Hi,
I'm new to Boonex Dolphin, and am curious if you could tell me something about profile questions.
Why is it so difficult to set them up? As if you have to enable each individual question on search page, view page for all the different types, add keys and language files, captions, system names etc. can't this be streamlined in any way?
Also, getting to the jist of my curiosity. What default fields need to stay in Dolphin? Ones such as zip code, couples, education, income etc are very invasive. why are there 4 name fields also? I noticed there's a naming preference system in place. You can't seem to remove first and last name, but you can full name. But Dolphin will only either display full names, or usernames, not first and last names. I want to just have one field where people can type a space in their name, and limit it to so many characters but not character types such as punctuation or non Latin letters or numbers. Can this be done?
Also, I notice in a default Dolphin setup, that the implementation of the default fields, like Religion, Ethnicity, Height, Weight etc are incomplete. not only are they unnecessary for my community, but they're not properly filled in. It's a lot of work dealing with profile fields, even though once it's setup it just works. A lot of the back end of Dolphin seems incomplete and this is one area where the incompleteness reaches the front end. Another area is the navigation builder, as the problem is related. In my many days of testing the product even before it's gone live, I have had to sign up with a verified Dolphin Hoster, which I'd have prefered to be Zarconia. But since I can't order a server with them to this day, it had to be TMD Hosting.
With Dolphin, the right passion and idea is there, but it seems, from what I'm reading on the community here, not the right developers. I'm open to third party community funded contributions if you are as a paying customer and also as an interested person involved with Dolphin. My issues with Una, besides the clear upselling, is that it's not production ready. Three features my community needs now it doesn't support. Music, video chat and video comments. Speaking of video comments, I notice that Boonex isn't putting up links to the Ray Media Server anymore. It's removed from their Git Hub also. I miss it. I've been watching Dolphin developments since 2015 ever since I moved from Ning to Social Engine. A move I wish I could say I didn't regret doing, but seeming as how even Dolphin handles spam bots better than any other member of the competition out there save for IPBoard and VBulletin, among other database related sign up services, I have to admit that's a deal breaker for me. Even the bugs in Dolphin's rough and ready state, don't deter me. Like the one where you can't add administrators from the back end to name a single concern.
But no. What really surprises me, is the implementation of duplicate unnecessary modules that do the same thing. You don't need articles, news, blogs and a forum all in one site. Just like you don't need a faq, and a help system. Just like you don't need several uploaders to post files. Yet the features I wish one module had, another does it but you need to enable it to get the functionality you really want. Splitting your, and other peoples work load across a lot of extra modules than is needed. To be able to combine certain field procedures would be a huge dream come true for this script since the functionality to do so is already built. I believe that in time, we'll be able to see the result of our efforts if we simply made the ability for modules to have multiple instances of itself, With each feature of any module be replicatable. this would unite the purpose of Una with Dolphin, by the same company in a way that would eliminate the need to have to protect two separate projects developmentally while giving strength to the most needed parts of a CMS. You want photos, add a media type. You want albums, add a gallery type and link it to an existing module. You want groups, add a category type and link existing modules to it. You want a forum, choose the name for responses as replies instead of comments and topics instead of posts. You want a blog, add the ability to schedule posts and optionally put XML RPC Ping Back and Track Back support into an instance. Make all this configurable so that you can have a wiki, a files system, whatever you want through an interface that isn't limited to whatever outsourced third party support can be provided by other peoples products.
Boonex's biggest problem, is 99% less of a hassle in the long run, than many other peoples major problems in other platforms they simply won't address. I just wish the focus of a company of this size, would be focused on streamlining the same type of file and database relation functionality, that has been used to empower peoples websites, as well as create and inspire the business end of the deal. Code comes first in any case, and what I hope people learn from this monolog post, is that it can be done, and has been done. the puzzle pieces, just need to be restructured in such a way that makes more sense for 2019 and beyond.
