How stable is Dolphin?

I am looking to launch what will become a large regional social network, and have installed Dolphin as a test platform.

Although I like the script, and it seems to work well for me, I am curious as to how stable it really is.

I already have some of my beta testers not able to do even the most basic of things that Dolphin should be able to do, such as upload pictures, videos, add events, etc.

I want to make sure, before I dump a ton of money in to advertising and building my community that Dolphin is the right solution for me.

Does anyone no of any sites running the script that are large?  I mean more than 1000 people large, not less than 100, as most of the communities I see online right now seem to have.

Can and Admin or someone from the development team provide some idea please of how viable Dolphin is for a community expecting to have a minimum of 25,000 peple?

Thanks,

Bill Rust

Dolphin 6.1.4 is stable now and we have hundreds of clients using Dolphin on our servers. Some of our clients thousands of members. The load is low and not CPU intensive which is great news. There are 2 things you need to keep in mind when choosing the right server -

1) Make sure that the register_globals on the server is OFF. This post security issues when it's turned on. Your best bet is to contact your hosting provider.

2) Make sure they have mod_sec installed to prevent external script injections.

From what I see using the Dolphin platform thus far...

You need to know a lot about coding in order to get what you want to occur.

Through the Dolphin control pannel you cannot even add HTML to User profiles....?

Also The users themselves cannot add HTML to their own profiles...

HTML doesn't work in the forums..

HTML doesn't work in text feilds on profiles...

HTML doesn't work on events page...

Would be nice if it was made a little easier to accomodate to these options.

Might I suggest going over to www.expertzzz.com and spending some time on their site in the modifications section.  There are some AWESOME developers working almost explicitly on the Dolphin script.

You will have to put some money into your site by purchasing the upgrades and modifications, however most are very reasonably priced.  And, I can almost guarantee that you will find any modification you need.  Such as putting HTML in various sections of your site, profile customization mods, and MANY more !!

My BoonexNerd.com site has over 2,500 members. Real ones. It uses the default Dolphin install. The site has some graphics added to the standard template. I get decent traffic with it and my Alexa ranking is respectable. Last I checked, if you Google dolphin tutorials the site can be found in the first or second page, somewhere around there.

If you check my jtadeo profile, it will show other sites I've produced. I have another site I am working on again as I just got back from a much needed break.

The issue about maximum members is a bit more complex. You will need to deal with load balancers, clustered servers, concurrent connections and other issues relating to Linux.

For example, you can have 25,000 members but if only 10 is connected at any one time then just about any script will handle that. That would place a different load on the server if for example you had 10,000 people connected at the same time using up server resources.

For a $100 script, this is a bargain and if you don't mind the logos it is FREE. If you are looking towards the realm of facebook, myspace and want to be a big player, then be prepared to pay out big player bucks. However, if you can roll a site like the biggies with a $100 script then kudos to you. Sometimes inventiveness with a bit of imagination can take on the big players or at least nibble at their heels. Case in point, one of the ugliest dating sites in the world -- PlentyOfFish.com.

Regarding installs, I have found that over 95% of the problems I have seen with Dolphin is related to improper server configs. Get a good host, it is your foundation. It will save you trouble with upload issues and other problems. If you do have problems, you can find answers at a few other Dolphin sites in addition to this one ofcourse. I have a resource page on my site that lists Dolphin sites that may help in your search for an answer.

If you're looking for some documentation, Sammie is currently writing Dolphin for Dummies and I've written the Unofficial Dolphin Manual. The manual is freely available for view at my site. I am hoping BoonEx will invite me to write the manual for Dolphin 7...nudge nudge wink wink ;)

...sip...

i've more than 3000 members . I had some teething problems but I got the help from Boonex support staff.

To me I think the most important thing is good host & server. I'm paying USD150/month for the server, daily average visitors around 300 and my site was down 3 times last month. This month alone already down 3 times!

I can surley understand putting some money into a system to get it to do special things but when you pay $1000 to remove branding alone I would think having a function to allow or disable HTML should be a standard core function, why would someone have to pay extra for such a standard function.

Thanks everyone for your replies, I will be reading through them today and making some replies myself :)

I spent the weekend going through my site as much as I could to find the pros/cons of it, and have a pretty decent list to begin to work on.  I moved my official launch date back a couple of weeks, as I can now see that the script, although a steal at it's price, does need some customizing and coaxing to get it to play nice with the people in my target demographic.

All of the little things I found are fixable, and the overal usability and design of the complete system has far more pros than cons, so I will give it a shot for now.

Anyway, thanks for your replies and confidence in the script :)

Bill