BoonEx, a leader in the Community and Social Networking software market, has release Dolphin 7. Disclaimer: Boonex is an advertiser. Dolphin was developed on a modular system, and BoonEx claims it easy to install default modules, such as a 100% Ajax based forum, file sharing, instant and simple messengers, audio/video chat, mailbox, music and video players, video recorder, a user’s profile customizer and more, and further – to disable them or add other third party modules.
One thing I’ve always said about dating site or community software is that you’re basically buying an administration system. Serving up a profile is easy, it’s the pay-wall, user and communications management that’s complicated. Various forms of security and anti-fraud solutions can make up a large portion of a dating site codebase as well.
A lot of dating software in the past didn’t upgrade easily. Unless your developers were skillful and really knew the system well, the version of Dolphin you built you site on was the version it stayed. This is bad for two primary reasons, functionality and security. You can’t take advantage of new features and hackers can deface or take down your site. This is true for blogs as well, a WordPress blog I host myself was recently hacked because I failed to install a single upgrade.
The ability to skin, or layer a specific design on Dolphin was a problem as well. If Dolphin is truly skinnable and modular, launching a site should require much less effort and expense. I’m going to throw a copy on a box and see how much the installation process and features have changed. Boonex Dolphin isn’t for everyone, but if you are looking for a customizable site-in-a-box, check out the Dolphin site and play around with the live demo. And don’t forget to let us know what you think.
