Sorry about support delays

i bought this last friday - your marketing guy finally sorted out my license today but I STILL HAVE NO SOFTWARE - I only have the free version and no link to the ad-free version - am getting really pissed off with this. Take a look at your automation/scripts guys. The link in my purchase history just goes to a 404 error. ARGGHHHHHHH!!!

Hi johnnyh!

I'm that "guy" who replied you from marketing@boonex.com. The software should be downloaded at boonex.com/products/dolphin/download, note please, you need to download the free package there and once again, sorry that your license hasn't been generated right after the payment but you know, in most cases this happens due to connection errors or some people do not come back to BoonEx site when payment is completed.

Regards, Lyubov L.

I don't think it's a problem of this period. I bought the licence in Juni. I contacted support for a problem which i wanted to solve (changing a code for the poll).
AFTER 3 WEEKS (!!!) the support replied me saying: "to solve your problem, install Firebug to see where your problem is. And change the code". And this was all!!!
Really unbelivable.
Joomla, I think, it's the best: free and really good supported.

Thats fine but after entering the license I still see ads on my site

i have the Free version already installed - I added the license code to the advanced settings section yet still I have ads. Is there any sure way to just register this product - seems a bit scrappy to me that even though I have bought and entered the code I still have ads. Do you know why the license page does not show my domain name?

OK after reading the comment from sammie - screw it - I'll just pursue a refund.

"johnny" if you cannot be paitent enough to wait for a support response, what makes you think you can be patient enough to run/manage/create a Dolphin community?

Sounds like your just another get-rich-quick myspace webmaster.

johnnyh
what licenses did you buy last friday? you have only been a member since Tuesday.

let me try and explain once again, you say you have the free version installed. (that is the ad supported version) you have adfree licenses that you cant understand why you still get the ads showing, because you need to install the adfree version to use the adfree licenses.

after you do this, clear your browser cache as it will still hold the old files for the free version and the licenses for that. so will still display the ads.

you claim to be:
software developer
a programmer
no shit? another one that claims this and lies about shit.

johnnyh
Status: Member
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Member for: 3 days
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Age: 36 years
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City: BURY ST. EDMUNDS

Gender: Man
software developer
a programmer

oops, whatcha think about all that now?

later,
DosDawg

I do not think it was a good idea to start a "Sorry about support delays" blog ... or maybe it was ...

I run Amistad.com (friendship.com in spanish) and I have to say that I gave up on Boonex support a while ago. It is sometimes there... most of the time not there. If I had a single word to describe Boonex support I would say it is "Bursty"... once in a while you get a burst of support then it goes away.

Needless to say, I am now using third-party paid support. And "yes" ... I bought the $999 all inclusive package .. I believe it was a mistake now.

The upgrade that Boonex did from 6.0 to 6.1 broke 1/2 of my site. I am still recovering from that mess. Seems like Boonex is more interested in adding new features instead of fixing problems and making this thing more stable.

Perhaps Johnnyh is not the most patient person out there, but I feel his pain. I been there Pal !!

One bug that is driving me nuts is the inefficient way Dolphin looks up friends in MySQL. Take a look ... it takes at least 35 secs to display this profile with 83 friends: www.amistad.com/cafealmediodia .. or the friends look up at http://www.amistad.com/viewFriends.php?iUser=66021 ... what do I get from support? "You have too many pictures, music and photos" .... well.. that is NOT IT !! Took me a while to figure it out but the culprit is an inefficient left join in a SQL query:

$friend_list_query = "SELECT `Profiles`.* FROM `FriendList` LEFT JOIN `Profiles` ON (`Profiles`.`ID` = `FriendList`.`Profile` AND `FriendList`.`ID` = '$id' OR `Profiles`.`ID` = `FriendList`.`ID` AND `FriendList`.`Profile` = '$id') WHERE (`FriendList`.`Profile` = '$id' OR `FriendList`.`ID` = '$id') AND `FriendList`.`Check` = '1' ORDER BY `Profiles`.`Picture` DESC LIMIT 12";

It is located in inc/profiles.inc.php, function ShowFriendList( $id, $aMutualFriends = 0 )

Maybe you can fix this before version 6.2 ?????

The server ... an 8 core (dual 4-core) Xeon dedicated server with 4 gigs of ram. Should be enough for this application .. right?

And think about it ... Cafe al Mediodia has around 9000 friends in MySpace ( www.myspace.com/cafealmediodia ) ... There is no way I could get close to that using Dolphin... it would take a week to get the profile up in the browser !!!!

Ahh... I feel better already.

I do not think it was a good idea to start a "Sorry about support delays" blog ... or maybe it was ...

I run Amistad.com (friendship.com in spanish) and I have to say that I gave up on Boonex support a while ago. It is sometimes there... most of the time not there. If I had a single word to describe Boonex support I would say it is "Bursty"... once in a while you get a burst of support then it goes away.

Needless to say, I am now using third-party paid support. And "yes" ... I bought the $999 all inclusive package .. I believe it was a mistake now.

The upgrade that Boonex did from 6.0 to 6.1 broke 1/2 of my site. I am still recovering from that mess. Seems like Boonex is more interested in adding new features instead of fixing problems and making this thing more stable.

Perhaps Johnnyh is not the most patient person out there, but I feel his pain. I been there Pal !!

One bug that is driving me nuts is the inefficient way Dolphin looks up friends in MySQL. Take a look ... it takes at least 35 secs to display this profile with 83 friends: www.amistad.com/cafealmediodia .. or the friends look up at http://www.amistad.com/viewFriends.php?iUser=66021 ... what do I get from support? "You have too many pictures, music and photos" .... well.. that is NOT IT !! Took me a while to figure it out but the culprit is an inefficient left join in a SQL query:

$friend_list_query = "SELECT `Profiles`.* FROM `FriendList` LEFT JOIN `Profiles` ON (`Profiles`.`ID` = `FriendList`.`Profile` AND `FriendList`.`ID` = '$id' OR `Profiles`.`ID` = `FriendList`.`ID` AND `FriendList`.`Profile` = '$id') WHERE (`FriendList`.`Profile` = '$id' OR `FriendList`.`ID` = '$id') AND `FriendList`.`Check` = '1' ORDER BY `Profiles`.`Picture` DESC LIMIT 12";

It is located in inc/profiles.inc.php, function ShowFriendList( $id, $aMutualFriends = 0 )

Maybe you can fix this before version 6.2 ?????

The server ... an 8 core (dual 4-core) Xeon dedicated server with 4 gigs of ram. Should be enough for this application .. right?

And think about it ... Cafe al Mediodia has around 9000 friends in MySpace ( www.myspace.com/cafealmediodia ) ... There is no way I could get close to that using Dolphin... it would take a week to get the profile up in the browser !!!!

Ahh... I feel better already.

If you care to reply... richarddib (at) Mac . com

I bought the software on Friday there was a glitch or something - I can prove it my bloody paypal receipt says so - I have also installed both copies of the software available on the download page and both give me ads. Please do not be rude - I have been writing software for about 20 years and know what I'm doing - there ARE some usability faults with these processes.

You got to ask yourself Sammie - do you think it helps by being so rude - what if your wrong, what if I have been a programmer for 20 years? The fact is this - you pay for something you expect to get something that is fit for purpose - so far, Dolphin has not fulfilled that brief.

I guess 1 useful thing to come from all this ranting and rudeness is the identification of a usability problem with one or more processes. The main being the purchasing process. The process should follow on from a successful transaction with a page that tells the consumer exactly what to do next - a link to the software that is most relevant to the transaction and the license. Given that we now expect instant results in a digital world, most of the above should be instant. There is no reason as to why the license generation and contextual software links should not be instant unless there are problems database side.

Perhaps a suggestion might be that Boonex conduct controlled testing with their processes to identify these little hiccups in the system. As it is - it's a great set of products and it seems that most of the questions in support are there needlessly as most of them could be removed through effective usability study.

am doing a detailed and documented step by step re-install for the benefit of all.

Installation of Dolphin – test conducted by Unity user johnnyh using:

Hardware
Mac Pro Quad core (4x2.66Ghz cores)
2GB memory

Software:
Os - OS X 10.4.11(Tiger)
FTP – SecureFTP
Host – Dreamhost.com
MySQL – V5
PHP – V5
Openoffice.org (notes)

Network:
8mb ADSL connection via x2 bridged Airport extreme base stations
8mb>
2mb<

License type:
Dolphin Unlimited - $99 Australian Dollars

Process steps:

1.Check MySQL setup
2.Opened FTP connection to domain
3.downloaded - Dolphin 6.1 + Free Ray 3.5 + Orca 2.0 (10 Mb) as per support email instructions. (Lyubov L.)
4.Unzipped file (unzipped files are:25.2MB or 20,381,239 bytes on disk)
5.Begin upload of files to site
6.completed upload
7.follow installation procedure
8.change file permissions
9.go to domain
10.login as admin
11.no request for license so far
12.go to [settings>advanced settings>]
13.enter license
14.save changes
15.logout
16.still ads on the page
17.log back in
18.license is still present but so are the ads
19.what am I doing wrong?

You will still see the ray, orca, icons on the footer after entering your license. What will go away or should go away is the boonex links above them. The icons in the footer will remain for orca and ray as you do not have them licensed...so the icons/images for ray and orca will exist. The dolphin one should be gone and the boonex links above them.


Powered by:
BoonEx - Community Software; Dating And Social Networking Scripts; Video Chat And More

should be gone as well as the dolphin icon if you entered your licensing and it took it correctly
If you so desire to register orca and ray then these icons will also go away.

You can check my site which is 100% Ads, all dolphin ray and orca links and logos exist to compare to what you see.

Basically you paid for dolphin removal only not ray or orca.

http://www.dialme.com

Otherwise post your site so we can check it and verify it as well.
gameutopia

OK am now seeing an ad-free version of Dolphin on your site for download - this is very confusing as the version I installed as instructed was the Dolphin 6.1 + Free Ray 3.5 + Orca 2.0. I'll try that version. Cheers

i did say way up there, first and second post to down load the adfree version.
1st post where to find it,
2nd post what version to download.
for a programmer, you dont seem to read instructions very well

GoandKnow,

I have about 78,000 users in Dolphin (Amistad.com). As far as number of users I do not think there is a problem with Dolphin. The problem is that users can NOT be very friendly at the moment ... hehe.

If they can find a way of optimizing this query, I believe this could scale up fairly large. I believe it has been an oversight ... that can be fixed fairly quickly. The problem with the left join is that I believe it creates a temporary file every time it executes, therefore is very slow.

Besides that, there are several ways to scale up Dolphin. You can always run the database (mysql) on a separate server and optimize that server just for SQL. Then you can cluster the website and even the database .. might require some ingenious changes to duplicate music, videos.. etc .. but perhaps those could even be served from a third server.

I am NOT giving up yet on Dolphin ... I think it has a lot of potential. Now, I do believe that they should concentrate on fixing bugs and making it stable and faster, and forget about new features for now.

For the moment, think of Dolphin as the base to build a social network ... not the complete solution. You will need to put some good hours to make it work right.

Again, if anybody wants to email me.... richarddib (at) Mac . com :-)

I am thinking to buy SmartPro but after reading all these negative comments about dolphin group, I don’t feel comfortable to purchase or recommend to anyone!

I have downloaded the free version and have uploaded to server but already got installation problem at the right first step!


I have installed Joomla and it was so easy I could not believe!

Even Oscommerce is easy to build entire ecommerce website!

Now what with Dolphin?!

You have to change the permissions of those files in your server.

You can do that from the command line (SSH) with the command:
chmod 777 /the/file/to/change

erroloz

To run a website you should at least know how to set file permissions. The answer to your next question "how to..." you can find on g o o g l e !

I am not a programmer or developer and I can still run a dolphin site.. I guess he does not know the differnce between adfree and free version... My 6 year old niece can read the instruction and run a dolphin site as well.. johnnyh is a DE DE DE aka: loser....

SrMeXiCaNo I am not a programmer or developer and I can still run a dolphin site.. I guess he does not know the differnce between adfree and free version... My 6 year old niece can read the instruction and run a dolphin site as well.. johnnyh is a DE DE DE aka: loser....


Don't called him a looser help him or have you six yrs niece help him as well.

dear LyudobovL, I dont know who reported you that my requests have been replied in the same days. THIS IS TOTALLY FALSE. Anyway do you think it's professional to reply to an user who paid for your program (and who is not a programmer) "to solve your problem, install Firebug to see where your problem is. And change the code" ?.
I solved thanks to some users.
In addition, I totally agree with Amistaddotcom: my SQL for friends is too much slow.
I read you don't offer a refund. Ok: so please offer us please a good service in anyway.

Well.... after reading all the comments I want to ask one thing... Why can't we be polite to each other? There are times when everyone has to ask some basic questions. Those of us who are "experts" now , did know nothing once. The spirit of a community is to welcome everyone and to help everyone getting started.

I have been hasitating in asking questions because i knew that i will recieve harsh and rude replies.

In my opinion, the biggest problem of dolphin is not the performance and scalability, but lack of community spirit and support.

I think we are all here to help, some more than others. Some are more likely to work with you, but others have done this so long and heard it over and over again they don't want to deal with it.

So whether you are a programmer or not, it's a new program to you and if you do not understand it or how it works, it would actually be wise not to quote that you are a programer no matter what your knowledge is.

I think you will get a much better response if you leave that part out. And there are many levels of programming and scripting. Which is highly debate-able and often times don't mater.

This is a highly unique script mostly in php but obviously many others are incorporated at well. Unless you are a genius or extreme die hard, it does take a bit of time to learn the structure and how this thing works, no matter what your programming knowledge is.

Slow down...take a deep breath, and do a little research and asking. We will help you out the best we can!!

JstAgame.. Well said.

About the topic, It's nice to at least see that the guys in Dolphin acknowledge the problem, although, sometimes Sorry alone wont do the job. I can honestly understand Jonny's point of view.. I for example submitted a support ticket over 3 weeks ago.. I'm still waiting for an answer.

Unoboonex.. just a thought, maybe next year the guys should consider having their vacations in different times so that you wont fall short of half of your staff.

Zubair.. how true!