Back to work (sort of)

@Tavelnotes, you're becoming so negative. Many years ago I enjoyed reading your comments, but more recently you're become a bore.  Are you depressed because the Covid-19 pandemic has virtually ruined your little niche, or do you believe you've just discovered some kind of magic wand? Either way, I would personally appreciate it if you peddled your politics elsewhere. In the Internet world, if you had a broader audience, you would be classified as a Troll.

Nobody has demanded that you or I move over to Cheetah, so I would ask you to please keep your negative comments to yourself. and stop trying to influence me!

Cheetah is not going to happen.

 You can use Dolphin; well now Cheetah since Dolphin is dead, for this.  If the CMS part is you/admins posting articles, then the articles module will handle that for you.

Nothing to do with anything really, but we are discussing alternatives.

I needed a site  for a small club of around 50 members, all of whom detested FB. Dolphin was ideal but complete overkill. I came across a script designed for families and very small groups called Family Connections. It was very limited in what it did but it looked good with an enthusiastic developer offering a lot of promises. Things were slow happening and I lost interest. 

I noticed the script was still available so I downloaded it again to see what improvements had been made in the past several years. It looked identical, but it was worth a second look. It  seemed to install okay on PHP7.2, but the database didn't want to respond to the latest version of MySQL.

Other than that, I like the concept of a "family orientated" script. it would be ideal for church groups which I think it was originally designed for and small clubs.

Not sure how that got mixed up.  Two different Dolphin installations, two different databases.  You can have both on the same dedicated server of course.

 How can you do that? They're chalk and cheese with different missions, which means different page designs, different profile fields, different forum categories. The list goes on. I'm sure a few dolphin users with multiple licenses would love to see it work.

I have two community sites and one adult orientated site. What a mess it would be if the three somehow got mixed up.  Ditto Geek_Girls two site scenario.

Did you mean "You could have a Church group and a Motorcycling group on one 'Dolphin' installation. 

You could have a Church group and a Motorcycling group on one 'Dolphin' installation.

I want a community around the travel content and content for the travel community.

So I need a CMS and Social Networking combination.

I thought Dolphin could do this with the right modules.

I also looked at Joomla (even used Mango way back when) .

:)

I have looked at Drupal in the past as a Content Management platform.  I never cared for it.  I liked Joomla better but Joomla had a steeper learning curve.  Both are CMSes; designed to be good at displaying content.  Dolphin is a social networking platform; Drupal isn't.  Two different tools for two different jobs.  I wouldn't use Cheetah as a CMS just like I wouldn't try to use Drupal as social networking.

Dolphin is a social networking platform.  I could have a Dolphin site that I have set up as a church community site.  The members of the church use it for a number of church related purposes; perhaps we record the sermons each service and post them to the site for members that could not attend a particular service.  I am also a member of a motorcycle riding club and I put up a site for the club for various purposes.  There, I just posted two reasons why someone might have two Dolphin based sites.

Thanks for the subtle sales pitch, Geek_Girl.

I never did understand why anyone would want two Dolphin sites; or one UNA site, for that matter.

I would have gone with an UNA 'upgrade' if it looked like something was moving forward with Boonex over there, but it's a shimmy; a dip of the shoulder and a flick with the outside of the foot.

No, non, pas de tout.

Right now I'm coming to terms with making a costly, Dolphin mistake; a mistake I hope to learn from.

Deano is going back to work, albeit on short-time, in a restaurant.

I know what working away from upgrading an Internet property means. The web waits patiently and dust gathers silently.

Drupal 9 has just been released, so I'm going to play around with that for a while.

Dolphin has taught me a lot about getting in to the database tables and PHP code.  For that I am grateful.

I have also learnt plenty from your posts in the Dolphin forums and always gave a thumbs up, even if I didn't post in the thread itself.

Yes, the decision on what to do moving forward is different for each of us.  What I am hoping is that once we have Cheetah going strong, we can reach out to the past developers and get them to come to Cheetah; their past modules will work and they may have an interest for developing new modules.  Modzzz told me that he does have an interest in Cheetah when it gets to the point he can see promise.  For now, he needs to make money and is working on several different platforms.  As for licensing, your Dolphin license will not get you any future with Dolphin, with UNA, yes.  However, if you wanted two UNA sites; you would have to buy the monthly licensing that Boonex has moved to with both the current Dolphin and UNA.  If you wanted an additional Dolphin site, it is now monthly license.  Cheetah does give you a future for your current Dolphin site; Boonex won't even fix the few simple bugs that is in 7.4.2. 

 And maybe even more of a future than UNA.

Thanks, John.

I missed the 'Sort Ascending' link.

As for Cheetah, I'm not prepared to pay again for a 'licence' to use software that I already purchased (via Dolphin).

There could also be a legal issue to re-use modules developed for Dolphin.

What happens when Cheetah gets going and the modules are left behind (not updated for Cheetah advancement).

Then it's back to 'square one', as they say.

Round holes, square pegs.

This is one of the biggest problem with UNA; one that Boonex keeps ignoring all the cries for them to stop.  Boonex keeps adding in "features" to UNA while still having bugs that haven't been addressed and then introduces more bugs with the new "features."  UNA is up to release 11 when it is actually release 1.1.x.  I am glad to see that you aren't going down the Boonex rabbit hole with releases. 

@TravelNotes:

1. You can click "Ascending/Descending  just below the post heading.  It seems some people like it this way but I also like reading the original post first.

2. Have you run the BETA and tried converting your modules. I've done a few of Modzzz' and Anton's and they all work. You can also convert the database. /Developer Info/Module and Template Conversion Tool.

I think Cheetah has more of a future than Dolphin, which is none!

OK. Having read it backwards.

Good luck with the project. Chat is not important to me. Most of Dolphin rehash is not great without the modules already purchased.

Like many, I made a hefty investment in Dolphin and modzz modules but it's all water under the bridge; as multiple upgrades of everything, in numerous mini steps, is too much a pain.

Can't see me sticking around for Cheetah to catch up with where we were, let alone move forward.

Nice knowing you all.

And then having to read everything backwards.

It makes no sense.

What a pain scrolling to the bottom of a thread to read the opening post.

 OK good news

The final beta is not getting anymore changes. The final is meant to be one last look at it for bugs before the stable release.

So no. I don't intend on putting the new chat module into the beta. It's going to take weeks to finish that module.

I was merely getting a head start on it.

The current version of cheetah is pretty stable and making any more changes now so close to the stable release is not something i would do.

So, i will have the last beta out by this weekend, and at the end of the month if no serious problems are found, then the stable version will be released.

I agree with all these comments, especially improvements for mobile phone usage, which I would consider the most important improvement of them all. I have my own thoughts on how this could or should be done, but EVO is a poor choice because it has taken many features away from the PC user, plus it's not perfect on a phone. I'm not sure how Oxwall did it, but I think it switched to a completely different template when the user opted to use a phone. Responsive is fine provided one user or the other isn't compromised.

I'm on a number of sites that have chat and generally people just talk garbage. In most instances all you see is xxxx has just entered the room, or xxxx has just left the room. Then you have FB were Chat is intrusive. I don't use it because I'm fed up with people wanting to hold a personal chat with me when I log in. I fully realise that some users love the chat facility and and we were overwhelmed with requests to install it on one site with 1,000 members. it was installed and never used.

My post wasn't aimed at the Chat module in particular. It was about staying focused. If people find their way to this site, most won't bother downloading the script because it's a Beta Version. For the average Joe, that means "Don't use it as a working site". Once the phrase "Stable Release" appears, we can all make an effort to attract new users and assist current Dolphin users to migrate. To me that would be a good time to start introducing improvements and changes. In all honesty, it wouldn't phase me if Deano spent a year working on the chat module, provided I had a stable site I could work on in the meantime. However, if I had to wait a year for a stable release to appear, I'd be long gone.

All 3 opinions are correct in my opinion. I do believe on one thing, if Cheetah wants to stand out it needs to offer something different then all other platforms. Video streaming id HUGE now, tagging, places visited, real-time chat, mobile usage(the more mobile friendly the better), uploading files easy via mobile, email notification is ok...but indication on mobile icon of any notification is so much better, people want quickness...they don't want to go to their emails and then click on link to go to post, the quicker the better, most people also don't like to be constantly logging into a site unless they sign out, emoji are HUGE in today's world, humans have become very lazy, the less they have to type...the better for them, do i agree...NOT!! but it's true, if the phone can reach out and brush their teeth...u would be a sensation!!! LOL, but seriously the more mobile the better. Just saying!

First of all, one should understand release cycles.  If the last beta is tested and does not have any bugs, then the final release will come from that without any work.  If a bug or two is found, then it shouldn't be that much to fix those bugs and get the final release out.

There are a few things that would have took Dolphin forward that Boonex never addressed.  Those same things are being asked over on UNA and Boonex half way addresses them by trying to add on third party hacks.  Real time comments; which I pushed hard for and got some help with although their are issues with it; it was never implemented in the Dolphin code (UNA only sort of has real time comments; you get a notice that new comments have been added). Good mobile support, Boonex sort of addressed this with the EVO template; they more or less stopped any work on the mobile app and the mobile builder in the back end was never completed; there were only limited blocks you could add.  A good video chat to replace the old Flash based chat; there Boonex tried to add in Rocket.Chat rebranded as Chat+ with limited Dolphin integration.  On UNA good video chat was asked for time and again; Rocket.Chat was more or less abandon as a solution and instead UNA focused on Jitsi.  Everyone was happy for a bit on UNA until they found out that Jistsi is for video conferencing and the implementation is that a person to person video call can be made.

For Cheetah to be successful, it has to offer what the majority of users want; it has to offer something to attract users to come to Cheetah instead of UNA, instead of Oxwall, instead of Elgg.  I have worked with a lot of users over the years and video chat was wanted by a majority of those uses.  Video chat rooms tightly integrated with Cheetah will be a big selling point.  Chat+/Rocket.Chat was not tightly integrated.  Knowing that there are members already in chat; listed down on the member bar; having your avatar/photo automatically appearing in the chat room; automatically being logged into the chat room are the sort of things that need to be there.

While I understand that there are many different types of websites that one will build with Cheetah and that not all will necessary have any sort of live video features we have to think about Cheetah as a business model.  If Deano doesn't have customers seeing Cheetah as the platform necessary for their project, then they won't come here.  No customers means that Cheetah won't grow in development.  

 Is this a good move?  I realise it's easy to get sidelined, but I feel it would be best to release a bug free and stable working script identical to Dolphin 7.42 so that people can start migrating their sites before you start adding any bells and whistles. I say this because we're all waiting for a fully functional version of Cheetah and not everyone will be making the change because Chat has been improved. That can be one of your first upgrades, and a huge incentive for people to support you.

Once the stable release is out there, people can begin using it with a degree of confidence while you  continue working on making it "different" and better.

Just my thoughts.

Ok. Looks like i will be returning to work on Fridays, starting tomorrow. Right now it's just one day a week to see how things will go at the restaurant. So it should not affect my unemployment, and still leaves plenty of time to work on this.

Oh, and i will be getting the last beta out soon, been working on a chat module the last few days, got on a roll with that and just kept going.