Thread: which community software to use?!?

Hi all,
i'm glad i found this forum!
Have a need for community software where users can create a regular profile and have a blog, events, news, links and comments on the profile, which can also be fed into the home page.
Newsletter to members and rss if possible.


Now i've looked into Dolphin already, but a memeber of the group i am building the site for raised the issue of all the negative comments on the web about Dolphin 6.
Most say the same thing, bad customer support, code is buggy, hard to customise.
Its not all bad, some say they like it!

Now i would prefer an off the shelf package, but Drupal has also been recommended, but why use a cms with plugins if there is software made for the job as needed above.

I would like to know if anyone has had trouble customising the software, changing functionality, design changes and how it operates over time.
If you don't like the software, then why - did you install it yourself or get boonex to install, which i think i will.

If some feedback could be given, that would be great!


regards,

dash333

no such thing as "off the shelf" - not working anyway - sorry to dissapoint you on that one.
However, it seems to me dolphi has pretty much all you need.
Yes support from boonex is pretty much non-existant, but then again we got mms

My advice would be; download dolphin, try it out - after all it IS free...
Play around with it for a week or so and you will see if its the right software to use for your project

Oh almost forgot - i would not let boonex install for me, so of course i would not advice you to let them do it on your site - i just dont trust them enough...

thanks for the feedback.
you recommend them not to install the software, have you had bad experience with them installing the softare?
I would have thought having them install would make sure it is setup properly, not to do a worse job than doing the install ourselves.


It seems odd that a company supply software that is potentially very good, but the company is not very good.

With any community site, we hope for it to be up and running for the next few years. 3 years of updates - don't really need 3 years of constant headaches if the company cannot provide some backup.

Do you have any commmercial sites to look at?

........after reading your post again, can you provide a 'bug free' version of the script? If so, how much, etc.?
thanks in advance.

Also, i can see the same thing happening to Dolphin, as what happened with Mambo and Joomla! People not happy with Mambo, so joomla was made - Dolphin to Octopus..................ahem!!


Sorry, for all the questions and probing, but we have to make a decision soon.

the reason i wouldnt let them install is simply because i do not trust them with the job. Some of the bugs i had to fix on my site was so obvious, they cannot have missed them, and very very easy to fix, so i have to believe the reason for those bugs was to "con" me into paying them to fix it. Such a company wont get anywhere near my server...
If your time-span for perfection is 3 years, by all means go for dolphin, i got my site pretty much how i want it in a few weeks.
And i wouldnt get involved in a bug-free version, as bugs can always pop up at unknow times (just had to fix one yesterday), and im pretty busy with the current project and one more comming. You can however get very far by yourself using this forum. I didnt use anything but mms, and common coding to get my site the way it is now.

hi,
thanks for the feedback.
i am getting more reports of the nastiness of the company.
If it is just a commercial application to them, then make it so and provide software that work.

The site is to be around for about 3 years, but development time is a month or so for the budget.

Baiscally, if Dolphin is going to take longer and is more headache to get it where i need it and to run over a 3 year-ish period, then its a matter of going for another solution - build from scratch - drupal or one of the others - phpfox, etc.