Taming Dolphin

What can I say, I'm enjoying blogging now, it's in my blood.  Kinda wish I'd never found this section of the site.  :))

Moving on, when I first came to Unity I was as confused and scared of the dolphin coding as everyone else who first installs it.  Heck, I was worse, took me a week to get my first install done.  I had no clue what WHM, cPanel, phpMyAdmin, MySQL and so many other little tricks to opening a website up. 

Next up was trying to figure out how to work dolphin once it was installed.  Here I was, a complete newbie and had no clue about Language Keys, why did it say __Field_Caption_Sex_Type__ on my profiles?  What in the heck was an RMS?  Why did I need to keep compiling language and what is a compiling of language entail?

All I knew, like all the others who find Dolphin is that I had a dream, a dream of building a site that was mine because I believed and still do, that I can do it better than the mainstreamers who have done it before me.  So, that is what I tried to do and what I've been working on.

As I came through setting up the first site, it became apparent, either spend a lot of money and settle for the solutions others come up with or start learning something and start learning it fast.  I dealt with the same issues others ran into, SQL Errors that were more foreign than Galic, Duplicate entries in tables, erroneous argument caused by public_html/inc/classes/BxDolPFM.php on line 492 value cannot be null and so many others.

Should we even talk about the day I accidentally typed 200% in the .page_column_first width box and sent middle and last columns into internet neverland?  I have to admit it, I was like a kid in a candy store and I was like a kid in a horror house, scared crapless but wanting it all.  Pretty much the same as all others when they first find dolphin and discover all the things that it can do.

But one morning I woke up and I was no longer scared, I'm not sure how it happened, it just did and I took it upon myself to sit down and really start learning this software.  I dug into the php and sql information I could find, whereever I could find it, played with firebug and the css files and just figured, heck if I break it I'll just make it again.  If I recall correctly this was about the time I learned about Database Backups, what a wonderful idea that was.

Today, people ask me how I can run through a site, install in 30 minutes without an auto installer, start modding files and upgrade a site from not existing anywhere to being ready to go public in a week, not counting the TOS, About Us, FAQ's and uploading of media.  I used to say I don't know, then it hit me, it's not because I don't know why, it's because I no longer think about it.

That morning I woke up no longer scared of Dolphin is the morning that Dolphin began to do what I wanted it to do.  I learned quickly to use Notepad++ to edit files and leave all files unsaved until I'm ready to save them all, run the sql and compile languages and such at one time.  I discovered that any mistake I make on a site can be quickly undone with the reverse button, drop table (or insert table if I accidentally drop the wrong one) and I learned servers don't talk in a foreign language, they talk in the language of a 5 year old.  This is what's wrong, fix me, nothing more and nothing less.

Today we all see new people in the forums who are asking how to do things and we're happy to help you out, we really are.  All of us who have been around for awhile receive e-mails almost daily asking for assistance with an idea, their skill levels are as varied as the skill levels of those of us who have been around here for a little while now.  Some it just takes a quick point in the right direction, others need their hands held as all of us did when we first got here.

In the end, when I was talking with someone is when I realized I had treated Dolphin like a pit bull when I first found it, a stray, angry pit bull and was scared to do anything that might upset it, thus it did all it could to upset me.  Today, I treat Dolphin as a Pit Bull still, but a Pit Bull I can control, I have the confidence to give it a command and know it will carry it out.  Once  you achieve this mindset, then the rest is easy.

Achieving this mindset is when you realize dolphin is just a list of commands, that will do exactly what you tell it to do and nothing else, it is constants, it is variables with rules, it is nothing more than a math problem that when you hit the button calculates the answer. 

So folks, I am encouraging you, install a test site in a subdomain and install/play with it/modify it/upgrade it/decimate it and restore it.  Have fun and don't be scared to try things, test, experiment and you will master it.  Dolphin has been called the most complicated software on the market, if I can figure it out so can you. 

I Promise!