Orca vs vbulletin and others

I have seen that alot of people are or want to intergrate other forums scripts into there dolphin as  replacement for Orca

I have two questions

The first is why. Whats wrong with Orca or what doesn't it have the others do.

The second if the other scripts are better which one bests works with Dolphin

Thank you in advanced

I absolutly love SMF. whats better about it? Its a proper forum. ther are plenty of mods for it all FREE and submited by users just the same as dolphin mods but like i said ALL FREE, the other great thing about SMF is that to install a mod you just log into admin click a few buttons and its done no serching through code for hours only to find it dont work, Just upload via admin, click install, It then tells you if ther are any installation problems befor you clik inastall again, installs your mods using XML files. SOMTHING DOLPHIN NEEDS TO HAVE. basicaly it works in any browser and is 100% cross platform compatable. It is the safest open code forum out ther and is even better than PHPBB, VB, ect.

Well have a look for yourself im running one here http://www.uk-giveaway.info/Forum/ by the way i think there is a intergration file for dolphin on the SMF site somwher

I've been using SMF on one of my sites for about 2 yrs, but the thing is, can it be integrated with dolphin so they share the same registration, i.e. you register on dolphin and it automatically registers you on the forum with all the same details??

I must admit, I'm trying to create a forum in Orca and I'm lost.

LOL, thats got to be a joke, whats wrong with orca forums...  Im used to hosting forums like MYBB which is Vbulliten style forum that can do magic tricks, orca is amature at the side of that, at the side of most dedicated forums really, orca looks like it was a rush job, its just poor forum software. I'd love to be able to get myBB to work with dolphin, cant though so im stuck with all the problems orca brings. Like now ive just opened a group on my dolphin, and the orca posts in that have these [[L]] stupid things on everything. The main forum did that too but you just have to compile EN for it to go away, but on the groups orca there is no such EN compile to get rid of it. I love My dolphin and the ray, but this orca is such a let down and needs a lot of work

Regards

tyke

Great

So how to fix Vbulliten to work with dolphin database, i mean members access code?

1.  You find a good coder

2.  You pay he coder money

3.  The coder provides you with a vBulletin/Dolphin

OR

4. Learn Linux. Apache, MySQL, and php and do it yourself.

Tyke,

yes you compile the languages the same for groups as you do for the orca forum. you have to be logged into admin, and you navigate to the /groups/orca/forum or whatever the string is, just search the forums here for something like "compile groups language" and it is done exactly the same way.

Regards,

DosDawg

thanks saying all that though, the new dolphin 7 forum is very much improved, im not sure how much its improved as ive only had a little play with it, but on the surface at least, its sleek and sexy.... LOL

.

I think i must have a forum fetish.... teehee

 What isn't wrong with Orca forums would be a much shorter list.  I suggested to Boonex on multiple occassions to ditch Orca and provide integrations for third party forums like SFM, myBB, vBulletin, and Invision.  Orca is so far behind any one of those, that it will never, ever catch up. Besides, why reinvent the wheel.

There's a half-baked integration for IPB, which will be useless for D7.  I want to use IPB for D7 so I'll end up paying someone to do the integration.  The main reason I want to use Invision is because of all the  addons for it, like the arcade script on my test site here: http://astrosturf.com/games.php  (takes a while to load so give it time)  ...go ahead and play a game to check it out.

HoustonLively,

What you've done is pretty cool with Dolphin/IPB.  I run an IPB board, and was hoping to do a similar integration with Dolphin.  Is what you are showing on your testbed a custom integration, or a product of that "half-baked" integration you spoke of above?

Hopefully, IPB moves along with their new release too.  Looks very cool, and I am anxious to finally have SEO friendly URLs.

Best,

M

Fiodan, that is the 'half baked' integration I spoke of, which will be useless for D7.  Once D7 is out, I'd like to find a group of dolphin users that want to use an IPB integration.... to possiby pool resources and pay a coder enough money to do an above average job on the integration.

I would be interested in this. I am using phpbb3 for my one site but so far there are no posts LOL but regardless I am going to be building a second site once D7 comes out and would rather use IPB ( I think..hmmm Invision?)  I used to use it in the past and really liked it.

Teaming up and paying for something done really well makes sence. Now I havent looked at D7s forum I was kinda hoping we wouldnt need to go this route.

I'd rather not go that route either, but Orca in D7 will have to introduce  several new features before I'll consider using it.  Some features that are a must for me are:

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• Sub forums
• Ability to change default sort order of threads in a forum by date (Most recent, oldest) or Alphabetical (ascending/descending)..... on a per-forum basis.
• Admin ability to move threads
• Ability to attach files to a post ..... admin specified file types, ie  .pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.
• Private, password protected forums.

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I really don't expect to see those things in Orca for D7, so I'm pretty sure I'll be searching for a coder to do an IPB integration.

Ditto Houston, although I would add phpBB to the list (which has another half-assed intergration with an old version).   I really, really wish Orca wasn't so tightly integrated with Dolphin, and that they would concentrate on the social networking component, which they do well.  Allowing easy integration with any of the popular BB systems would open up a new world to all of us, as we would be able to take advantage of all the mods developed for those systems.

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Rob

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p.s.  I have beated this drum before, but another VERY important feature is to have a good set of email alerts when someone replies to a thread that you are watching or have posted on.  This goes a long way toward forming a more interactive community, and is especially important for lower volume sites (where people seldom go to the trouble of logging in to see if someone has replied to their thread).

The Orca forum obviously leaves much to be desired.  I wanted to ask anyone who cares about the forum of their Dolphin website to check out this Forum Choice Wizard.

I must admit after going through the wizard my choice turned out to be different that what I originally thought.

HoustonLively brought up a few important issues about phpBB I did not know before taking a closer look at what I was actually asking for.

Please post your results on this forum.  I do not have any vested interest in that forum wizard or any forum software company.  I just would like to know what the community would prefer as a whole.

After going through the Forum Choice Wizard it turned out that FUDForum ended up being the most complete option I found.  It lacks a WYSIWYG, but far more replete when compared to most other forums.

Then again, most who post on the Dolphin forum have many more years of experience so I'd like to hear what you have to say.