Notice! Upgrading to 7.4.x - Third Party Modules

Since there is no red flashing message on the upgrade pages; be warned that if you attempt to upgrade to Dolphin 7.4.x and you have third party modules that have not been upgraded to work with 7.4.x, they WILL NOT WORK!  You have been warned; upgrade at your own risk if you have third party modules that are not stated to be compatible with Dolphin 7.4.x.

And one more thing, the Dolphin 7.4.x upgrades will most likely wipe out any custom code you have added as well as any code changes needed for third party modules to work.  You have been warned!

How many times do we need to say this? It's obvious that a lot of people don't read the forums, but make a post thinking they're asking something completely new. 

Over and over Boonex was asked by its users to upgrade to PHP7, but in their unfathomable wisdom they were far too focused on UNA.  So what did they do? They told everyone Dolphin had a life expectancy of five years, but made a quick-fix upgrade to PHP 7 to appease the people who had forked out up to $600. What they clearly forgot was the developers who had designed hundreds of modules that actually helped make Dolphin the great product that it is.

It isn't an impossible task to upgrade the modules, but who in the blazes would bother when they know Dolphin is headed for the scrap heap?

Blame Boonex, don't blame the third party module developers. This whole mess is due to an individual who owns this script and this site but rarely pokes his head above the cloud to justify his actions or eat a slice of humble pie.

I don't live far from him and I've previously offered to have a one-on-one debate to sort this mess out. My offer still stands because I believe a lot of people are entitled to a little more respect and an lot more cooperation than they're currently getting. That also includes the third party developers who I would vigorously support.

If it wasn't for LeonidS and AlexT, we'd be talking to a brick wall. Thanks to both of you.

I was set to upgrade a site today from 7.3.5. all the way (which is necessary) to 7.4.2.  Before I started; wisely I may add, I poked into the modules directory and saw a large number of third party modules.  So I stopped what I was doing and sent emails to the client.  They had attempted the upgrade but ran into issues; most likely from the third party modules.  My advice is to just stay with 7.3.5 and if your hosting is yelling about moving to PHP 7, find a different host or if they offer, pay the fee to stay with PHP 5.6.x

So it prompted me to come back here to the forum and start this thread hoping it may save someone some pain.

Or set up a discord server and let have a civil debate; everyone being respectful.  I think most of us are reasonable, intelligent people but we get frustrated by the lack of response from Andrew.  

One of the problems is that the "secret team" are gone that use to talk to Andrew.  There was a really big mess created by one of the new Dolphin releases; see: https://www.boonex.com/forums/topic/Bring-back-First-name-Last-name.htm It took a lot of yelling at Boonex before they fixed the mess.  People upgraded and bam, full names were being shown on sties; a privacy nightmare for site owners.  Dolphin 7.4.0, 7.4.1, and 7.4.2 need to be pulled and the fixes and upgrades rolled back into one Dolphin 7.4.0 beta to address this current mess.  The problem is that there is not a group now that has the ability to push Boonex/Andrew to do this.

That's interesting because one of my sites insists on first/last names. We get around it by asking people to use fictitious names as long as it isn't Micky Mouse. On some sites genuine first/last names are fine and on others they're not. I get around it with a field that asks for full name and another that asks for preferred name.

But I hear what you say - Shades of Oxwall.

You can talk your head off, but if the major players (sex site purveyors) don't want it, then forget it!

I'm still thinking - working on a discord style site but my current commitments are slowing me down somewhat.

I think it was very unprofessional for the Boonex team to release Dolphin 7.4 knowing that the release made changes that would break almost all third party modules.  The professional way would have been to announce that Dolphin 7.4 was completed, announced that developers would need to make changes to their modules; outlining what had been changed in Dolphin and what would have been needed to make third party modules compatible.  Instead, it took Deano having to come into the forum and asking Boonex what they did.  There was no way that developers could have installed the beta and tested all their modules, made the required changes, tested again from the time that Dolphin 7.4 beta was released to the time that Dolphin 7.4 final was released.  Dolphin 7.4 should have stayed in beta for at least a month so that all testing could have been done.

We then saw two quick patch releases in short order.  Boonex could clean up this mess considering that most sites cannot upgrade anyway until the modules they are using are upgraded or replaced.  So there is no reason that Boonex could not clean up the Dolphin 7.4 rlease.

Intentionally break third party module?

And why new install template detection don't work

New Site

Some of the members here want to use Dolphin Pro they loved it.

Especially those who already invested a lot.

I correctly followed instructions and updated my dolphin platform from 7.3.5 to 7.4.0, from 7.4.0 to 7.4.1 and from 7.4.1 to 7.4.2

I obtained two types of HTTP ERROR 500 after Dolphin Updrade:

- on some standard pages, for example member.php for any authenticated user (like Admin)

- as you said, all my Modzzz modules was not manageable by the Admin panel (Admin Notifier, Announcements, Dolphin Alerts , Ultimate Notifier). 

Instead 7.4.x solved perfectly my reCaptcha bug (reCAPTCHA is not displayed and after few seconds appears the message "Could not connect to the reCAPTCHA service. Please check your internet connection and reload to get a reCAPTCHA challenge.")

...but now I had to roll back from backup to my old 7.3.5  

I need to study changelog trying to understand what 7.4.2 resolved on my reCaptcha v2 problem.

Andrea

@ITET_PERUGIA - Admin Notifier, Announcements, Dolphin Alerts, Ultimate Notifier are all updated to Dolphin 7.2 now.

Sorry, I meant ".... upgraded to Dolphin 7.4.2 now"

This is a very good news! 

As you remember, in 2016 you modified your "Ultimate Notifier" (v.2.0.9) and "Dolphin Alerts" (2.0.3) modules for our needs. So, do these new versions contains this modified code for all? If so, I will be very happy. :)

@ITET_PERUGIA - If you apply the upgrade to your customized versions you will lose the customizations that were done. Clients that have customized versions of my modules will have to arrange with me to have those upgrades done for a small fee.  

With the exception of one or two modules, my entire portfolio is now updated for Dolphin 7.4.2.

Thanks Modzzz, much appreciated that you have done the work to update your modules for the current Dolphin when Dolphin is in such limbo.