Dolphin 7 Alpha Notes and Observations (in progress)

BoonEx has released it's Alpha version of Dolphin 7 and it was just as they had said it would be. There were more classes and as it appears a better way to make modules and extensions for Dolphin. Here's the download for Dolphin 7 alpha as of June 12, 2009.

These are two key items that from a programmer's point of view that will help make Dolphin more popular and extensible. Namely, the ability to standardize the install of modules and keeping all the classes in smaller and tighter bundles. In essence Dolphin 7 has the beginnings of a common framework. Organizationally, it looks much better. Below are some other observations:

Dolphin has a several different types of users. Some are hobbyist, designers, developers, programmers, small business and media companies. Yes, the market range is that vast and the expertise definitely varies from group to group.

For the hobbyist, alpha is not the way to go as it is too raw to be of any use. I say stick to 6.1.4/6 version of Dolphin. If you can't find a downloadable version, check outdialme.com. The site keeps track of the versions of Dolphin. I think he has a few downloads going back to 5.x.

For designers, developers and monkey-coders this alpha version of Dolphin 7 is a tease. It gives you just enough to get it working but not much more as it really is an intro to the admin side of things. The front end is incomplete and raw. But fear not, there is a public SVN that has been made availble. However, the SVN as of June 20, 2009 is not accessible. So what does this mean? It means you will need to download the .zip file at the bottom of the page. Here's the location of the Dolphin 7 SVN. To be of any real use, it needs to be set up on an SVN server or the current install needs to allow developers to connect via an SVN client. If anyone is interested in a basic SVN tutorial, I will post it if I can get enough interest.

For programmers, well it's a big munch. You will notice that compared to the class listing for Dolphin 616, Dolphin 7's class listing is much more extensive. You can see the class and functions listing for Dolphin 6.1.6 here and the class and functions listing for Dolphin 7 alpha here. I used phpdocumenter to list the various classes and functions straight from the file. I will be notating it as I find more info. It's the same as in D6 except there's much more to work with. What's great about classes that programmers can extend the class to customize it to their needs. However at this time, there is no documentation for any of the classes and functions. I am so hoping that will change with Poseidon.

Above: Dolphin 7 Alpha - List of classes and functions. There are a lot of classes and some new functions.
Dolphin 6.1.6 list of functions and classes is available here.

For media companies, don't even touch this unless you have the money for research, development and you have your own team of coders. This is as raw as they come and it would not be a good idea to use any type of alpha to do anything. Good for testing tho and for poking around. Stick to D6 and it's various flavours. I've had a lot of success with Dolphin 6.1.4.

Dolphin 7 packs more functions than previous versions and that's good news for the hobbyist, designer or developer who just can't do without the social net toys. For modders and programmers, Dolphin 7 opens up a way to standardize how they can deliver their mods or apps whether free or pay. With the new modules standard, I trust it Dolphin will follow the path of Joomla and WordPress with regards to how others can add to the current set of functions.

In conclusion, I think the Dolphin 7 alpha is acceptable to look at as a preview (as per BoonEx's notes) in the admin section and also how the code was structured. It's also a way for programmers to take the module/extension paradigm for a quick spin. There is an example file within the modules folder one can take a look at. I've had a chance to roll my own and it was pretty easy. I just took the example file and poked around until I got a simple mod to work. You know, the standard "Hello World" test. It may seem uneventful, but the tiny step will mean great things for both free and fee-based mods.

...sip...

Permalinks

A permalink is a search engine friendly version of the links that are generated on your site. Instead of using a query string, permalinks will display relevant named pages.

What Does a Query string look like?

A query string is a set of name/value pairs that gets passed to a Web page. For example, this is a query string:
http://www.boonexnerd.net/dolphin/orca/?action=goto&cat_id=12

Can you see the ?,& and = signs? Those are what make up the name/value pairs. Now compare that with a permalink and you will see that permalinks is easier to understand.

Here's what a permalink looks like:

http://mywebnerd.com/mytestsite/test

In terms of search engine friendliness, the permalink has more relevancy and can be visually identified much easier than a query string.

You can work with the predefined values by doing the following:

1. Login as admin and go to Settings > Permalinks
2. You will see a list of settings such as:
   • Enable friendly profile permalinks
   • Enable friendly articles permalinks
   • Enable friendly news permalinks
   • Enable friendly blogs permalinks
   • Enable friendly events permalinks
   • Enable friendly classifieds permalinks
   • Enable friendly gallery photos permalinks
   • Enable friendly gallery music permalinks
   • Enable friendly gallery videos permalinks
   • Enable friendly groups permalinks

Each setting is activated by selecting the checkbox. When you select the checkbox a check mark will appear. This means it will be active. The permalink function in Dolphin requires that you have the proper .htaccess configured. The default install of Dolphin has it built-in. This feature may not work with all Web hosting accounts. It will require that you turn off permalinks.

Meta Tags

Meta Tags is a basic way to get search engines to crawl your site. Dolphin allows you to add meta tags to your pages dynamically.

You can work with the predefined values by doing the following:

1. Login as admin and go to Settings > Meta Tags
2. You will see a list of settings such as:
   • Insert Meta description on site pages - Enter a brief description of your site giving an overview of what your site is about.
   • Insert Meta keywords on site pages (comma-separated list) - Enter a series of 10 - 15 keywords that are relevant to your site.

Database Pruning

Database Pruning allows you to choose items related such profile uploads, activation, confirmation and so forth to prune or limit the time the data stays in the database. This is a useful feature if you have a very active site.

You can work with the predefined values by doing the following:

1. Login as admin and go to Settings > Database Pruning
2. You will see a list of settings such as:
   • Clean old messages ( days ) - Indicates the numbers of days that has to expire until old messages are cleared. The default value is 180.
   • Clean old private messages ( days ) - Indicates the numbers of days that has to expire until private messages are cleared. The default value is 2.
   • Clean old profiles by last log in ( days ) - Indicates the numbers of days that has to expire until profiles are cleared. The default value is 180. This means that if a member does not login after 180 days, the profile is deleted.
   • Clean old profile views ( days ) - Indicates the numbers of days that has to expire until profiles views are cleared. The default value is 180.
   • Clean old greetings ( days ) - Indicates the numbers of days that has to expire until greetings are cleared. The default value is 90.

Each setting can be adjusted by simply updating the number of days you require. The number you enter indicates the number of days the pruning or deleting of database entries related to the setting is delete. Once deleted you will not be able to restore it.

Moderation Settings

Moderation Settings allows you to choose items related such profile uploads, activation, confirmation and so forth.

You can work with the predefined values by doing the following:

1. Login as admin and go to Settings > Moderation Settings
2. You will see a list of settings such as:
   • Moderation Settings can be set such as:
     Automatic profile activation after joining - If checked, a member will not require moderation after joining. Their profile will be immediately active.
   • Do not change profile status after photo uploading
   • Do not change profile status after editing profile information
   • Do not change profile status after sound uploading
   • Do not change profile status after video uploading
   • Automatic photo activation after uploading - If checked, a member will not require moderation by the admin.
   • Automatic profile confirmation without Confirmation Email - If checked, a member will not require an e-mail confirmation after joining.
   • Each setting is activated by selecting the checkbox. When you select the checkbox a check mark will appear. This means it will be active.

Polls Settings

Polls Settings allows you to choose items related such as member polls, number of polls and so forth.

You can work with the predefined values by doing the following:

1. Login as admin and go to Settings > Polls Settings
2. You will see a list of settings such as:
   Enable members polls - Checkbox indicates whether members are given the permission to create their own polls.

Number of polls that user can create - Indicates the number of polls a member can create.

Enable profile polls activation - Checkbox indicates if the polls will be included in the member profile page.

Tags Settings

You can control tags that you don't want to be entered as tags. These include redundant strings. There are two settings:
Non-parsable tags (type all tags in lower case, delimit them by comma)

You can work with the predefined values by doing the following:

1. Login as admin and go to Settings > Tags Settings
2. You will see a list of settings such as:
   Non-parsable tags (type all tags in lower case, delimit them by comma) - This is a list of words that you do not want to tag. These are words that are typically not unique. There is a list of words included by default that will flood the relevancy of tagging.

Minimum rating of tag to show it - Indicates a value that will consider a word to be taggable. The higher the number the more relevancy it requires.

Groups Settings

Groups Settings allows you to choose items related such as gallery images, invitation text, approvals and so forth.

You can work with the predefined values by doing the following:

1. Login as admin and go to Settings > Group Settings
2. You will see a list of settings such as:
   • Gallery max image width - Indicates the maximum width of a submitted gallery image.
   • Gallery max image height - Indicates the maximum height of a submitted gallery image.
   • Gallery max image thumb width - Indicates the maximum width of a submitted gallery thumb image.
   • Gallery max image thumb height- Indicates the maximum height of a submitted gallery thumb image.
   • Group invitation text - The invite text that an invited person will receive.
   • Group member approve notification - The notify text that an approved member will get once they have been approved by the group creator.
   • Group member reject notification - The notify text that a rejected member will get once they have been approved by the group creator.
   • Request message to group creator - The notify text that a group creator will get when someone tries to join the group creator's group.

News Settings

News Settings allows you to choose items related such as maximum length of news headers, news items, news previews, news text and so forth.

You can work with the predefined values by doing the following:

1. Login as admin and go to Settings > News Settings
2. You will see a list of settings such as:
   • Maximum length of news header - Indicates how many characters appear in the news header or title. The default is 50.
   • Maximum number of news items to show on homepage - Indicates how many blogs will appear on the front page via the display block. The default is 2.
   • Maximum length of news preview- Indicates how many characters appear as the preview to the blog. The default is 128.
   • Maximum length of news text - Indicates how many characters appear as news text. The default is 4096.
   • Maximum length of story header - Indicates how many characters appear as the preamble to the news store header. The default is 300.
   • Maximum length of story preview text - Indicates how many characters appear as the preamble to the news text. The default is 400.
   • Maximum length of story text - Indicates how many characters can be submitted. The default 4096 characters is the standard 1 pager.