Your topic intrigued me as I am a STRONG advocate for Ning as a script. It is SUPERIOR to Dolphin in so many ways that it Dolphin should be ashamed of marketing themselves as a complete product when it has so many bugs that it should still be considered a beta product. In fact, the ONLY reason I came to Dolphin is to have control of my website in a way that you cannot with Ning. Spending money with Ning no matter how large you grow your community, you will always be a subdomain of them and when see more Google search engines look for you will NOT be found! An individual will have to know the EXACT name of your website in order to find you.

I was very excited to find Dolphin and put all my hopes and dreams into making Dolphin work for me but it has been a nightmare. Ning, in my opinion as a script is SUPERIOR to Dolphin in all the things that matter to me. There is and EASY Administration panel where you can easily access your member data and create a .csv file WITHOUT needing to know anything about mySQL. Videos always upload and work great on ANY site I have ever posted a video on. Their comment section is robust and feature rich and VERY VERY easy to use. I CANNOT say the same things about Dolphin.

The problems I have had with Dolphin HAS ALWAYS been the videos. I am NOT a blogger and on my website the videos are the MOST IMPORTANT PART of the site. That is what my members/fans are coming there for. I have a popular channel on YouTube and I have new members signing up daily. They often complain how difficult even the sign up screen is and many couldn't even get past the terrible date part of the sign up section.

I can't stand coming to my own site because so many of the bugs are aggravating (i.e. the number of unapproved members is inaccurate, the mail mailer is antequated and confusing, the uploading of videos has multiple tiers that are just plain aggravating and confusing to the average person). Nobody is uploading any content because it just plain awkward and difficult.

Dolphin is so un-user friendly that it makes me want to scream every time I visit my own site but like so many others I have invested a LOT of money and time for a script trying to "fix" what's wrong with it and still I don't have a site that I can be proud of. I spent a year bascially hosting a site that is just a glorified template because all the things that matter to me simply DON'T WORK and now that I am going into the second year still in the same boat as I started which is NO WHERE when it comes to videos I am convinced that videos is obviously NOT a priority to the developers of Dolphin else something would have changed by now.

I have repeatedly come to the Dolphin forum for help only to be greeted by a bunch of egg-head bullies who rather beat you over the head for typing in capital letters instead of actually offering a solution to your problem or at least point you in the right direction. Who wants to be subjected to that kind of treatment? Not to mention making you feel bad about complaining when others are suffering the same problems and because you didn't spend $999 for Dolphin that I should be happy have those problems since you are using the free version. I would have dumped Dolphin a long time ago except that I DID spent my hard to come by money on a so-called FREE program and wound up becoming poorer than when I started out and a website that still does NOT work as it should.

I hope others will have the courage like you to speak out and not have to fear the egg-head top guns crucifying them.

Thank you for having the balls to at least start this thread.