Why did you choose Boonex Dolphin?

ping posted 6th of June 2009 in Community Voice. 48 comments.

While I've heard about Boonex I am new on the forum.

I'm wondering if it's full of bugs why do you use it?

What is the redeeming factor to Dolphin since there seems to be so many users?

 
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houstonlively
If you are going to claim to be new here, at least you could use a different avatar than your other account. (wink, wink)
bpowers84
This wasn't posted by me if that's what you meant by your message. I have no clue who this is.
lol...LMAO...this is funny...lol..
houstonlively
You say yes, I say no
You say stop and I say go, go, go
Oh, no
You say goodbye and I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello

I say high, you say low
You say why, and I say I don't know
Oh, no
You say goodbye and I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello

Why, why, why, why, why, why
Do see more you say good bye
Goodbye, bye, bye, bye, bye

Oh, no
You say goodbye and I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello
hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye I say hello
Hello

Hela, heba helloa
Hela, heba helloa
ping
Sorry it is the same pic but we are different users. That was funny though LOL!
houstonlively
Your secret's safe with us. (wink wink)
houstonlively
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99jVPJUeqr4
tyke
LoL thought it had been a bit quiet today... Dont worry about it BP84. somebody is just trying to be clever using the same avatar as you on purpose.
ping
Sorry it wasn't on purpose. It's just the default picture. Should I change it?
ping
oops I'm sorry not a very good impression. I saw what bpowers wrote and sorry bpowers if it caused you any trouble. You had some valid points and thats what brought out my question. I suck :(
bpowers84
You don't suck but of course everyone assumes it was me who posted this blog, I expressed my frustration and also explained myself in my blog.
ping
lol! bpowers84 this has got to be the strangest experience i've had all day! LOL! I'll be sure to chime in the next time I'm bore.
houstonlively
Great idea embedding the vid... wish I could have done it in the reply. Now we can all sing along.

Please change the embed code to autoplay and loop.
bpowers84
Its amazing to me the way people act this post was not done by me, I have nothing to hide here and I've responded to nearly every user in my original post, feel free to come to my blog and discuss my reasons for my post, I'll gladly explain myself again, and talk things out, this post on this blog is not mine. So lets squash that rumor now.
ping
bpowers84 I think I should change my avatar. Can you tell these guys that it is the default picture of vista please!?!

I can assure you guys I am me.
ping
So if I change my avatar will you guys answer my question?
tyke
LOL houston, winding the poor lad up :-)

Ping, what is your point if you have one of course. come on, spit it out :-)
ping
If dolphin has so many bugs why do you guys use it?
ping
I changed my avatar. It is the second picture in the folder.
tyke
simple question gets a simple answer, bugs or not, there isnt a software like this out there that can match this one, and you can use it for free too if you like. Besides that most of us like coming on here for the entertainment when there's nothing on the telly. :-)
tyke
Oh and you are right, there is a lot of users, we are like cat flea's. for every one you can see, there are hundreds you cant. LOL
mastermindsro
I remember first time I found the Dolphin download page.. I was thinking something like "WOW all this for free?".. so this almost explains it why are so many users..
killerhaai
Yeah thats 100% right :)
Hi, Ping

houstonlively is a blog-jacker from houston .... and that's exactly what he's done to your blog! You're supposed to also do wink, wink when you respond to him, and then he'll leave you alone.

In my case, I settled on Dolphin from a combination of the 'make-or-buy' reasons and the purely Dolphin reasons:

1 - Full suite of features.

2 - Open source: so I can customise it however I wish down the track.

3 - 'Try before you buy' through the free version (Though I have paid, ad-free see more versions myself because I want to be able to control all the content on my site, plus -- being a knowledge worker myself -- I do believe in compensating Boonex for its work.)

4 - Much, much cheaper than developing one from the ground up (even when factoring in all the additional costs involved to fix bugs and pay for additional mods). But the largest cost savings is in my own time: the opportunity costs for the time for developing a spec from the ground up and for project management time to shepherd the project through. Apart from forestalling stress ... and potentially a heart attack as well!

5 - Much, much shorter production cycle than developing one from scratch. I can 'go to market' much more quickly.

I am totally, totally sold on WordPress (easy for a non-techie to get into; robust and solid -- releases are not bug-infested like Dolphin so far; stable; availability of support -- plugins and templates -- from just about every corner of the galaxy; the modular architecture is brilliant; etc).

But WP is not a social networking tool, and BuddyPress still has quite a bit to go before it can offer the same features that are already in Dolphin.

I have looked at a few other social networking tools but they tended to come short in relation to #1, #2 and #3 vis-a-vis Dolphin, though they did seem more robust/solid products and the support more professional. Have not done an exhaustive research by any means, so I'm sure I've missed many other options. But I'm quite comfortable that I'm right on with Dolphin.

I'm not a solid techie person; more like a content person. So tech support is going to be crucial in order to make Dolphin work for me. But I'm prepared to pay for this ... and coupled with Dolphin being open source, I think I should be able to manage the risks.
houstonlively
TZ, I'm not jacking anything. You missed how this blog started. You had to be there.

If you don't believe me, look at the url of this blog ion your browser, the look at this one: http://www.boonex.com/unity/blog/entry/GOODBYE_Boonex_and_Dolphin

Imagine both poster having the exact same avatar, and this blog appearing about 30 seconds after the Goodbye blog.
DeeEmm
Thats whats I love about this place 2 + 2 = 5

Wasn't that part of the reason that others have been banned?

wink wink

;) ;)
DeeEmm
I chose Dolphin because it has a free 'trial' - it allowed me to actually download and use the code to test to see if it was suitable for my site - many of the competitors do not offer this. It offered a workable base on which to build my site. I actually managed to set up the site - modify the templates and see how it all worked before going live - a great help.

I actually tried it a few years back and decided against using it then as it wasn't up to scratch - I had a lot of problems with it. see more This time around it was easier to get up and running.

It still has some minor issues, but nothing that really detracts from being able to produce a workable site.

If you want to use it - my recommendations are as follows:

- Carefully check the requirements - you can get a basic Dolphin install up and running on most shared servers (photo / video hosting), but to use the video casting / RAY features you will need to look at utilising the RMS media server. This means either installing RMS on your web server (probably not feasible for most hosted accounts) or renting an RMS connection (I do this and it works fine). The webserver requirements are the single biggest problem for new installs - choose your host wisely and it will save you a lot of hassle - I'd also recommend doing a search as somewhere I remember seeing a free 7 day dolphin hosting trial - this would certainly remove some of the headaches.

- Pay some consideration to your projected userbase - a small / low volume site will work ok on a shared server but high traffic site will need larger bandwidth / webspace - might pay to consider a VPS or dedicated server which will also cater for running your own RMS.

- Many mods are not free - pay some consideration to what you want your site to do - you may need to purchase some mods to achieve it - this obviously has a $$$ value.

- Good support is also not free. If you want guaranteed fast support, consider that you may have to pay for the privilege. If you are happy to have a go and are not in a rush, then the Answers / Forums section here will be fine.

This may be trying to teach grandma to suck eggs - forgive me if this is stating the obvious.

HTH

DM
theguypc
LOL - That's not an avatar, that's a Windows wallpaper.

I chose Dolphin because I believe this package will be the absolute envy of the social networking world very soon.

It already is in a lot of ways - but I think the wave is really just cresting & I plan to be riding it when it does.

I also love to learn and I'm doing a lot of that here. ; )
I chose it because of the features it has and the ease to move around what I want.

When you first start it might seem difficult, but after a while you figure it out and understand the script<<<---"That Is The Key", Plus I like in the direction the script is moving too. They are not just developing a script and that's it, they are improving with newer versions and keep up to date with the current technology..

Believe it or not, this is a major plus...You can get another script see more and the script developers will never keep up with technology & if they do, it will be released as a new version and charge an upgrade fee...Boonex is really it.

With all the bugs and issues you might have, I feel as Boonex is at least trying fix them & aspire to move forward and that shows a lot...

I'm always aspiring higher, so to find a script with the same concept is awesome...(Thumbs-Up) Boonex..
ping
This blog started as a question then a few of the members thought I was bpowers84. So as not to offend bpowers84 I changed my blog title from HELLO Boonex to the one you see now. I also let you guys know I was not bpowers84 and so did bpowers84. It looks like with all the "wink wink" you guys did not believe me. The video was a Beatles tune called Hello Goodbye that I posted. I thought it was funny. I took it down because it looked like you guys thought I was a spammer. I'm not. You can see more see the lyrics in houtonlives posting. I was invited by one of your members to check out this forum and so I did. theguypc knows I am using the default pictures that comes with all vista computers. bpowers84 and I happened to use the same one. If you have vista you will see it is the first picture to show. I chose the first picture I saw because the join form needs a picture. I contacted bpowers84 and he was fine with this blog. I hope you guys are too.
ping
wink wink and hello hello to everyone again :D
houstonlively
Howdy Ping. You gotta admit, the way this thread appeared was pretty funny... at least I thought so. Thanks for that.... we need all the humor we can get around here lately.

I can't say that I have chosen Dolphin yet. When I first saw D6, I thought it was a perfect solution for me. When I tried to start a site with D6, I quickly found out differently. I wanted to build a social networking site, and D6 is a dating site script...period. You can add all the ridiculously high priced mods you see more want to D6, but at the end of the day, you'll have nothing more than a frankensteinian dating site. My site was just a few weeks old when I put everything on hold.

That was right about the time, talk about Dolphin 7 started to pick up. At the same time I was having a look at every single social networking script available, and I found major shortfalls in every single one of them.

Dolphin 7 intrigued me enough to stick around for a while, and make as much noise as I could about implementing core features missing from D6. D7 will be more of a social networking script, and less of a dating site script. You will be hard pressed to find anything that comes close to competing with the D7 feature set.

Boonex has recently taken steps to improve the quality of products that are released, and I believe this will become apparent when D7 is introduced in its final form.

So in answer to you question, D6 is indeed full of bugs, but worse than that, it's obsolete. The redeeming factor is D7.
Just wondering, since you haven't decided on Dolphin yet as your main social networking tool ... do you have a Plan B up your sleeves already, or you'll roll one up after testing D7?
houstonlively
The probability of me using D7 stands at about 95%. If Boonex doesn't implement the photo/media albums and privacy controls in a sensible manner, that 95% probability will fall off in a big hurry.

I hate to think about plan B. Plan B is very, very expensive.
Once I've taken a test drive of D7 I'd be interested to share notes with you, houstonlively, and all others interested to do the same, re gaps in it that we strongly believe should be filled (eg privacy-related features).

Perhaps there is a way for us to jointly fund the development work involved in these? I'd be open to discussions on this when the right time comes.
This is the ORIGINAL houstonlively now through the door. The alter ego's okay, too -- a bit of a stirrer, but never turning things nasty or into a drama. But had to nudge you a bit there as you were wandering a bit off the topic.

The dating vs social networking script issue is a good point. I would have thought dating is a subset of social networking, so that the overall design of Dolphin should focus at a high (ie social networking, not dating) level. Because the resulting tool can then be see more customised to dating (or any other subset of social networking) from there, but you cannot do it the other way around.

Dolphin started out in the dating space. It was why I never found it until recently, because I wasn't looking for a dating tool. Personally, the evolution into a more social networking tool is very welcome. Looking forward to D7 ....
DeeEmm
I think it works fine as it is for a community site - the stuff relating to dating / looking for / matches etc can all be disabled. The only thing that is not easily disabled is the 'kisses' feature (Greetings) but this can easily be renamed to be more suitable (beer / kudos / whatever).

From a software perspective I would disagree that a social net script can more easily be modded to be a dating script than the other way around. IMO the dating script has more complex features - such as couples see more profiles and matchmaking - it is far easier to already have these features integrated and then simply disable them. To add them in after-wards is a lot of work.

DM
jtadeo
I actually started writing my own social networking app. Then I found Dolphin and dropped what I was doing.

To me it was a bargain. It's free if you kept the links.

Dolphin turned out to be one of the most flexible and powerful scripts I've used. With the right expertise, you can make it do anything. I work with other OS scripts, but this one is one of my faves.

I've launched several business and networking sites with it. It is not just a dating script.

It's a lot of fun to work with see more especially when doing integrations with other technologies.

This year, projects are getting more complex and much larger. You'll be surprised what's being done with Dolphin on a pro level. It is starting to rival the big fish out there and plenty of it.

A few of my developer colleagues just run circles around the stuff I do and good for them. They certainly deserve the kudos.

...sip...
Zarcon
I would say the reason I chose Dolphin was probably like a few others.. All this ?? And Free too????. However dolphin has come a long way and now has alot more members to help with those bugs you mention. But I mean, what can you say, you pay hundreds of dollars for software that has bugs in it (take a look at your OS). I can't say its perfect but I can say that it is becoming more stable.

As for the dating vs. social networking, I have just disabled/modded all of those "Looking for" see more crap (I mean stuff) on my site to make it appear more of a social networking site.

I too enjoy it and plan on continuing my playground of fun with Dolphin.
 
 
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