the same time, I am always one to look at new things and try them if they offer;
1. Good Support
2. Lots of free and commercial extensions (modules components, bots, etc)
3. Time tested and proven successful
4. Flexible coding
5. Flexible templates/themes/skins (whatever they are known by in a particular system)
So, is Dolphin going to give me what I am looking for? When you finish the new version, how easy is it to upgrade or migrate everything to the new version? Honestly, for those that are familiar with Joomla, how does Dolphin compare to it when it comes to DB and system resources? How flexible is the core coding when it comes to customizing? What is the pricing like for the base system and extensions compared to what I am currently using (haven't even investigated that far into it yet, was just doing basic reading in here.) Last question, and it is probably answered elsewhere but just in case... What forums will directly bridge or integrate with this or do you have your own?
I have to say that even if I don't use it for the RacersZone.com site that is the one we are building now, It does look light weight enough just from what I see that the gears are turning and I have a few customers that this may work for (obviously need to get some more info but just from this site it seems like it would work for them.) Well I'm going to go do some more reading here on the site and probably answer some of my own questions. In the meantime if anyone can shout out some answers, advice and opinions I would appreciate it. Thanks again and thumbs up on what seems like a pretty good system here.
Rick
