Future Dolphin script???

gkcgautam posted 11th of March 2008 in Community Voice. 7 comments.
Few days before the coming of Dolphin 6, i came to know about Dolphin. It was Dolphin 5.6 At that time i didn't have much knowledge about all this stuff, and so i felt like i've got the power of the complete world with Dolphin. I started experimenting with it and soon i understood it as much to create a good site. I was just planning to lauch a site when suddenly Dolphin 6 came..... I was excited with the new dolphin as it provided so many features...
So i just decided to experiment with the new Dolphin and then launch my site with it....but soon i found that there were many bugs in it, as reported by people... Boonex said that they will release new version which will be bug less....this continued....and finally when they have released 6.0.0005 , still bugs are there. And i was just waiting for the coming of a bug free version because i knew how to remove some of the bugs to make site work well, but then it would be difficult for me to upgrade to next versions of dolphin and i would be just trapped... And so, i just could not start a site....Dream was to provide a social networking site to the people of my area free of cost....But even after passage of so many months, it's still a dream
Many people here have a similar story....They are just afraid to launch their site with custom modifications to remove those bugs because they know than then upgradation would be extremely difficult...Everyday we come acroos many posts in which people say that they lost their members...or some other problems occur when they upgrade....Sometimes it is due their own carelessness during upgradation...or else due to the custom modifications which they make to their site so that it woks well.....Now the question is that will all this continue like this only???? Whenever Boonex releases a new version..it contains bug(s)...they resolve one problem...but simultaneously we come across another problem....
I think that now Boonex should think about redesigning the Dolphin script in such a manner that its very easy and safe to upgrade even if we have custom modifications... When we start a new kind of work...we experiment many things....and after completing the work, we think that we could have done a paticular task in some manner instead of the one in which we did...but it becomes very difficult for us to reverse the work...So we have to continue with the same work...which causes many problems...Same is the case with Dolphin....Though it has been coded very well....it need complete recoding....
Mostly everyone knows about CMSs like Mambo, Joomla and all. Well they have been coded in such a manner that we can add custom components to them and can also remove them whenver required...The core script is uneffected by the additional components and so it doesnot cause any problem when we upgrade...Also in the last version of Mambo (4.6.3), they released two types of Mambo...one (lite) which was just the core script without any extra component...and the other which contained some of the components in it.... Now we need a Dolphin like the core Mambo in which we can add components or modules.
Boonex is known as good Community software experts because they release atleast two versions in every six months....But is this good??? If a person starts a site with Dolphin...will he keep updating it again and again to get new features and thus loose his modifications??? I think Dolphin should provide special documents on creating components/mods like they are in Mambo or Joomla...and even Dolphin should work like Mambo... I would personally advice Boonex to redesign Dolphin after the release of bug free 6.1
I know that many people would be against me because it is very easy easy to say all this...But only the programmers know how difficult it is to create a script like Dolphin.... But guys...it is for the betterment of the Dolphn script....Anyways....i'm not a genius in Php mysql and other such stuff...But i really like Dolphin.... It's definately a great script.....Thanks Bonex....
 
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gkcgautam
And yes....one more request....Boonex plaese also include Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo import friend option....all of us need it...It's a must for a community site....
Saks
Agree ! Or atleast fix the bugs and improve the support !!! Expand your team !
lalakis
Hi gkcgautam,
Generally I agree with you, but.. :)

Always there is an extra zip with the differences, between the carrent and the older ver, that helps a lot. You only have to check exactly what has change.

I know if you have many modifications it is little a bit chaos to make the upgrade from one ver to the next.

I had many many difficulties in the beginning because i had another problem to solve, as my site is in non latin language. (This have been solved now but it was a great headache see more for me for many years :( ).

Any way i have to say that day by day this platform is getting better and better, believe me because i am with boonex from the "ancient days" of ae.
I am trusting them because they are trying hard :) and getting better and better also the support not as support but as real helpful persons are never refused to give me there "lights" in any problem i faced and ask for there help. (Specially Alex).
So be patience :)

Friendly
M.
gkcgautam
Lalakis, i agree wid u...dolphin is improving day by day...and boonex is working really very hard...
But the big problem is that boonex is trying to fulfill all the requests which people make...and because of this...they are improving the core script...but today, some changes are required for the main functioning of dolphin...as someone said...the template system is spread over 30 files...these things are the weak points of Dolphin...we need a change in the template system...coding needs to be separated see more from templates...like this, there are many weak points in dolphin...if a better module system is provided and mods are made taking it in mind...dolphin sites would work great...we need separation of core script from extra stuff like guestbook, dating n all...we should have the choice to add whichever components we want n remove the extra ones...
I would say that after releasing bug free version of 6.1, they should take some time and make changes in the corefunctioning of script...its not that a script becomes great(dolphin is great) by releasing 2 version in six months...now is the time for some big changes...Anyways, Best of Luck Boonex...
Andrew Boon
Just one word - TRUE. There's nothing more important for Dolphin now than a simple, easy and effective upgrade path. And, yes, we are far from there.

Complete remake also doesn't sound cool though. So, we'd have to do it step by step. In fact we've being doing that for a while. Those who knows older aeDating versions can tell about php/html mess, difficult installation process, difference in templates functionality. We've already made huge advancements and will keep on improving.

Your post see more raises this topic again and we'll try to address the issue in 6.1 as much as possible.
gkcgautam
Thanks Andrey...
Your response was like getting water to drink when u are walking in a desert in summers for 5-6 hrs...:-)
Thanks...would try to give my best to dolphin development. What about documentation? Can i contribute to it in any manner??
navman
yehh cool great all this and we hope thats boonex make improvement to produce the perfect community site builder but still one point need some deep thinking this license and this commercial thing i think dolphin move from open source to a payed product and when it reach free of bugs level dolphin will not be free any more.
 
 
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