New to Dolphin, Comparing with Drupal

I've done a couple brief searches here but it's tough to identify information here based on date/freshness.

I've used Drupal for some years but am frustrated with some key issues:

• Each version is subject to breaks in the core that may never get fixed. It's tough to decide whether to wait, code, look for a free patch, or commission someone to write a patch.
• Similarly, with each new version some number of modules tend to fall off the list as unsupported. As with a lot of FOSS, the authors may not have the time or interest in providing updates, and no one else wants to maintain someone else's code, for free or for fee.
• With each new release I get an education on how the platform works, and with each major release core developers radically change the internals. For me the CMS is a platform I'm using to support other businesses - I'm not someone who sends all of my time with this package itself. So while I try to do my due diligence to understand the software I'm using, I simply can't continue to go through a complete re-education every couple of years - and then deal with the above issues too.
• While Drupal has hundeds of modules, many of them are simply rubbish. Developers try to force Drupal to do everything like wiki, forum, blog, etc when complex, standard, well-developed packages like MediaWiki, phpBB, and WordPress are already out there. Drupal tries to be a blog to compete with WordPress and WordPress tries to be a CMS to compete with Drupal. I wish they'd each recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and those of alternative offerings, and work on integration to get the best of all worlds, rather than competing to achieve mutual states of mediocrity.
• Finally, finding information on Drupal is extremely difficult. You can search through forum postings for days and not find the info you need. You go through pages of data that's related to prior releases and no longer valid for the current. Once again, maintaining the environment requires a huge investment of time, or simple acceptance of low-quality and occasionally changing basic features - that of course doesn't work well with a user community.

Now, looking into Dolphin I'd like to understand how people feel  it compares in these related areas.

• Are there chronic issues hanging over from one release to the next?
• I have read that the code is poor and there a lot of bugs. Is that old data or does it still apply?
• Does Dolphin integrate with other packages as stated above, or like Drupal is Dolphin trying to be the new core platform on which everything else should now be based?
• What's the quality of modules like in the core and from the community compared to Drupal? I know that's highly subjective, but if you know Drupal you can make some comparisons.
• Do you feel like you need to accept mediocrity in some areas because you're super happy in others? Are you making a lot of those compromises?
• Can you comment on the learning curve of Dolphin compared to Drupal? Is information easy to find and/or is the code easy to read and intuitive to follow?

I'm sure I could ask more but answers to those questions I think I'd have a much better idea of what to expect.

Sincere thanks for your time.

I don't know if you would want my two cents.  I'm pretty much a novice and only know how to create a more general website adding photos, description and shopping carts to my site enough to actually sell a product.  I don't do anything fancy like the other websites with extravagant graphics and the works.  I want my customers there to buy and leave, they aren't there to look at graphics which of course bogs down their computers.  And that's as far as my expertise ends.

I've tried the bulletin boards like phpbb and vbulletin boards supplied by godaddy and got sick of them as I was getting too much spam from china and other countries and gave up till I came across dolphin.  This is my first advanced social networking site I've worked on ever.  Never worked with databases and anything else that is associated with dolphin.  I looked over several other free social networking software and found that dolphin was the more appropriate choice and far out way the others.   I like it so much that someday in the future when I get quite a bit of members I will start paying for it, right now it's impossible.  Plus I'm working out the kinks and playing with it.

I can tell you this, I don't know what your knowledge is if you are an expert or novice.  But from my point of view as being a novice.  I find that I was getting some helpful information from everyone and I was getting information from searching for it in the forum and it was quite easy.  I also found a tutorial online and in the forum somewhere that was helpful as well.  There is some tinkering you have to do with it.  I'm using godaddy and that is just fine for now.  No issues yet.  Not sure if my info was helpful but wanted to share my experiences.

I'm looking forward to reading responses to your questions.  Unfortunately I don't think I have enough experience with both Drupal and Dolphin to answer them.

I learned enough about Drupal 6 in 2009-2010 to build three websites... successfully used for business.  Fortunately I never had to deal with a major version upgrade to v7.  For me, the biggest headache was customizing each site's theme/template to meet the requirements of the site owner.  Drupal has a huge amount of instructional media to help site developers and programmers... Dolphin has comparatively very little, making learning it more challenging.

After 6 months of learning about Dolphin by trial and error, my impression is *mostly* good.  I should mention that I've yet to launch a Dolphin website (two under development) so my knowledge is limited.  

There are not nearly as many modules (compared to Drupal) nor anywhere near as many developers... though in some ways that could be a good thing.  Of course Drupal mod are mostly free and Dolphin mods are mostly NOT free.  I certainly don't mind paying a reasonable fee for a well-constructed module... if there's going to be reasonable support provided for bug fixes.  So far, sometimes that's happened and sometimes it hasn't.  I'd be happy to share my opinion regarding which developers are good.

Just as you would look to see if the Drupal module developer has been active with maintaining and improving his module(s)... you will also need to research each Dolphin developer to ensure they support their work.  

While I never changed core files in Drupal, I have made many changes to the Dolphin core files while following some developer's installation instructions.  Since the Dolphin core files not "protected", as they are in Drupal, I suspect all Dolphin version upgrades will be potentially ugly for heavily customized sites.

I've purchased over 100 modules so far, mostly a few good developers.  Most of them install and uninstall easily... never touching the core files.  Most of them are very intuitive to setup and maintain... a few of them have many options and it's a bit of a guessing game as to what each one does until you experiment with them.  Unfortunately it's unusual for developers to provide a detailed guide for their feature-rich modules... but some do and they refer to the guide in their module descriptions.

Finally, regarding "Do you feel like you need to accept mediocrity in some areas"... yes, the most obvious one is the "Orca" Forum which is very 'basic' compared to many popular open source free Forum packages... and my understanding is the Orca Forum cannot be easily replaced with something better.  As far as I know Orca is owned by BoonEx and has not had a serious upgrade in years.

Sincere thanks @phantomusa2012 and @epaulo. I'm also hoping to see more comments from those who have live sites running. I want to give Dolphin a fair opportunity to position properly and competitively.

So far I'm finding myself unimpressed. If I'm going to deal with issues I might as well deal with them in a free environment that has more eyes on it and more options. Recent forum postings show people losing their work and other significant issues. As a developer (over 30 years of professional programming) I understand that there are release-specific issues that sometimes get a lot of attention, they're fixed, and everyone moves on. But if Dolphin isn't any less subject to such things than other platforms, what's the motivation to use this package? From what I'm reading so far, many people choose Dolphin because it seems simple and attractive enough, has the "social networking" buzzword that is familiar to Facebook fans, and they generally aren't familiar with other tools. That's not a compelling fan base for those who are familiar with other tools.

I'm thinking that I'm missing a core concept, which is the difference between Dolphin as a platform for social networking, and Drupal as a general purpose content management system. Is this a real distinguishing feature? Does Dolphin try to be a CMS like the WordPress blog does? Should I focus on the social networking aspects of Dophin and not expect it to be as broad in scope as Drupal (or Joomla, or Mambo...)?

Looking forward to more comments. Thanks again!

I'm looking for basically a social networking like facebook.  But  I wanted more and drupal and all those other sites.  Just didn't have what dolphin has.  Plus, dolphin keeps getting better and better and better.

Dolphin has all the features that my new members seem to like that facebook doesn't.  Blogs, forums, groups (although facebook does but my site is design for one particular group of people) Polls, chats, embedding youtube vids, spy feature, bulletin boards and the list goes on. 

This is why I will be purchasing this product in the near future.  As soon as I can get enough members and get the funds rolling in.  This company is going to start earning my business.  I'm not bias I just think that they work so hard at what they do here and offering a free product is going above and beyond the call of duty.

If you want though, you can install dolphin in one of your directories test drive it have a few people sign up play with the features for a few months like i did, well in my case 7 months.  You don't have to get rid of drupal.  Then you can decide, if you don't like it delete the directory.

I don't know just my point of view.

Bill

There are so many social networking sites today and [Link removed] is one of them its free and Social+Business site.The World most visited Business,
Entertainment, Professional portal and Social Networking site. Find
Business Partner, Investor, Franchise quickly, get in touch with
Friends, Messaging, Blogging, Sharing Photo, Forum, Business Ideas,
Arts, Video and lots more

 No offense.  But the break down of what you said was unclear.

 Since a mod removed the link it's a safe bet he was a spammer.

Thx to you CaptainStarbuck!

I have developed a location based social network AND i am currently writing my master thesis about it.
The main focus in this thesis is: how to build it.

You have no idea how you helped me with your questions. You spoke about all urgent points and i will surely quote you there :)

The problem is: i still don´t know how to do it.

Can you give me a hint, how you would do that? My idea is close to this Its a german site, but i think you´ll get the point.

Have you some hints for me.... maybe? That would be great!

jekl

 Why is this thread such a magnet for spammers?

It's all the damm key words in the first post.

Dolphin, Drupal, Wordpress, FOSS, CMS, phpBB, Mediawiki, wiki, forum, blog, ect. The first post is loaded with them.


Just a guess.

Hey Guys! Thank you so much for your helpful answers!

What a warm welcome to the forum!

You consider my post as spam....why? Because i did not want to explain all the functions of the site that is explained with one link?

The site is NOT mine and i am really interested in these informations...

No, because your first post on the Boonex/Dolphin forum contained a link to a site that has nothing to do with Boonex/Dolphin.

I know what you mean. But thats the way i came here.

I developed something that no cms can do out-of-the-box. I searched and found dolphin as the piece of software that came the most close to the base of this idea. but its still very complicated to fit it to my needs.

i am not a programmer, so i asked: "guys, do you have a hint how to fit it to my needs, or is there maybe an even better solution?"

so i registered and postet this. at least in a thread that is already dicussing the main topic already...

so...

To answer your questions personal opinion only:

• Are there chronic issues hanging over from one release to the next?

• I have read that the code is poor and there a lot of bugs. Is that old data or does it still apply?

• Does Dolphin integrate with other packages as stated above, or like Drupal is Dolphin trying to be the new core platform on which everything else should now be based?

• What's the quality of modules like in the core and from the community compared to Drupal? I know that'shighly subjective, but if you know Drupal you can make some comparisons.

• Do you feel like you need to accept mediocrity in some areas because you're super happy in others? Are you making a lot of those compromises?

• Can you comment on the learning curve of Dolphin compared to Drupal? Is information easy to find and/or is the code easy to read and intuitive to follow?

 Dolphin if you get used to it is easy and made your learning fun. I'm sorry I cant comment much on Drupal I haven't touched its core yet. 

Short post for now.

I feel Dolphin is more 'Pay to Play' then Drupal. You will be spending money in the market for things that may be free for Drupal.

For somethings Dolphin is MUCH easier then Drupal but still lacks basic features. As an example try just setting up a Profile page in Drupal and change the layout, then setup a page listing members with a link to there profile. Once you have that try to do member photo albums linked to there profiles. Then try and do some basic privacy settings like view by friends only. Good luck...

I got so angry dealing with dolphin and the trouble I'm having finding just one programer that isn't full of sh1t that I tried using Drupal. After three days I decided it would not be practical and it would be better for me to expand my php skills and code dolphin changes myself.

There are some safe paved paths for dolphin with stuff built in to dolphin and with quality modifications from the market. Once you stray off that path knowingly or unknowingly things can get frustrating and costly in time / money real fast.