I am in the process of deciding on a social network platform for a business, and have been researching Dolphin and PHPFox. I am not a programmer, but I am a graphic and website designer for many years, and I do Search Engine Optimization and marketing for clients. I was using the 7.2 Beta 2 Demo until 3 am last night, and I am really liking it. I went through and tested almost feature in it.

The only thing from a user's point of view that I did not like visually was the round avatars, and the see more round profile photo over the banner, especially since the profile photo is right below it on the left side—which I do like that, so maybe not have the profile be round over the banner? Just personal preference based on being taught to avoid using circles in advertising. I like square or low profile portrait rectangle shapes better. Not sure if you can change the shape in the Admin area for this or not, but that is the only thing visually did I did not care for; everything else was really nice looking to me, and logically laid out.

Options that I thought would be great to have:

I would like the option of being able to move things around or hide them on my profile page, like RSS feeds being at the top. I didn't see how to rearrange those boxes, and I am not sure if you can.

I would like to have the option to be able to paste links to Youtube videos in the Video area. Because of copyright issues with music, my finished videos usually have soundtracks supplied from Youtube, so they are way better to view from a Youtube imbed link, rather than uploading the raw video.

It would be great to have the option of size limits for uploads listed as text in each upload area, so people do not waste time uploading something that is too big. I tested that last night, and it took quite a while before I got the error message that the file was too big. I would want the size limits to be able to be listed in each upload area for members on my website.

One thing I did notice, and it may have been because it was 3am and I wasn't doing it right, but when I tested the Add Products function, I accidentally uploaded a photo to the video area. I did not see how to remove my mistake without starting over on the page. It may have just been exhaustion on my part.

Something from Facebook private messaging that I do not like is that you do not have the ability to change or remove what you have typed, like you can in a regular post. I did have a short chat with another Dolphin member a few minutes ago, but now I am not seeing how to access the conversation to test if you can change or remove anything within it. It would be great to have an easily accessible Chat icon at the bottom of the page next to the envelope Mail icon. Just a couple of little features that would make Dolphin way better than Facebook in my humble opinion.

These are a few things I saw that I would like. What I can say is GREAT JOB! Beautiful the way the program resizes in responsive mode, and the way it is set up is really smart. After spending several hours surfing the 7.2 Beta Demo last night, I really love Dolphin and want to buy it for our new business.

The only concerning thing to me is will the plugins work with this new version? We want to also purchase the Dolphin Multiplayer Gamez and Game Zone, which is pretty pricey if it will not work with the new version. I would love to have a definitive answer from someone concerning if the Game Zone will work. I tried to contact the developer, but had no luck. We also want a chat room that can have one or more moderators that is not Flash-based. Those are the only two things we are looking for as additions to this wonderful program to begin with.

Thanks so much, and looking forward to working with you all and learning a lot : )

Tracey