Grips

I am looking at dropping my attempts at using vb on a site.  I have tried other "social software" like phpFox, Socialengine, jcow and a few others.  The forums software seems to be too simplistic for me in these packages.  Socialengine had some plugins but to get everything I need I would be looking at around $1400 or more.

Dolphin has the free version and the paid is reasonable if my site is actually being used.  They seem to support developers more than lets say vb which makes it hard to track down who is doing what.

Right now I have a few questions:

1) Other than a phpAccelerator is there anything else I can do to speed Dolphin up

2) I am looking for a theme to purchase for Dolphin but my googling has not turned anything up that I like. Can anyone suggest some sites? ( No I am not looking for too much Customer design for the simple reason the market is small and I will probably drop the site in a year.  I am using this as a teaching exercise to do a different site in a year. )

3) I am talking to some Dolphin venders regarding "rich snippets".   Does Dolphin have a good overall SEO plugin?

4) Software licensing.  I am always worried about security on the internet and noticed that if I upgrade all the time some software venders charge if their version are to work on the latest version.  Is that norm here?

Oh and one more thing is there only the one Admin panel?  I don't see Moderators in this?  Do i have to create a membership level for that?

1) See this. http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/HostingServerSetupRecommendations

2) Look in the market here on this site. There are plenty of free themes. If you do not see one you like, then you will have to create one of your own.

3) Unsure. SEO is not my area.

4) It depends. Most of the time vendors update for free. It depends most on how much of a difference between dolphin versions there are. Additional costs usually only occur between major updates like dolphin 6 to the current dolphin 7 and may happen again with dolphin 8. But for minor versions like 7.0.0 up to the current 7.1.2 then most of the time no charge.

The license for dolphin however is lifetime. Will work with all current and future versions.

No moderators.

Yes, you can create a membership level for moderators.  You can add some actions such as being able to delete blog posts and comments, etc. for that membership level.  Make the level as a non-purchasable level and assign it manually.

As for the backend; there is a module in the market that will close off sections of the backend for moderators.  For example, you can give the moderator access to just the video module for approving videos; other parts of the backend will not be visible or accessible to the moderator.

I'm confused, is this grips or gripes? 

 just a few selection since they removed the option for Eaccelerator  which worked perfect for me.

Oh well I guess we are going generic.

Revert or only use 7.1.1

eAccelerator dropped dedicated cache features in an older version - selecting it as the cache handler had no effect, beyond the basic stuff it did on its own (which Dolphin couldn't control).  It's still recommended to have it, but shouldn't be listed as a cache handler.

Thanks for the replies.  I have been using vBulletin and been thinking of changing.  I can seen some amazing plugins done for this software.  Different software has different pluses.  It would be nice to have more options available but then that can be too confusing.  I really like the general feel of the software and the Events and Business Directories software look great for what I am trying to do.  It looks like moderation could be an issue but considering that I have issues with plugins messing up my current setup in vB not sure if its a problem.  I bought the Advanced Video Embeded and the organization of the videos is really cool for my app.  Will buy and test the Business Directory and Event software if all goes well I will move software.  Sorry if my posts sound negative I am really comparing this to what I currently have and think this has some amazing apps.