'bout done with this.....

This site has gone in the toilet. Not nearly the interest there used to be and as a result, nothing new comes down the pike EVER.

The fish forum is crap and I've been waiting patiently since 2009 for someone to step up and fix it. Constant bugs and failures throughout. (No one understands that new ideas are NOT as important as getting what you already have working properly) and judging by the snails pace that this project moves along at, I have to assume that there's maybe 2 people, total (or one very industrious individual) actually building the project.

I have grown over these years and I just successfully finished my first web application. The requirements to get it working like I want require that I move back towards Microsoft, Sql Server, Visual Studio and IIS.

I already own a W2K3 machine that sits in my office running and doing nothing. Seems wasteful since I have a very strong 10Mbit commercial wireless connection going to waste that would be perfectly suited to deliver 2 or 3 websites (including my new application efforts). I don't see Dolphin really working well in that environment. I know it's possible but the script already has enough bugs without me introducing IIS to it.

So the decision has been made. Since I get complaints all the time about the lack of functionality within the fish forum, the most used part of my site, and complaints about the other features because of their poor design and lack of true functionality that I am officially dropping my Dolphin project effective in 30 days. It's been fun (and expensive) ....

Deano had some success with a Vanilla integration.  I wonder what happened to that.

I dumped it due to the server requirements mostly. Found that most shared hosting environments would not meet the requirements of vanilla.

It was also not a complete integration. Everyone wanted a complete replacement for orca meaning the groups, store and other dolphin and 3'rd party mods to use it instead of orca.

It was iframed which people did not seem to want. Sorry, but it's really the only way to do it with all forums and still maintain the dolphin headers and footers.

If i do another one it will be phpbb which will run on most servers, or write my own from scratch as a native replacement for orca.

 Dolphin and php run just fine under IIS  been running it for years on IIS 5, 6, 7, and now 8 (server 2012 - windows 8 pro) with no problems .... 

 That is the one thing that has only had such minor changes!! 

Tired of waiting too.

Please do this Deano

skyforum, sorry to hear this, and a shame you feel its wasted so much of your time. 

Ive recently moved many of my projects away from Dolphin, only kept a couple on the go here and thats only as the responsive templates have just been released! Still boonex seems to think they are a waste of time...

I made a ticked for 7.2 to at least humor the idea of integration support (not even a full integration right away).  We'll see where that goes.

Honestly, I don't care if the forums aren't within a Dolphin page, or use the Dolphin headers and footers.  What's most important is that they work.  As in, members are seamlessly shared and their membership levels are converted into forum levels.  If you want the forums to have the Dolphin layout, hire someone to take it further.

What's a fish forum?  What are you going to use instead of dolphin?

One of the biggest problems I see with Boonex is they don't listen to the users.  They make a decision to do something and even if it is the biggest cock-up of all time, they stick with it and it does not matter how much you tell them it is a cock-up and why it is a cock-up it stays.  With the forum recently that has been the autopilot crap.  In practice it is clunky and a horrible way to paginate long topics.  Andrew, there is a good reason that SMF, and phpBB and others are not using it, it stinks.  You never know how many times the topic has been split and there is no way to just jump to the end.  I have encountered this clunky autopilot here on Boonex forums; try going to one that that has been broken eight or ten times, you have to scroll to the bottom of the page before you find out that you have to click to load yet another autopilot topic.  I can see members of a big forum with lots of discussion going on getter rather angry over autopilot.

Technically, it is a mammal but it stinks like dead fish at times.

well d7.1.2 seems to be maybe first somehow usable version of D7. Hope this time boonex dont do what they do all the time - move last about 5-7 issues to another version instead to really fix all in trac for 7.1.2

 He is referring to the original name of the forums, it is a totally separate script in it's self.

The name of it is "Orca," and that of course is really a mammal. 

And, for the spammer.. it's such an easy target yet again.

"Recent Topics :: Orca Forum" is a default page title that is hard to change for most, making a big target to find your forums and attack.

Try this, http://miniurl.com/4PAT

All I want to see in Orca is better moderation and privacy controls.  For example, there shouldn't be a single private forum option, there should be support to limit forums to certain membership levels.

Also, as of 7.1 (and maybe lower), the suffix now says only "Forum".  Orca is now only listed in the module name - it's slowly becoming less of a separate product.

It is true that it is a target for spammers although I have seen spammers posting blog articles as well.  However, it has always been spammers that created an account, I have not seen forum topics appearing without an account attached to them; in other words, no anonymous forum topics appearing (only the ones where a member removed their account).  So that would mean the key is blocking the spam accounts as best as possible.

 'Mammal Forum' just doesn't sound right..... and I hear ya Jay on the IIS. May contact you about it....

What am I going to use? I can do a very nice little forum using phpbb. It certainly won't have th bells and whistles Dolphin has but there are a lot of good mods for it for image uploads, etc. I am looking forward to being able to successfully share individual posts on Facebook, something the fish forum can't do. Also, multi level thread hierarchy is going to give me tons more user permission flexibility.

There's also the fact that it's a tried and true script and virtually bug free. (comparatively speaking)

What is so wrong with "myBB?"

It's nice, I also like PunBB a lot.  But phpBB is the "standard" when it comes to free forums.  I think if someone - cough, BoonEx, cough - were to make an integration, even a basic one, that would be the best route.