should I use an SSL certificate?

How do I completely prevent hackers? Will an SSL certificate do the job?

No SSL certs will not protect against hackers.

To answer your question. I do not believe that there is a fool proof way to prevent hackers from certain activity. Just the fact that they can enter into your site through your members accessing it and they can piggyback or have your members put codes that can be activated when someone like you click on a file, photo or video.

  You can protect your site. Back it up daily. Both your database and your html. Make sure that your computer files and your website administration is only available to your personal IP address. You can double password protect your computer files. Also make sure that your htaccess files are in place. Make sure your computer is virus protected. Do not open emails or files from a computer that have access to your main system or passwords. Change your passwords often. Use firewalls or routers which use particular ports.

Anyone want to add feel free, but my experience has been if they want and are good enough they can hack. Not sure why they would pick on small fries, when they can hit a bank, government or wall street accts.

Good luck

Thank You.

90% of the hacking that goes on is automated, it's scripts people have running that comb the net looking for vulnerable files or certain scripts like Wordpress, Phpbb etc. 

You can stop almost all of the generic attacks by installing mod_security on your server.

Well, I bought a private SSL for my site. I'd just hire the service VPS and was starting to create my website Dolphin. I was a total noob in Dolphin.

Honestly, I do not recommend. First because the file structure Dolphin does not allow the use of an SSL property. Even if you put your file 'join', for example, within your SSL, it will not work properly because support files will be left out. With this, two things may occur:

1 - the page is not loaded correctly by the browser.

2 - the browser issues a warning of risk in relation to SSL on your site, since some files on that page are not loaded within SSL.

(at least that's what happened to me)

In summary .... I think it's a waste of money to buy a SSL for your Dolphin site. At least this current version of Dolphin.

Use your money to buy an anti-spam module that will be most helpful.

 I have one 100% solution, http://www.boonex.com/m/bot-stopper-automatic-spam-fighter .

Such a seemingly small price to pay for 100% protection against bots and spammers with IP blocking. 

To simply explain, bots fill out a join form in seconds, maybe less... this module is all about how long that takes, not only the join form, but site wide. Instant clamp down, forever.

SSL only protects you and your member that data transmitted to your site or back can be read by anybody else (Man in the middle attack), nothing else. But after the "Snowden files" I even suggest everybody not to use any US or UK based SSL authorities anymore.

If u need protection against hackers use a dedicated/root server and know what you do. Do code audits of every third party module you install and keep track of every changes made to dolphin in the track/ticket system on boonex.com

My host provider recommended this:

https://www.cloudflare.com

 Typo

Cloudflare protects you against DDOS attacks but also lil bit against known vulnerabilities. But it still not protects you against unknown security bugs in dolphin or third party modules.