Dolphin is an open-source community building software. It can be used for development of dating sites and social network portals. It provides various features which will allow the webmasters to build web sites similar to Facebook, Youtube, MySpace, Flickr and others.
The application provides different tools like chats, multimedia functionality, forums, groups, e-mail functionality, events and much more.
Dolphin Community Software is a scalable, open source, downloadable and independent and having platform with rich contents for producing exceptional dating websites, social networking and web community websites. There are countless features such as recorder, video chat, forums, events, mailbox, video player, video sharing, desktop app, iPhone app, photo sharing and many other things to be received from, to be utilized and to make profits.
You need not to be an expert to install it. Its very easy. You can install Dolphin with a single click using Softaculous, provided by your web host.
How to customize Dolphin according to your needs :
1. Customize logo :
Create your logo on your local machine. Once you have your logo created and saved to your local computer, you upload it via Admin>Settings>Basic Settings>Logo. There is an option to “Enable resizing” and settings for the width and height – deselect this option. If you want to resize your image, do it using a graphics program instead or you will slow down the loading of every page of your site.
2. Change Site Title :
Go into Admin>Settings>Basic Settings and look under “Main Settings,” type in your Site Title. This is what will show at the top of your browser window. Or you can simply choose the Site name on the install form when installing via Softaculous.
3. Change your Copyright :
Change your Copyright to your company name or site name using the Language Settings. Admin>Settings>Language Settings>Manage Keys, type “copyright” into the search box and click the box next to Apply. Click the Edit link next to _copyright (System).
In the popup edit box, edit it as you want. “©” is the code for the copyright symbol. “{0}” is the code for the current year.
4. Customize banners :
Customize your rotating Promo Banners by creating your own personalized images with the dimensions of 994px x 262px. Add and/or delete banners, or even switch to an html reloader, in Admin>Basic Settings>Promo. There are several free graphic editors available if you don’t have one.
5. Personlise your page design:
Unless the default look of Dolphin’s design is exactly what you want your site to look like, you’re going to want to personalize your Dolphin’s design in order to make your site your own. Personalizing your Dolphin’s design can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be, depending on how many elements you want to change. In order to keep your customizations intact, make sure that any design changes you make are on in your own Template files (UNI or create your own) rather than in the Base Template files. When Dolphin upgrades are released, they will upgrade the Base files and overwrite your customizations.
- Here are a few ways you can personalize your site’s design :
To change your Template: Admin>Advanced Settings>Template.
There are free and purchasable templates available in the Boonex Market (http://www.boonex.com/market/category/templates).
There are free and purchasable templates available at various websites, just google “Dolphin Templates”.
Make sure that any template you install is compatible with your installed version.
It is recommended making sure that the Template designer/developer offers support for their template, otherwise if something goes wrong you are on your own and there is next to no documentation or support available for Templates.
To create your own template visit : http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/DolDesign.
6. Personalize your Page Layout :
- Navigation Menu:
You can customize your Navigation Menu via Admin>Builders>Navigation Menu, where you can adjust which menu items will show in the top nave menu for which users.
Active Items are items which are in your menu currently.
Inactive items are items which are not in your menu currently (or repeats of ones that are in your menu currently!) but can be placed in your menu by dragging them to the Active Items area.
Blue Items are the top level Navigation Menu listings (the ones you see on your menu)
Green items are the secondary Navigation Menu listings (the ones you see in a dropdown menu when you hover over the main listings and that appear in the submenu when you navigate to the top level page)
Red items are system level menu listings, they will show when navigating to certain pages but do not show on the main navigation menu.
Here you can use the grey grabber part of any one of the items to rearrange the menu items into the order you prefer. In the Navigation Menu Builder, you can control how your Navigation. - Menu looks on your site :
To control the order of menu items, grab the grey grabber bar on the side of the item and drag it to where you want it to be. You can rearrange the top level items to control the order of tabs in your main menu and the secondary levels to control the order of items in the dropdown menus.
To control what menu items visitors and members of your site see, click on the hyperlinked name of the menu item. A popup edit box will appear where you can select/deselect visibility for Guests and Members.
To change the text of menu items, click on the hyperlinked name of the menu item and make note of the Language Key for that item.
Go to Admin>Settings>Language Settings>Manage Keys and enter the Language Key you found in the Nav Menu edit box above, click the box next to Apply. The language key will appear, click the edit button next to it. In that edit box, you can change the language key in the box labeled “String text for English language:” to whatever you want to appear in the Navigation Menu.
To change from text to icons in your menu, double click on the name of the item and simply add an icon in the edit box.
7. Page Access Control :
Much in the same way that the Navigation Menu controls allow you to control what Navigation Menu items are visible to visitors and members, Page Access Controls allows you to control Top Menu, Member Menu and Page Blocks visibility/access by membership levels.
- Page Access
Here you can view your Current Access Rules and create New Access Rules. - Top Menu Access & Member Menu Access
Click on the hyperlinked name of the menu item.
Select/deselect the membership levels as needed.
Click “Save Changes.” - Page Blocks Access
Choose the page you want to control from the drop down menu.
Click on the hyperlinked name of the Page Block.
Select/deselect the membership levels as needed.
Click “Save Changes.”
8. Personalize Email Templates :
Your default Dolphin installation has Email Templates preformatted for you, however you will definitely want to read through them even though it is a daunting task. You’ll want to edit the phrasing so that they are more clear, more professionally worded and in proper English. Remember that your Email Templates are how your site directly communicates with your subscribers & members, you want them to represent you well. In addition, if you have tweaked any of your modules or how your site and/or modules are used, you’ll want to edit the Email Templates so that they reflect these changes.
To edit your Email Templates, go to Admin>Settings>Email Templates. There you will find a long list of every email that the system sends out. To access individual templates, click the arrow on the right hand side of the bar next to the one you want to read or edit. There you will find language choices (it will only show the languages you have installed, the default is English only), The Subject of the email and the Body of the email. Edit the Subject and Body to your liking, keeping in mind that some of the emails are sent to onsite email boxes as well as offsite email and that more complex html coding is likely to fail in onsite email boxes.
Source : http://www.boonex.com