Thinking of moving to Dolphin

I currently run 4 phpBB forums, each one with a focus in 4 local communities around the world. With new communities ready to pop-up in other cities, the overhead of managing 4+ different forums is pretty big - plus, I'm looking to benefit from some modern social-networking aspects and to more tightly-integrate my groups.

I'm currently considering merging the 4 groups together into a single Dolphin community, which will then make it easier to expand and grow. I've installed the Dolphin trial and am currently evaulating it, but I'm hoping somebody could provide some guidance on how much "configuration" can be done to achieve what I want, and how much "customisation"

My (basic) requirements:

- Each regional group has its own section, with its own forum consisting of 10-15 sub-forums

- Half of the sub-forums are 'public' (anyone can join the group and see them) and half are 'private' (members of the group need to be given permission to see them)

- Each regional group has its own administrator, who manages the public/private forums and access to them

- In addition to forums, each region will have an event calendar (bonus: if I can tie events to forum posts somehow), and also static pages that contain information relating to the group (eg, details of regular meetups and other resources for the region)

- I will need some way to import data from my existing phpBB forums into these forums

- In addition to regional group forums, I will also have new General Interest groups/forums. Each of these groups will be 'public' and anyone who joins the group can post/write in the forum for that group

- Each user will have a default group tied to their location. When they login, they will be presented with this group

- We need a class of user that is a "Registered company".

- Registered Companies can create events in any regional group, but it must be flagged as a commercial event in the calendar

- Ability to 'like' posts, or to 'tag' other users in a post/comments.

I have some more, but those are the basic requirements I have and would be interested in knowing how I would implement them using Dolphin. I don't need someone to build this for me, but some pointers in the right direction would be a huge help. Coming from a phpBB background, I'm currently trying to figure out the object and permission model within Dolphin.

Also, if anyone has a guide to the 36 default modules, that would be a huge help. I want to keep things 'minimalist', but I can't really tell which modules do what, so I'm going to have to install them 1 by 1 and see what happens.

Thank you!

Much of what you want can be done out of the box. What cant be done can either be achieved with the addition of some of the extra group modules availiable in the market. But some will need to be custom created or altered.

It can be done though, and should not be too dificult if you can find the right coder to hire. Finding the right dolphin coder is a bit of a mine field though.

NAthan : )

Sounds good. Finding a coder doesn't phase me too much - worst case I can do it myself.

The main problem I'm seeing out of the box is that the group structure only supports a single forum. How do I go about adding multiple forums for a group? Or is that a place to start with my customisation?

Also, any idea where I can find a good description of the 36 default modules?

You can also poke around the demo as a user and as an admin.. links and passwords are on this page:

http://www.boonex.com/demo

http://www.boonex.com/features

Do you really need someone to explain what a chat module does?

The Dolphin forum is not going to match the phpBB forums.  The access for posting is going to have to be custom coded in.  As for groups, the group forum works through the standard forum using an integration that can be found if you look in the forum code.  It uses the forum code to handle the group forum, it is not completely separate.  You would need to try to clone the group forum in some way to have more than one group forum.  You might want to look and see if there are socialisation mods for phpBB instead of trying to get Dolphin to work for what you have outlined.

You'll be regret moving to Dolphin, unless you know everything and plan to do everything, or have the money to pay for everything. 

The Dolphin community is as not helpful as the phpBB3 community where they can help you resolve any problem/error. With Dolphin you have to pay for every fricking single modifications, your questions will be left unanswered 90% of the time. 

I paid for the license and now the code has stopped working but they refused to troubleshoot/support.