1. I need to know if the customizations we make can be kept private and can we keep them without being forced to share the customizations with others. EG: GPL forces code additions to be offered back to the public, LGPL does not.

Dolphin is licensed under the terms of CC-BY license, which does not bind you to give the modified code back to the original vendor. The only limit it sets is that you have to keep reference to BoonEx in the way specified by us. We want the links back from the pages footers. If you want to remove them - you have to pay a $39/annum link-removal fee or $99 and get the Lifetime license.

2. What does CC-By license mean?

Dolphin and Orca are distributed under the terms of the CC-BY license. You can learn more about it at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. In short, when using Dolphin and Orca you should not remove BoonEx copyright notices in files headers (not visible to your site visitors) under any conditions. CC-BY license also states that "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor." As an attribution we require you to keep the links to BoonEx in the footers of all pages of your site that are based on or use Dolphin/Orca code. You can purchase permission to remove them if you wish to, but we request either the attribution or money as compensation for our work. All of these requirements apply to the original Dolphin/Orca distributions and to any 3rd party distributions based on or using the Dolphin/Orca code.

3. Dolphin is listed as free, yet I keep hearing about licenses. How exactly does Dolphin get into use?

Dolphin is free. You need to have a Free license to run it, or you can run it unlicensed. When running unlicensed, you will have to click the "Continue using unlicensed" link each time you log-in to the admin panel. You can, however, obtain a free license at your BoonEx Unity account. To do so, go to BoonEx Unity (http://www.boonex.com/unity), sign up for a free BoonEx ID or sign in if you already have one. Then in your Unity Account, go to "Licenses" and click a link "Generate Free Licenses" next to the Dolphin icon. You may use a generated license to register your Dolphin copy. We require this registration in order to track installation to be sure that Dolphin is not used for any illegal activities, to organize better customer support and to maintain our company statistics.

You can also purchase an "Ad-Free" license for Dolphin via the Unity Account or from the Dolphin homepage. With this license, you are allowed to run Dolphin without links to BoonEx for a period of one year. The fee is just $39. Or, you can get a Lifetime license for $99 and use it permanently without any annual fees.

4. How easy is it to add a new template to Dolphin? Is there a template language e.g. smarty?

Dolphin has built-in presentation layer that let's one create templates easily. A manual on how to create Dolphin templates is available here.

5. I want to avoid installing a version that will not allow me to, for now, run without ads but in the future will still allow me to move to the 'ad-free' mode for the Ray widgets ... Which version should I install?

Dolphin accepts both Free and Ad-Free licenses. It can also run with either a Free or Ad-Free Ray Suite. You can install Dolphin with, say, Free-Ray to start with, and then change to Ad-Free anytime, by downloading the Ad-Free Ray Package and purchasing Ad-Free Ray licenses at BoonEx Unity.

6. I deleted the software and the DB ... fresh download from your site ... installed again ... registered in BoonEx Unity ... activated ... login in the admin panel ... but still the message "wrong license number" appears in the widgets.

Ray comes in 2 variants - Free and Ad-Free, and you have to use appropriate files with your licenses. Download and install the Free Ray if you are going to use Free Ray licenses; download and install Ad-Free Ray if you wan to use your purchased Ad-Free licenses or Contributor licenses.

7. The articles sections seem to be for internal content. I need to let my users create edit, categorize, and comments articles. Is this possible?

That is expected to be added to Dolphin 6.1.

8. I need to add my own header and footer. Is this easy to do?

Yes, you can customize it through template files and language files. Note that with the Free Dolphin you are not allowed to remove links to BoonEx from the footer, unless you paid for link removal.

9. I need to be able to take all the dating fields references out as my site is not about meeting people socially. Is there a way (relatively easy) to edit, add/delete field names?

Yes, go to Dolphin Admin Panel > Settings > Fields Manager to edit your site fields, remove them and create new ones.

10. On the Join form: what is the purpose and function of the "Tags" field, and the "Headline" field?

Headline is a short greeting and tags are words categorizing the person. Both of them are widely used by different Dolphin pages.

11. I did not get the license for Video Player. What happened?

Video Player is the latest Ray Widget. It was released on the 1st of September and licenses for it are available now at BoonEx Unity and for sale at BoonEx.com.

12. If your scripts are free, how do you make your money, because I know that it takes a lot to develop a program like that?

BoonEx is break-even at the moment. Our mission is to Unite People. We cover costs thanks to Expertzzz Contributions and Link/Ad-Removal Fees.

13. I see different offerings for Ray that is now a part of Dolphin. Does Ray work completely with the new Dolphin?

Ray is now heavily integrated with Dolphin, but can also be integrated the same way with any other software.

14. What is Free Ray compared to Ad-Free Ray.

Free Ray is a full-featured set of Ray Widgets that you can install to your site and run it with your own RMS (Ray Media Server) installation or you can connect to BoonEx Media Server for free. Free Ray is ad-based. BoonEx will display unobtrusive banner ads in the footer of each widget you run. This traffic is handled by BoonEx and doesn't add bandwidth costs to your hosting account.

Ad-Free Ray doesn't have any banners or BoonEx references. You have to buy Ad-Free Licenses for each widget to run Ad-Free Ray. With Ad-Free Ray you may not use BMS (BoonEx Media Server) and have to host RMS (Ray Media Server) yourself.

15. Do you provide hosting for your products?

We provide free remote RMS hosting, which we call BoonEx Media Server. We do not provide traditional hosting accounts, but we can recommend HostForWeb as a reliable hosting provider that supports BoonEx software.

16. Do I need the BoonEx ID to get all of your products?

Yes, you need BoonEx ID to get into your Unity Account and generate license codes for BoonEx products. BoonEx ID is free, secure and anonymous.

17. How do I use BoonExpress? What does it do?

BoonExpress is a set of simple copy-paste scripts. It is created to let you instantly add innovative and cool communication apps to you blog, forum, community site, MySpace account or simple web page. You can see how they work at BoonEx Blog. To add them to you site, just login to your Unity Account, register your site as a new community and in the My Communities section click "Get BoonExpress Widgets". Just copy the provided code and paste it anywhere on your site pages - chat, messenger and messenger with audio and video capabilities will be added to your site instantly and for free. Bandwidth, support and upgrades will all be handled by BoonEx.

18. Can I use Ray without a license?

No.

19. Can I purchase the Ray suite like before and own it without having to pay for links removal?

No. In fact current system is more affordable and flexible. Before the 1st of September you had to pay $79 per widget, plus a yearly upgrade subscription fee. Now, you just pay $39/annum and have access to free upgrades.

20. What is SmartPro and why should I purchase it?

SmartPro is not something new, it's a special package which offers a bunch of BoonEx products and services such as Dolphin (with Lifetime license) Orca (with Lifetime license), Ray Suite (with Lifetime license for all the existing widgets), integrated eCards modification and more than 40 countries' zip codes, professional installation service, consultations, assistance and much more.

21. How many web sites can I have by ordering the SmartPro package?

The SmartPro package is for one copy of the software only. This means a single domain (where domain means a single site URL, no matter if it's a domain, or a sub-domain). As a SmartPro customer, you may order additional ad-free/link-free licenses and installation services with a special discount of 30% per item. Alternatively, you may run a site on your main domain ad-free, and install other sites on the sub-domains based on Free (ad/link-based) BoonEx software.