Would be nice to have something like it on UNA platform to replace the instant messenger that is in dolphin. Seems like it could be done easily for a good coder. So, I will pay someone to develop this feature for me. Please look at how it works on or if you already know about FreiChat - thats cool. I am looking for ideas for instant messaging between site members that is not based on a block or some other restrictions. I like the idea of chatting from any page - like facesucks.
BuddyPress includes much less unused javascript/css with additional modules turned off. For all these reasons, I can say that the quality of the BuddyPress code is much higher and more optimized than that of BuddyBoos.
Boonex Dolphin Modules Nulled Code
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Dolphin vs phpFox vs Joomla vs Drupal vs Ning vs Kickapps for Your Social Networking SitePriceInstallationOut of Box FunctionalityEase of Customizations & AdministrationSEOMaintenanceFrontend Look, Feel and usabilitySupportFinal Grade SummaryAll PagesIn the rush to create the next MySpace or the next Facebook, many people have created social networking sites in hopes the sites will become hot commodities they can sell for millions. So which platform is best for you to start your new social networking site?You can enter into the game as a coder and write a platform from scratch (probably the best way to go) or you can use prebuilt software and get up and running in a few weeks, maybe even a few days. So what is the best Social Networking software currently available? Considering you are a slightly above average person when it comes to technology and writing code, writing a social networking platform from scratch, although probably the best thing to do, is not economical and not a wise use of your time. The next best solution is to use a prepackaged solution. This review is going to give you an overview of some of the more popular solutions to help you decide which approach is better for you. The focus of this review will be on Boonex's Dolphin 6.0, PHPFox 1.6, Joomla 1.0.15, Drupal 5.15, Ning, and Kickapps. Hopefully the review will help you save time, energy, hair, and money when deciding which software to use for your social networking and community web sites. PriceOne of the most important attritubtes of any piece of software is the price. It may be the best software ever written, but if you can't afford it, what good is it to you?* Dolphin - $100 for the core but you will have to buy more modules as the marketing on their web page is misleading. The software is very componentized and each of the components will cost you more money, especially if you want to take down the Dolphin branding and ads.* phpFox - $300 for the core and another $75 to remove "Powered by phpFox"* Joomla - $0 for the core and a few of the modules required for social networking are commercial. Still a very minimal cost.* Drupal - $0 and every module we used to build a social networking site was free.* Ning - Free to startup a social network, but you must pay to remove Ning branding, ads, etc. Price can easily reach $50 PER MONTH or more.* Kickapps - Free to startup a community site but you have the option to "buy out" Kickapps. One package is $300 per month with up to 20,000 page/widget views. Surely you want your network to get more than 20,000 views so imagine what the price is for a successful, busy network.InstallationFirst, the installation of the product. If you can't get it installed, it definitely won't be for you to use on for your social network.* Dolphin - Installed without any hiccups. It does a good job of checking your server for the proper prerequisites and the installation wizard was nice. The admin and frontend appeared to be functional immediately after installation.* phpFox - Installed perfectly AFTER we changed a few settings in our .htaccess file. Hmmm, if that was cryptic to you, then you can pay the phpFox guys $75 and they will install the product for you on your server. Pay for the product, and pay them to install it for you. But once the changes were made to our .htaccess file, all went smooth. Great wizard for installation.* Joomla - The installation wizard is good and you will have a working Joomla core installation once you complete the wizard. However, the core is only the beginning as you will need a few components added to the core to get a community site. Installing all the templates, plugins, components, and modules takes some time and all are installed using different menus. Each installed component, module, and plugin must be individually configured as well. The installation of the items works, but it is very tedious.* Drupal - The installation wizard for Drupal is good and is very similar to Joomla in that you have a core installation staring you in the face once you complete the install. You will have to install at least 20 modules to get a social networking site setup and each module is configured separately. Tedious process but Drupal is surprisingly powerful and flexible, especially considering it is free.* Ning - Not really much to install here. Just register on the Ning web site and start adding content to your social network.* Kickapps - The Kickapps install can be a standalone community site, or you can integrate it into your existing site. Kickapps claims to integrate with Drupal, Joomla, and they have an API you can use to integrate their code into your custom coded site. The integration with Drupal and Joomla was flaky at best and the API has name changes which is just downright unacceptable! Don't release an API in one version and change function/method names in the next version without warning. Big no no in software engineering!OOB (Out of Box) FunctionalityThe OOB functionality of the software is how close you are to having a functional social networking site after the installation process is complete.* Dolphin - Your site is ready to go once you are done with the installation. You can setup groups, classifieds, etc and tweak the site, but you have a community site that is functional after you complete the installation.* phpFox - Your social networking web site is complete after the installation is complete. You can tweak the site, but phpFox provides a functioning social networking site once installation finishes.* Joomla - You have a Joomla core ready to run. You can submit articles, create news feeds, edit content, publish content ... wait, we need a social network. This is software for a digital newspaper! Correct but with some major tweaking and addition of extensions, you will have a social network. Joomla core provides you with about 40% of the code needed to run a community site. The major component you will need to add to Joomla is Community Builder. Community Builder and its plugins (yes, Community Builder has plugins as well as Joomla core has plugins so make sure you install CB plugins in CB and Joomla plugins in Joomla!) gives you avatars, the ability to make connections (friends), profiles, photo galleries, etc.* Drupal - Drupal core provides about 25% of the code necessary to make a community site. Drupal provides a forum which absolutely has to be replaced with Advance Forum if you want to keep a forum on your site. Drupal provides a simplified version of profiles, blogging, image upload, etc all of which can be enhanced due to Drupal's flexibility. You will need to download a bunch of modules with the main ones being Views, CCK, Organic Groups, TinyMCE (WYSIWYG editor), and Captcha (stop SPAM). There are a host of other modules to add to Drupal to get things working like you want them.* Ning - Ning is like the Microsoft of social networking platforms. Everything is point and click and works well as long as you don't try to do anything that is not within the normal realm of point and click. You have a function site as soon as you register and all that is required is supplying content.* Kickapps - Out of the box, Kickapps gives you the ability to upload video, audio, add friends, etc. They are very similar to Ning if you prefer to keep everything on the Kickapps servers and will require a little more tweaking if you want to integrate Kickapps into an existing site.Ease of Customizations & AdministrationNow we have an installation of the product completed, how easy is it to customize this baby for my needs? Every great piece of social networking software should have a nice, easy administration area for customizations. Each platform reviewed allowed for CSS customizations through the admin panel, a plus! Many others we tried forced customization of colors and css by hand on disk.* Dolphin - Wow! This product has so many bugs in it! A few of the panels in the Admin don't even configure anything. Moderators, for example, are not functional at all! You add people to the Moderators but they can't moderate anything. The Page Builder is a great tool when you are reading the marketing materials. However, to use the Page Builder is useless. It can only change or modify about 6 of the pages on the site while the other 50 are ... well ... not easily customized. Many of the labels you want to change for the fields are stored in the database. Others are stored on disk. Which are and which aren't will be your guess. Adding banners to Dolphin in useful locations is next to impossible. The banner manager only allows for 4 different positions and the positions are set in stone for all your pages. What if some pages have 1 column while others have 2 and others have 3 columns? Luckily Dolphin provides a usable site after installation because Administration and customization is a nightmare! You have total control over the code once downloaded but changing anything is like driving a dull knife through your skull.* phpFox - Administration and customization is not easy with phpFox, but it is not as bad as Dolphin. Changing colors is hard and tedious but must be done unless you purchase a theme with the colors you want. Luckily the labels for all the fields are stored in the database and you can get to the from the admin panel. Adding new pages and changing code is possible, but not easy.* Joomla - Joomla administration is pretty easy and straightforward. The downside to Joomla administration is that initial setup of all the components, modules, etc is VERY tedious. You have total control over most of the Joomla code and tweaking is pretty simple. Find and replace in most instances, if-else in others.* Drupal - Administration is difficult at first. The learning curve associated with being a Drupal Administrator vs any of the other social networking platforms is VERY steep. However, once you have a grip on the terminology (nodes, taxonomy, etc) used in Drupal, you may very well not want to ever try another product for any of your projects. The customizations available with Drupal are unlimited ... well, limited only by if there is already a module to do it or the expertise to write the code for a new module. With this product, you have total control over everything. All you need is a person who can code PHP to fit into the well defined infrastructure in place for Drupal.* Ning - Administration is very easy but customization is limited. You can change colors and where the blocks of content are laid out on the page but that is it. Any other customizations will cost you (ads, domain name mask, etc). The administration area in Ning is easy to use and laid out so it is very understandable. Ning is a remotely hosted solution, so forget about changing their code.* Kickapps - The administration area of a Kickapps affiliate site could use some work. Not all options available in the documentation is available for modification in the admin area. Changing the stylesheets to match an existing site is a tough task too. Removing the ads or injecting your own will cost a pretty penny. We also noticed Java stacktraces on a number of occasions. Luckily this is the backend and not something your users will see. Creating widgets is getting easier with Kickapps, but is still not as intuitive as it needs to be. Since widgets are their selling point over at Kickapps, they need to get this down to a few clicks and voila, you have a widget. Kickapps is a remotely hosted solution so forget about changing their source code.Search Engine Optimization (SEO)What good is a great community if no one can find it? You have to have great SEO so your network shows up near the top of searches performed in Google, Yahoo! & MSN. Pretty URLs, tag clouds, and meta tags, although not used by many any more, are important.* Dolphin - Dolphin has pretty URLs for much of its content. The major beef with Dolphin is its inconsistency in naming URLs and there is no flexibility in how the URLs are named. Some files end in .php while others do not have an extension at all. Keywords and description are all set globally. A tag cloud is available to help with keyword density.* phpFox - phpFox is pretty good with naming its URLs in a very consistent manner. Meta tags and descriptions are set globally with no control over each page's tags. Like Dolphin, a tag cloud can be displayed to increase keyword density.* Joomla - SEO in Joomla is fantastic. There was one minor change to the core code which made the SEO even better. The sh404sef component makes managing SEO in Joomla a snap. You have control over how each and every article is tagged. You can also control the extension used on the URLs or choose to not display an extension. A tag cloud module is available to help with SEO as well.* Drupal - The SEO modules in Drupal make managing SEO in Drupal almost as flexible as Joomla and sh404sef. Actually, Drupal is as flexible, maybe even more flexible with the powerful Token module. Token, Pathauto and a few additional modules will give you complete control of the meta tags for each page and the URL alias for each page. Tag clouds are available too.* Ning - SEO is controlled completely by Ning. You are allowed to set global keywords and description but that is about it. If SEO isn't working for you on Ning, you have to wait and hope the next release contains improvements.* Kickapps - Well, Kickapps has a LONG way to go with SEO. They do give you better keywords and description control on each page although no one can seem to figure out where the content is coming from. The HUGE drawback with Kickapps and SEO is the atrocious looking URLs generated for your community. Query strings galore just do not make for good search engine indexing.MaintenanceEven if you buy the best car on the road, it will still require routine maintenance. The same is true with any code you buy, grab from open source, or even if it is remotely hosted. How much downtime and headaches will you experience with these software platforms and routine maintenance? All 4 of our locally hosted solutions provide an off-line mechanism which takes your site down while you perform maintenance. Taking the site off-line is a best practice and should be followed each and every time you prepare to perform maintenance on your installation.* Dolphin - Dolphin upgrades will probably take about 10 minutes if all goes well. You have to manually change the version number and you must update the database. If you have made any changes to the core code, you will need to use a diff program as the upgrade is simply copy new files on top of the old ones.* phpFox - phpFox requires uploading a copy of the entire product again and going through the installation process. If the change made to get the install to work initially bit you, prepare to get bitten a gain by the upgrade process.* Joomla - Joomla provides an upgrade pack as well as the full install. If you haven't made any changes to the core files, you are in for an easy time upgrading your Joomla installation. However, you have to ensure the extras you have installed are also compatible with the new version of the core Joomla you are upgrading. If they are not, the add-on will need to be upgraded as well. Many of the extensions you install in Joomla provide their own upgrade process which can be inconsistent across modules, components or plugins. So learn the extensions you install and you will need to be familiar with what it takes to upgrade them. The upgrade pack can also be used along with a diff program to perform the upgrade. We achieved great results upgrading core Joomla this way.* Drupal - If you have not modified the Drupal core, deleting all the core files and laying down the new upgrade files will work. The main gotcha with a Drupal upgrade is to ensure you have backed up custom files and uploads due to the fact you will delete the core. Once files are replaced, the update.php script is executed in your browser and the upgrade is complete. Learn the files and folders you should backup before upgrading and a Drupal upgrade will involve very little pain.* Ning - Remotely hosted solutions are maintained by the remote host, not you, the site owner. Any bugs fixes or upgrades are handled by Ning. Be sure you have some sort of backup of your site because Ning has been known to roll out new code with customers as guinea pigs.* Kickapps - Kickapps is generally good for fixing bugs. However, they fix the bugs without much testing and negative side effects are not uncommon! During this experiment, Kickapps rolled out a brand new version of their code right on top of us and broke vital pieces of the test site. The renamed api method calls which crippled our custom application! Luckily it was only a test site!Frontend Look, Feel, Usability (any glaring bugs?)Why build a great social networking site if no one can figure out how to use it? Keep in mind we are comparing software originally written for dating (Dolphin & phpFox) and CMS (Joomla & Drupal) and turning them into social networking platforms. So although you can blog with the software, Wordpress will knock the socks off any of them when it comes to blogging. But Wordpress can never be social networking software. So with that in mind:* Dolphin - Looks very good. However, there are so many bugs in this software. The forum only works in IE. You have to change code to get it to work in any of the other browsers as the forum is all XML! The TinyMCE editor is broken and always tries to send gzipped content. Many times, the editor does not show up on pages and you get a blank box. The broken TinyMCE instance also breaks administration of a few items on the backend. Huge setback for Dolphin, but should be easy enough for them to fix in future releases. We fixed it on our system so surely they can fix their product? A HUGE mistake on the part of Dolphin is including Social Bookmarks in places where they are not visible! We were 2 to 3 clicks into a profile or gallery component before there was a Share It link! Not only was the link buried, but many of the included bookmarklets did not work (shadows.com is a parked domain)! One plus for Dolphin is the Video Chat which none of the others seem to incorporate.* phpFox - Easy to use with only a few glitches. Simple interface for everything and pretty much works for anything your users will want to do. We had a small problem with chat, but who uses that anyways? The look and feel is very simple with phpFox which is why it probably works. phpFox had the best events calendar of the bunch. It had a HUGE bug in version 1.5, but we used 1.6 for our test site and it performed well.* Joomla - The 2nd best looking product out of the box, but can easily be made to be the best looking product with the templates available on the internet. Many people are designing templates for Joomla so a bad looking Joomla site is unacceptable. Stay away from too much Javascript, Ajax, etc as it may not function in everyone's browsers the way you think. Keep the technology simple when choosing a template and you will be fine. There are too many good looking Joomla templates that function without all the sliding this, and peel back that effects! The forum portion of Joomla is Fireboard which also integrates with Community Builder. It's a little clumsy at first, but with some tweaking is probably the best forum component of these players.* Drupal - Very simple looking on the frontend. Even the paid templates were simple looking. Which is probably why Drupal just works! There has not been a lot of time spent on creating extravagant templates that don't work. Instead, get a "clean" template that works! Drupal and "clean" go hand in hand. The core Forum is not good enough to compete with the other products so Advance Forum must be installed. Drupal's user interface is not going to win any beauty contests, but will function very well and is intuitive to the frontend users. Drupal also does not have the TinyMCE editor many of your users will be used to using. Install it!* Ning - Point and click for the users. The interface is the same on each and every Ning site so once a Ninger, always a Ninger. Just like the Microsoft File, Edit, ... menus. Easy upload of photos, videos, etc. The one drawback I have noticed with Ning is their users prefer to use backgrounds that render the sites unusable! You can't read the text once they put up these hideous backgrounds!* Kickapps - Point and click for the users but not as easy as Ning. Easy upload of photos, videos, etc, but not as easy as Ning.SupportProbably the single most overlooked aspect of deciding on software platform for a community site is the support you will receive when you run into problems, and you will run into problems if you plan on customizing anything! You need to know how fast you can get support and how good the support is. Look at the forums for each product to see how active they are and how many questions actually get answered.* Dolphin - Well, these guys win last place for their support or lack there of! Their forums are terrible at best and loaded with spammers and hackers waiting for your questions! Once you post a question, developers/hackers will reply with a fix for money solution. Give them some money, and they will fix the problem for you. It's as if Boonex released this product full of bugs so they can make money as developers who can fix it for you!* phpFox - Pretty darn good support here except for our installation issue. They had no documented answers so we had to doc them some points for their lack of support on the issue. The response we received from them was a clueless one, but we did notice countless other posts where the users did get answers.* Joomla - Very good support from the community although we seem to ask questions that couldn't be answered. Reading through other posts would lead me to believe that their support community is very good though.* Drupal - The best we have seen so far. Drupal is not easy to learn, but there are people out there who are willing to help, for free because they believe so strongly in the platform they want to convert you to a Drupal lover! Support for modules, core and themes was excellent and each and every question we had was answered!* Ning - Well, submit the question, sit back and wait, and just move on with whatever bug is bugging you. No support from Ning or you get a canned response that makes absolutely no sense. It's a simple platform and shouldn't need much support and it doesn't have much support!* Kickapps - Support is there but for simple questions. None of our questions were answered and the forum is hard to understand. No timestamps so when was the question posted? I have the same problem today, but can't tell when the original poster posted the question? What version of Kickapps is the original question for ... no idea! Very poor setup for the forum. Their dedicated support team provides free support but the provide answers that are free of substance! We did not try the paid support, but it can't be much better as the same people provide free and paid support!Final Grade SummaryDolphin phpFox Joomla Drupal Ning KickappsBoonex Dolphin phpFox Joomla Drupal Ning KickappsOur Configuration Core + Ray + Orca 1 yr license Core + License/Brand Removal Core + Community Builder + sh404sef + host of other components, modules, and plugins. Core + host of modules Core + Premium Services (limited by disk space & bandwidth) Core + Small Business Package (limited by # of users)Price for Our Tests $500 $375 $80 $0 $65/month $100/monthInstallation A+ A B B A COOB Functionality A A C C- A ACustomizations D+ C B+ B D DAdministration C- A- B B A- BSEO B B A- A C DMaintenance D C B B N/A N/ASupport F B+ A- A+ D- D+Look & Feel & UsabilityForum D- A B+ A- B- N/ABlog C B C B B BPhotos B+ B+ C B B A-Groups B B+ C A- N/A B+Chat/IM A- B+ C C N/A N/AVideos B B- C B A- A-Events B B B+ C B N/APolls B+ A B+ A- N/A N/A Tags: 2ff7e9595c
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