Try UNA... it's better than Dolphin.

Why...?

+ Module Group - full function (photos, video, timeline, cover, etc.).

+ Module Organization (New module/Group clone) - you can clone this module for what you want: restaurants, club.. etc.

+ Template design is not great .. but profile, group unit cover is much better than Dolphin.

+ Better timeline.

+ Greater functionality.

+ Conversations (New module).

+ Better results for PageSpeed Insights.

+ Better support and update. I think.. Dolphin is dead.

- A more complex template system.

All modules can be downloaded from github.

I've been a member for nine years here ... and I did not pay attention to the UNA in the past.

I'm installing in my localhost UNA .. and it's better than Dolphin.

Try it...

As Boonex moves UNA; and that goes also for the RC, not all modules will be free.  Only a few core modules will be free, the rest you have to pay and some come with a monthly license fee.

I have looked and worked with UNA and I am not impressed.  Also, UNA will use third party servers that require an additional cost to install if you don't know anything about setting up servers, you either pay Boonex or you paid a third party developer.

UNA did not exist in the past so don't know where you are coming from there.  UNA is what Dolphin 8 was with all the horrible crap of Dolphin 8.

AndrewBon - from UNA.IO

Modules for free - Link

Just to confirm, yes, you can get all PowerApps for free from GitHub - all open source and MIT-licensed.

As for the payment plans - we basically charge for access to automatic updates and direct downloads from UNA.IO. That gives you the convenience of installing directly from Studio, without having to fiddle with files, installation, etc. We also offer a hosted plan, which includes both hosting and the PowerApps. 

As UNA Market evolves we do plan to introduce some form of commission for sales generated via the ecosystem, and eventually we'd like to focus on core platform more, allowing 3rtd party vendors to offer the full range of apps. Therefore, one can, and is welcome to take any of our Apps (including PowerApps), improve them, and put them out on UNA Market. We would only approve genuine and significant improvements over the stock apps, mind you, and the vendor would have to take care of the support. 

Here is one example of how crappy UNA is compared to Dolphin.  The Studio in UNA is horrible; it needs to be completely rewritten.  The Studio is a stinky pile of dog poo.  In Dolphin it is very easy and simple to change an email template.  I can't even find where you change any email templates in Studio.  The layout of Studio is horrible.  I found an edit button beside the email confirmation but that only allowed you to change the system name.  Maybe under developer?  No, not there.  I gave up looking; I will let the site owner find it or ask about it over at the great UNA.io.

 Perhaps you want to define what a power app is and list them.

Already did and old news...

I found it.  The idiot that coded Studio put it under Polyglot.  I guess they were too damn stupid to know what polyglot is.  The definition is: able to speak or write several languages; multilingual.  So that would be where you go to deal with differences languages on your site, not to edit bleeding email templates.  Studio is the worst pile of shit I have seen in an interface and I have seen some really bad ones.

Find way around in UNA Documentation

If not there, can't hurt to ask in UNA forum.

Ha, I heart you! It's true... bad place to be. Reckon it should be in Designer>Email Template.

mrBoon be like ... I changed the framework ... meh!?

or the long version ... why? 

of course, technically speaking Boonex/UNA is probably not best described as a framework.. but video remind me of our beloved captain ...ohoy!

geek_girl

Perhaps a bit of self-control and courtesy in the public space, without rudeness?

Thanks :)

 Same, GG you don't see me here hating D7. Why all the hate? My site has never been better.

1. The Email Templates in Studio sit in Polyglot because they're multi-lingual, and along with all other texts in UNA all the email texts are controlled via Polyglot. Email templates could be in Designer, but we decided to keep them close to the email texts, as since people tend to edit both texts and templates alongside. 

2. There is hardly anything to like or dislike about Studio. Perhaps it helps to understand that UNA is a lot more like a framework, while Dolphin is a CMS. Using various apps and Studio you can build your own Admin Dashboard as you see fit, in the frontend.

3. The configuration backend (the Studio) is designed to be module-agnostic. An "app" can be a module, template, language, plugin, integration, system tool, etc - anything. The Studio will present them all as a list of Apps in the Launcher and you can select your own favourites" and rearrange them. In the future, we will also offer a way to "folder" them. This approach is deliberate since UNA App can actually be hybrid "module-template" or "module-integration", etc. It's nigh-impossible to shelve them into specific categories. We do make some colour-coding cues for the default module app icons, but that's not a requirement. Internally, each app has two main "views" - a user-end interface, and Studio settings interface. Those are advised to use UNA system components (grids, forms, styles, etc), but that's not always possible and an app can actually bring its own full set of files, styles, methods, etc. 

With that in mind, the most realistic long-term way to move forward for Dolphin as a CMS would be the swap to UNA as a framework, with the frontend and admin features pre-configured to be as close to the old Dolphin as possible, and SSO integration for the legacy Dolphin extensions to maintain operation of the swaths of Dolphin modules in Boonex Market. Point is, that we are sticking to the Dolphin brand and will honour all our licensing commitments in the best way we can work out. I do believe that UNA is a superior platform - the whole point of making the changes was to address fundamental flaws that we couldn't fix in Dolphin without a disruptive update. Indeed, changing a framework is an unpopular decision, but you'd find that nearly every web-framework in the world had to do this at some stage. not just frameworks, but also major programming languages, web servers, transfer protocols, markups, OSs, computer architectures even - everything is changing. In some cases, it is possible to maintain some degree of reverse compatibility, and in other cases, vendors just have to do the best they can to help users transition, learn from mistakes and try to evolve more efficiently in the future.

If UNA is better, which I'm not so sure it is, isn't Boonex forums the place to correct the balance and make Dolphin better still?

All I can see is the powers that be are looking for ways to generate a regular income stream, with monthly payments, and still working out how to do it.

Aren't we all?

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Michel - Meta-Travel.com
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 Andrew, if that's the case and you're half sincere, how is it that you only appear on the Dophin forum on a very irregular basis to either defend, or promote UNA?

TravelNotes

---------------------

It all depends on what functionality your website needs.

As an example: I need the "Groups" module full functionality, users can add photos, videos, timeline, files, posts, albums, discussions.
What can users of Dolphin "Groups" do? Just leave comments, it's all!
You say, "The Groups module has been greatly improved by third-party."
I did: I bought Timeline for Groups from AndrewP ($ 40), I paid for modification ($ 35) = $ 75, and what I got in the final - nothing, non-functional, useless module.

All I can see is the powers that be are looking for ways to generate a regular income stream, with monthly payments, and still working out how to do it.
The "PowerApps" which you see in the Market from UNA Inc vendor can be purchased, but you only pay for updates and auto-downloads.

In defending UNA, I defend the future of Dolphin. If we could, we would have swapped Dolphin to UNA long time ago, but we want to look after people that started with Dolphin and so we issue maintenance updates. Another thing - UNA is still relatively "raw" in terms of how field-tested it is. We are only just getting feedback from active live sites that helps to improve the platform and have a version that we can confidently recommend as an "upgrade" for an existing Dolphin site. 

As a comparison metaphor, UNA is a like an electric car platform designed by a company that was building ICE cars for a long time. We know it will eventually be the only way forward, but first, it should have the adoption, infrastructure, field testing, and gradually some cross-over uses (with both techs running alongside). For some users the new tech is already a good solution, while for some the more traditional approach is more relevant. 

Hi Andrew,

So the idea was to go from what could be a disruptive update - to a completely new system (framework) that, to my knowledge, is not backward compatible or provide an upgrade path from the Dolphin CMS platform?

I have often considered, switching to UNA as I would not mind the cost that much but the idea of starting over with my site is ludicrous.

To quote Andrew from this link https://una.io/page/view-post?id=11

Hi gsicard !

There is a migration pathway. We even published a migration script/app and offer help with assisted migration. Direct "upgrade" is not possible - the systems are far too different and even in theory some of the Dolphin modules wouldn't match UNA's in any way due to a different architecture, functionality logic and URLs structure. 

What we are also working on is the way to run two systems simultaneously for a period of time, and even eventually support cross-platform data compatibility via https://github.com/google/data-transfer-project 

Andrew - how hard is it to create new modules for UNA vs how easy it is with Dolphin. Ability for HIPAA compliancy? Does it still need to be connected to boonex servers (is it possible to run standalone)? What about custom templates, can a developer create one easily by editing an existing one? Is it mobile friendly or is there a mobile friendly template?

OMGosh! Some of this can be confusing and hard to keep up with at times. Talks about Dolphin continuing or not, UNA taking over or not, either being upgraded or not. However one thing creators like myself need is migration. Easy Migration really needs to happen. I had a terrible experience just migrating Dolphin to Dolphin one time when my network was basically hijacked by a terrible 3rd party host. Now I have a great host (Zarconia), and UNA looks really promising. However, I need stability, my 40k users starting over would be terrible. I need the data, content, galleries, groups, blogs, etc.. I hope that will be smooth if that is the route I need to take in the future! So if you can clear that up, that would be great. 

Look, we've had a lot of investment made into UNA development over the last two years. largely due to the interest from corporate/institutional clients we've been able to finance development of quite a few modules, and made updates related to security, stability and overall UX. Thanks to licensing (MIT) and overall approach to deployment we can set up HIPAA and GDPR-ready sites (full compliance also requires operator practices and backend policies review). This traction makes UNA framework far more promising than anything we had before and the main goal for us is to find the best way to transition Dolphin-based sites to UNA, preferably preserving as much data as possible and maintaining some interoperability with legacy extensions developed by 3rd party providers. There are many options, and the end solution is likely to combine a number of approaches. That's what we are figuring out. The data migration tool is already available, but we also want to update the Dolphin.Pro itself to support SSO with UNA, pre-package UNA installation with the new build, and provide instructions on how to transition with best effect.

As for other questions...

- Making an app for UNA is technically somewhat more difficult than a typical Dolphin extension, but it is mostly due to a more stringent review process that we do on UNA Market. 

- One can grab any of our modules/apps and make a version of it, including templates - that's the point of the MIT license. 

- It is built to be fully responsive from the ground up. Mobile-friendly, touch-friendly and we're about to announce React-native apps for it. 

- Notifications are getting a massive overhaul, and Push works across all modules.

- There is a non-Flash messenger, based on NodeJS server.

- A new Sing-Page-App frontend layer is coming soon (ReactJS + SemanticUI).

- UNA works with PHP7 and supports remote storage (Amazon S3).

I'll probably get yelled at for posting here, but with Zarconia closing, I'm at a good place to move to UNA and test it. Where do I even start?  I have multiple ways I connect with my members, so although them starting over and re-adding content isn't ideal, I can do that.  Can I like sell back my Dolphin license and get some help moving over?  It's a lot all at once to sort out a new web host now and such.

You can transfer your Dolphin license to a Pro plan on UNA and we also offer a migration script to move data from srock Dolphin to UNA. Email us to support@una.io with your account details and general sotuation to start the process. 

I have worked with UNA from the time the Dolphin 8 code was dusted off and it was released as alpha.  It is a horrible platform; there are many long term platforms out there that are better, including Dolphin.

Personally, I don't think we can trust anything Andrew says; after all, he is pushing UNA for HIS benefit, not ours.  Of course all he is going to do is to sing UNA is great and the best thing ever.

 I'll post a more detailed statement shortly, but I'd like to specifically comment on this one here. 

Personally, I would have been MUCH better off continuing Dolphin. UNA has taken 5 years of active development, which was paid for without any guarantee of future returns, with only one basic goal in mind - we wanted to improve EVERY aspect of Dolphin, technical and organisational, without compromise of any kind. That meant coping with the cost, taking as much time as needed, forgoing reverse compatibility and introducing the most permissive licensing possible. We set out to build the best community framework and give it to webmasters in the most affordable, accessible and sustainable way. Personally, I would have been better off working in McDonald's. 

Now, switching everything over is even more risk. We have been in the red for some time, and the move will make it harder, but I believe it is worth it. Worth it, because we know Dolphin - all of its pros and cons. We also know UNA - every improvement that we made in Dolphin, taking time to plan it, try, test and then run it on production sites with clients we service directly. For some time Dolphin was a better option for some projects due to available 3rd party extensions and overall "turnkey" approach. In the last 3-4 months, however, we added so many improvements to UNA, that I can no longer genuinely recommend Dolphin for anyone starting a new site. If you already have it running and configured - sure, it's fine and we will service it. If, however, you're talking about a new idea - better start with UNA. 

And as for the platform criticism - we welcome constructive specific suggestions, which many people make and we address them very quickly. The "I don't like it" approach is not helping in any way. UNA is a "framework" by designs, with data model similar to that of Drupal, but with some ideas that suit a community site better, packaged with lots of modules, and linked to an open community. Everything else is a matter of incremental improvements. So far, my personal benefit in this is just the satisfaction of building the best community software I can imagine. 

I was always under the impression that UNA was started to test development ideas for improving Dolphin; with something of a Great Leap planned for the 'professional product'.

Now I sometimes get the feeling that users of Dolphin are being encouraged to go back to the schoolyard and play piggy back in the sand pit.

For those who have also invested lots of time and money on their pet projects, instead of making a better income flipping burgers, it can be insulting to be asked to pay more for seasoning on a reheated take-away along with something to wrap it in.

Now hearing that UNA is better from some evangelists, while not seeing it in the same light on testing, is not very helpful either.

Are people wishing to improve Dolphin really expected to start all over again and help scale another project by paying again for new modules that do the same thing but in a different way?

Many of us are already in the deep end and know how to swim, so don't feel comfortable being dragged over to the padding pool and being given a rubber ring.

There can be a very frustrated feeling of taking ten steps back, to move one step sideways. Yes, sideways; not even one step forward.

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Michel - Meta-Travel.com
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I think  Andrew's post was more for those who are at a point where they are considering starting over or just looking for something new. Maybe there are people with websites that have very little activity/members who may want to transfer over to something new. Who knows?

For example, someone like myself. Since 2007, I have attempted many sites using Dolphin and all of them ended up not being really successful. You get that first surge of users joining and then all the sudden.. nothing.. and about 95%+ end up never coming back. Spend $1000's on modules and custom work. What I heard from users was 'This is way too confusing', 'This is too difficult to navigate', 'It's not very user friendly at all' - just to name a few. Eventually, I just shut everything down, server and all. 

After a couple of years off, I decided to give it another try a few months ago for a new 'project', I bought a new server and began checking out the progress for both Dolphin and UNA. From what I could see, the primary focus regarding development was more on the UNA side versus Dolphin at the moment. This time my plan was to keep it simple and to the point while at the same time, being user/mobile friendly, and easy to navigate. I knew from previous mistakes that overwhelming a site with modules was a big 'No No' for me. So I went with UNA. So far, this has been working out well for me at this time. 

So in conclusion, UNA is not for everybody. Although it has quite a few of the same 'modules' as Dolphin, some people prefer to stay with Dolphin and that is perfectly OK. It really depends on which platform works best for your website and targeted audience. I have not heard any mention of discontinuing Dolphin or stopping the development of it so, for those who want to keep it, should keep it. 

FYI - This is my own personal opinion and experience and not a selling point. 

Nice post, Zarcon.

Cool, collective and well thought out. Respect.

Much of the fickle community syndrome has less to do with the software, but more about people running around testing 'new' things out and then forgetting all about them.

I signed up for FourSquare once, and never went back more than a couple of times. Warm Showers and Couch Surfing too. It's hard work to keep people's interest with so much else going on.

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Michel - Meta-Travel.com
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UNA sucks because it does not display my Vietnamese language correctly. 

Must be something wrong with setup. We have a live site in production - community.dacxi.com that has active Vietnamese groups and they use the language just fine. Come post your issue in UNA.IO discussion forum and we’ll help you sort it out. 

Just a reminder to all that this is a forum for the social networking script called Dolphin.

Constant posting about the virtues of any other script amounts to SPAM.

This thread is Spam and it doesn't belong on this forum.

GG... I'm speachless. I can't recognize you. So friendly and so kind person just out of the blue became so rude.

I feel for you guys, I really do.

Una, the good:

More secure. Hosted in the cloud.

Automatic updates. Minimal chance of server errors.

Supports modern web standards.

Has active development for security fixes.

Una, the bad:

No files, sounds or gallery modules.

No live chat without installing another server solution.

Changed names several times.

Many many bugs in every release proven byGit Hub.

Poorly thought out pricing structure.

Distracts from Dolphin Pro development for active sites.

Dolphin, the good:

Originally developed as Orca and Ray respectively by another company.

Before the removal of several mods, had the best third party extension system for any CMS online.

The oldest, most mature, most advanced platform of its kind.

Dolphin, the bad:

Many extensions are removed from the marketplace just because they are older.

Now hidden on boonex.com by default.

Still requires a new license to download instead of being free even though it is no longer recommended for new installs by the current management team.

Is still better than Una.

I specifically put this as a bad feature, because normally an upgrade is meant to entice someone. Dolphin's front end is extremely enticing to me. But neither back end for either system is particularly a welcome site. The front end for Dolphin is so much more extensible than either end of Una.

With the planned bridge for Dolphin and Una to work together, I only hope things will change. Should Dolphin somehow develop a multi instance feature, of a given module with different configurations, I will accept it as superior.

A few days ago I posted some comments on this and also on the pricing of UNA. For some weird reason someone deleted the post! I suppose it was accidental. In any case, I still do not understand that since there are so many complaints about UNA why they do not offer a free version for people to test, get used to it and support with their opinions. This would help an easy transition. Asking from people to pay and telling them that there will be no further updates on Dolphin and the support will end, I believe does not help not UNA not Dolphin. Let UNA develop well, solve issues etc and then ask for money and announce the end of Dolphin since you cannot support it anymore.

That is my humble opinion and I hope that it will not be deleted again! :-) 

I believe you can download UNA for free.

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Michel - Meta-Travel.com
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Are you in the correct thread? I recall the post and I also recall Andrew Boon writing to say there was a free version and the pricing as shown the the black bar above is for "enterprise" versions where Boonex assists with installation, servers, server support etc.

Thus @Travelnotes is correct. 

To find your post, go to "Partaken" in the first menu above the forum topic (above). That's all the forum posts you've "partaken" in. As there are only ten, it shouldn't be hard to find your post. It's unusual for Boonex to delete posts like that.

Good luck.

 - Theres is  a Files module for UNA. Music module is coming soon. Gallery is available in Albums module. 

- Live Chat in UNA is purposefully using NodeJS as it allows for better real-time messages exchange. It’s a defacto standard for all modern messengers. 

- we have released two updates with bug fixes only and will release two more. It becoems very stable. 

- UNA Pricing is simple - it’s free. You can download it from GitHub and never pay a cent. If you pay us $50 per month (no long term contract) you can have direct support via email and also can download PowerApps directly to your site via Studio, as well as updates. If you don’t pay, you can still do it all yourself via GitHub. 

- Dolphin was fully developed by us from the beginning. Orca and Ray are also our products. 

- only extensions that haven’t been updated to be compatibile with the latest version are hidden. Those confuse people and may vcreate serious issues if installed to a non-compatible instance. 

 Yes i can download Una for free and install it but i can't do anything without any license key

You should be able to get your key(s) here if you have created a free account at una.io.

https://una.io/page/kands-manage 

Bumpty, bump, bump bump.

Isn't there a forum for UNA problems. Maybe we Dolphin users should go there and fill it with questions that go unanswered here?

 Here it is @johnk42 https://una.io/page/discussions-home

The discussion area does not look very inspiring, does it?

If that's the best they can do with UNA, after six years of development, perhaps it's better to ditch the project and get back to matters more serious: improving Dolphin.

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Michel - Meta-Travel.com
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