why customize?

hello,

i have a question for dolphin users.  why customize your web site with third party or other members mods?  what happens when it comes time to upgrade your dolphin?  all kind of problems could happen right?  isnt is much easier to upgrade and be error free if you have a clean dolphin site?

because in it's original format, it's very generic.

Adding modules and changing things around is the best way to learn about this software.

If all else fails I always know I have a current backup b4 I change sites around..

I AGREE WITH newton27,

by default there is limited facility on dolphin7.

we should complete it with third party modules to make our site more powerfull

I recommend anyone serious about their sites to look into creating development installs.

I totally agree.  I am all for making the site look better.  What happens when your dealing with 10,000 members.  You don't want to be messing around and testing on your production site.  Even if you have a test site to install a new version, what happens if it screws everything up, your screwed.  Everyone seems to have issues upgrading from versions 7.02 to 7.03 what do you do when you have a ton of members?  If you install 100 new features on say version 7.03 and you end up getting 50,000 members.  So then you install 7.04 and all hell breaks loose 50 of the third party mods create problems.  It's scary for me.  Testing messing around, fine I would take the nose dive but when you got over 10,000 members I think it's risky with an unstable software like Dolphin.

I have a system where I compare the upgrade files to my 'live' site using winmerge.

I save my changes to the files that will be use to upgrade the site.

Then I run the upgrade against a test copy of my live site.

After figuring out any required changes and confirming the modified upgrade works on my test site, I then run the upgrade on live.

Also, I have found that a correctly setup template, and well coded modules do not get in the way of upgrades.

Thanks for the info.