How to Start a Social Network With Boonex Dolphin

Have you ever wanted to operate your own social network, like MySpace or Facebook? Maybe you've thought about it but assumed that you need million dollar software or massive computer networks to pull it off. But you can actually create a social network dedicated to your city, your school or some common interest, with just a small investment. Here is how to start a social network with the free Boonex Dolphin.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Account with a web host
• Copy of Boonex Dolphin

1. 

   Know that he first step for creating a social network with Boonex Dolphin is to log into the control panel that is provided by your web host, and enter the MySQL section. You will need to create a new MySQL database for Boonex Dolphin to use. Be sure to make note of the database name, user name and password, as you will be asked for this information when you install the Boonex Dolphin social network script.

2. 

   Visit the Boonex website at Boonex.com to download the latest version of Boonex Dolphin. This is a free download. Make sure to take note of where you download the files to so that you will be able to locate them when you transfer them to your server.

3. 

   Upload all of the Boonex Dolphin files to your web host. You can do this manually via the web host's control panel, but it is easier if you use a third party FTP program, such as SmartFTP or Filezilla (both of which can be used for free).

4. 

   Initiate the installation program for the Boonex Dolphin social network script. This is done by opening your browser and surfing to [yoursite].com/install/. You will be presented with a starting screen. Click the button that says "Install".

5. 

   Know that he next screen will show you a number of files and folders that need to have their permissions changed temporarily, so that the installation program can write information into them. To change the permissions, simply right click on the file/folder in your FTP program and click where it says Properties/CHMOD. Then just type in the number, as instructed by the Boonex Dolphin installation program.

6. 

   Verify that all of the paths for the script are correct. Boonex Dolphin will gather this information from your server automatically, but you may wish to look it over, just to make sure nothing is out of place. Verify your information, then click "Next".

7. 

   Enter the database name, user name and password for the MySQL database you created in Step 1. Enter the appropriate information, then click "Next."

8. 

   Provide some general configuration information. This includes putting the name of the site, the email address that will be displayed on member notifications and most importantly, the user name and password for the Admin. Please make special note of the admin user name and password. Enter all of your information and then click "Next".

9. 

   View information to copy and paste into your Cron Jobs. These cron jobs will automatically run maintenance scripts to help keep your site current. You can set up the Cron Jobs, using the supplied information, by logging into the control panel provided by your web host and clicking the cron icon.

10. 

    Display files and folders that may have their permissions changed back to the original setting. This is not required, but should be done anyway as a security meaure. After clicking "Next," your installation of Boonex Dolphin will be complete and you will now have your own social network, just like MySpace or Facebook.

Tips & Warnings

• A shared hosting account may be sufficient to launch a site, but you will need to quickly upgrade to a dedicated server or VPS when your site becomes popular.

Resources

• Boonex

[huevkin]

on 4/2/2009 aeDating was a total marketing job and they would edit comments on the forums and pull all sorts of crazy marketing shennanigans. Very, very scary. When they ended up "merging" with Boonex, I trusted both even less. Looking at the forums I was terrified of using anything more than their "free" aeDating repackaging as "Dolphin" which they try to sell with their $1000 package of junky plugins. I have yet to see a reliable site using all of them besides what they run and under different identities.

[huevkin]

on 3/8/2009 BOONEX DOLPHIN ARE FRIENDS OF SKADATE ALSO KNOWN AS SCAMDATE AND KYRGIZ SCAMMERS!!! Andrey Sivtsov is a famous Kyrgiz scammer. Boonex states that it is a US-based company, which is A TOTAL LIE! (If you are a man who somehow still haven't heard anything about Scamdate, read http://www.topix.com/forum/who/scam/TCS27T4P67FRVPBB9 just to be in the picture).Let us look at the whois info, to start with: http://whois.domaintools.com/aedating.com (it is one of the Boonex major sites).Registrant: Yulia Sivtsova mikroraion Asanbay d.2 kv.54 Bishkek 720060 KyrgyzstanNice, is not it? :-) (Cowards usually use the name of their wives to register domains by the way). If you go to http://www.aedating.com you will be redirected to Boonex.com, the main scam site of the scammer Andrey Sivtsov.You may ask, well, the script is "free", how do he scam people? It is very simple: to have the copyright re

[jtadeo]

on 10/10/2008 You can find free tutorials on how to skin your Dolphin site at www.BoonexNerd.com. The site also has a resource page with other links.

[BlueOx]

on 7/22/2008 Thanks for the comment. Did you use the latest version 6.1? I have used the previous 6.0.3 version to start minorleaguesportsfans.com, but haven't upgraded to the latest version. When they first announced it they said it was suppose to have multi-server support, which would be nice, but I'm not sure if that feature made it into the release or not. PHPFox is also a good community script, but they charge $300 for it, so for the price, Boonex Dolphin works just fine for me.

[afewtips]

on 7/22/2008 I installed Dolphin on BlueHost and it wasn't too bad. It took 2 tries - the folder and file rights are the tricky part. You have to have command line access (on BlueHost it's called SSH).
Once it's installed you do have a nice community. Works well and very customizable. Good luck - afewtips.com