I know there are recomended hosts but I am curious to know from someone what the actual specs are for recomended server as I will be buying a dedicated one for it. Keeping in mind the Video,Music,IM,chat,whiteboaard will be disabled.

Example: a P4 2.2 ghz,1 gig ram going to cut it or am I going into dual or quad core poweredge dell servers?

Also what is server load like? Example: How many people can actualy be using the site at one time with the server hitting 100 percent usage for over 5 seconds?

Any help/info is appreciated

Try this link for some basic background on hosting. :)

As for loads etc, my site is quite small yet traffic wise so can't comment on that one.

Yeah that link isnt really what im looking for, but thanks. I know the specs of what i need installed,more wondering what kind of servers are needed. example: Joomla will handle a thousnad users at a time on a p3 even, but dolphin seems to be more of a hog so may need a bigger, better server ie: p4, dual core,quad core.

Ive been using dolphin on HOSTV with a VPS1 package for a year and i have to restart my VPS about 6 times a day, my databases get shut down after getting around over 10 concurrent users, The server packages dont tell you how many users can a package handle, nor the server requirements on boonex talk about RAM or CPU requirements, this has been a pain in the ass and most of my users never come back because my server is down a LOT. If i want about 50-100 concurrent users i dont know how much RAM and CPU do i need and i havent been able to get a clear answer from anyone.

hi all!

this post is crucial for anybody who wants to run a site or business with dolphin!!! i want to know too; if anybody can share their experience with their server setting etc. with sites that are already live;

electrobeat you have a vps and you that with 10 users your site shuts down then we have to know why.

than you all

I have my own dedicated server so im just curious. If this CMS cant handle more then a thousnad users at a time its pretty much useless as a cms. Great product just hope it can handle load. Where is the support guys? What kind of server do we need? Actual specs needed

Ram:

Cpu:

etc:

hi acid complex;) just ad one more post so that users might come by ;) i need to know too!

agreed, funny thing is this should be a simple answer

Guess ill just keep bumping this till i get an answer

hey dude

im not a pro; but for the capacity of members, it is also bot how you configure the database (w3c, mysql); if this can direct you:)

so you have a dedicated? wht plan? which company?

i was planning on using an vps or rps with those guys www.ovh.com... if this is good...

Bump

We also need to know this

We have 100 online and a growing 10,000 base. We realy need to know the answer before we wiil transfer our members accross

thanks

Magalajack: you have 100 online? full working dolphin? with what server specs? hosted where?
My HostV VZ1 package has: 256MB RAM, supposedly on a quad machine with no Ghz specs. I have 5000+ members, and 5-20 users online. Full working dolphin (Videos, Music, IM, etc enabled). My databases stop working when dolphin reaches around 15 users online. All I get is emails from the server on failed tailwatchd, named, imap, exim and cpsrvd. So dolphin completely shuts down and i have to do a server reboot (losing my online users).  I have talked to HostV support and they tell me this happens when you run out of resources. By the way I see it i dont think even a dedicated server will support more than 100 concurrent users which seems unrealistic for any successful site. I still have yet to hear anyone with a clear answer on how many online users on full dolphin can a dedicated server (with specs) handle.

Sorry if I was unclear.

 we are not using dolphin at the moment however we were about to port our member base to dolphin from the system we are on now however We have put this on hold until we see some positive results to this thread.

 We have no intention of porting to a system that will crash our servers 6 times a day WE need some answers on this one before we proceed with anymore work on this project. Since I came across this thread all work on this project has been  suspended

:(

Im not with any company. I have a firend with a hosting data center. I just throw in my servers, unlimted everything, i own the servers. I dont pay anything a month.

agreed. Should be a simple enough question to answer and yet no one will/can

Well in a round about way, this may help your quest.

look at this link and scroll down till you get to a post by someone called topher, he goes on about testing dolphin with different member stresses . Anyway have a read and see if it tells you anything.

http://www.boonex.com/unity/forums/?action=goto&topic_id=Fake-profiles

Thanks Tyke, this paragraph from Topher really made me sad :                                                                                                                Quote " I moved upto 950 generated. And found a weakness, and this time, kept it to myself. Truthfully, boonex is selling you a dream. Everyone wants a myspace. Everyone wants a facebook. It is possible. Do you have the money to do it? Do you have the resources? Can you solve a simple problem when it arises? Can you trace memory and cpu overloads and understand why they are occuring? If you can't - and if your site does make it past infancy, I promise you will be shelling out the big money to Boonex. They work that way - I know."

Anyone from boonex reads this forum? do they have a rebuttal? what about a simple chart that shows server configurations versus the capable number of online dolphin users? as simple as that. This is critical for any of us having a dream of growing a real community site.                                                                                                                 And yeah.. using dolphin fully like it was supposedly meant to be used: A member watching videos, another listening to music and maybe chatting at the same.

Well that's that then i guess

We will stay with our present software That seems to be able to handle loads a little better than what this thread seems to suggest about dolphin. Until i hear anything to the contrary I have to surmise that the dolphin technology is only for very small sites (<10 , <1000) and cannot even handle small (+100 , +10,000) to meadium activity or memberships. Too bad the box looked nice, with a nice shiney wrapper.

hi!

is there a way we can improve this? im talking about member capacity with boonex;

can someone from the staff make a post here? please?

thank you!

agreed. The abilty to only have 10-100 actuve users at a time renders the CMS useless. It is very pretty and has great fucntionalty, it just needs to be able to handle load. Was this not thought of when building this? Im not about to drop my 2000 users into dolphin if its just gonna shit the bed when i fire it up.

Is there any hope dolphin makers??

exactly lol!

its like buying a tv with nice buttons and nice remote but there no plug for the antenna! lol

(now dont take this the wrong way... anybody)

You have to understand that Dolphin is a framework that will never compete with Facebook, MySpace or any of the biggies out there. At least not right now. If it did, it would certainly cost more than a few donation dollars.

No script out there is 100%. Not even Facebook and they spend millions of dollars a year to keep that beast going.

As far as server loads, well that is something either you have to figure out for yourself or hire a professional. That is what the real companies do. Think of Dolphin as a starting point. It's your job to mold it and to finesse the script to have it do your bidding. If you don't have the skill then you better learn it or find a good programmer. Otherwise, you will need to put your little dream on hold.

If you are doing this to startup a site for a small group, Dolphin will handle it.

Concurrent connections is a balance between scripting and server. Both will cost something. Money and time and so on. I think by now you get the picture.

This script is not for the noob who wants to be the next facebook. If you do want to be the next facebook, then be prepared to either hit the books to learn it all or shell out some cash. One or the other, sorry but that is the cold truth.

I do tend to agree with this, its silly to think you could run a facebook site (with as many members) even if you have your own server from a back bedroom mentality. you just couldnt do it on your own, and the cost must be massive, just in investments to keep the site running, let alone anything else, like staff, people to keep the servers running smoothly and so on. It's good that we all have dreams of one day being the next BIG THING, but its not going to happen. why would anybody want to join your site or any other on mass of facebook numbers, when there is already tried and tested places that people join anyway (like facebook, my space) that no one could ever compete with. Take facebook, the site may look crap, and be crap (no im not a fan) but the development that must have gone into that site script to keep it running smoothly would be beyond the price of what most of us could afford and they must have teams of coders working on it all the time just to keep it working. Dolphin does the job of what it was designed for, to help ordinary people get something better than a forum for its own little communitys, for very little cost. I would imagine it was never designed to come close to facebook or my space standards, how could it, unless you know how to code and can make the script grow with you, or pay big bucks for people who can. If i get a thousand members id be happy, and that is what dolphin (i suspect) was designed to do and i would bet that no off the shelf commercial script would be any different without a lot of extra man hours in major coding to handle the mass users of facebook or my space.

@tyke "why would anybody want to join your site or any other on mass of facebook numbers, when there is already tried and tested places that people join anyway (like facebook, my space) that no one could ever compete with."

Good question. Niche or specialty sites is one way to handle this.

If commerce is one of the reasons you want to make money with your social net site, then you better be hitting a few hundred thousand members or find a way to spin your site to make money for yourself.

Other than that, nowadays most Dolphin sites I see are more vanity sites than anything else with members comprised of friends, family and people who sign up then leave.

Nothing has really changed. If you want members on your site, your site has to give them something that is valuable to them. Not necessarily valuable to you, but them.

@ zeus, the purpose of dolphin is just as you mentioned breifly, a niche arena, and there are many that i am familiar with, that have done just that, captured a niche audience,. and never had any expectations of capturing the global vastness of the entire internet, just wanted their own little corner.

that is the premise of most of the sites that start out using the dolphin script. dolphin can most likely handle upwards of 3k members, active members, and that would depend solely on your servers configuration as well. you are not going to fire up a windows 95 machine, slap a wamp app on there and think you are going to take over the world, or even a block. this application is resource intensive, and it has huge demands on a server, and knowing how to control and maximize the resources on a machine are just as vital as having the site up and running.

its amazing the number of hosts that have come and gone, $5.99/month, and if you slapped 100 dolphin sites on that server, it would shit all over itself, even if the hundred sites had only 100 members per site. so i think your insinuation of the fact that dolphin is useless and will not get anybody anywhere, that may have been the facts in your instance, however there are those who are making money with dolphin.

Regards,

DosDawg

Thats just a flat out lie. Your telling me the people that designed this cant tell me what kind of loads it will place, any programmer worth there weight in salt would know this right of the bat. Lets take for example joomla whihc has a downloadable test file that can be run on a joomla site and simulate as many users and actions as you want, allowing you to see exactly what kind of users your server can handle and what the loads are like. Its free.

I like this script as far as easy of use for users and the fact that it now is freeware, with the unlimted licnese that we were given (thank you for that).

"and if you slapped 100 dolphin sites on that server, it would shit all over itself, even if the hundred sites had only 100 members per site."

See that right there is an issue, i am currently hosting over 250 joomla sites and my server doesnt even blink and all sites have members in the 100 min range, forums,gallery,streaming video etc... Dont get me wrong I am not shitting on the guys and gals who gave there time to it as its more then i have done for the project, just let people know right off the bat that the script is not optimized nor can it handle above a thousand members with at least 100 concurrent actions.

Seeing as how you would have to pay min 790$ for the site the claim of

"Take facebook, the site may look crap, and be crap (no im not a fan) but the development that must have gone into that site script to keep it running smoothly would be beyond the price of what most of us could afford and they must have teams of coders working on it all the time just to keep it working"  is rendered mute.

790 x 100 sites (to be very modest) =79,000 grand. Thats not including any other licenses you may need. Thats allot of money floating around to help out developers of this dolphin who are doing this for the open source community, which by definition means they should not expect money in return (but should get some). hence open source.

Where is all this money going if not to support continued work?. I know what it costs to run a datacenter per machine so dont even try telling me it goes all to maintiaing equip etc..

Again you guys have done a great job on a script that is great for a small comunnity, just label it as such. I will reccomend this to anyone looking for a small site. Its perfect for noobs but us more advanced users can see this is not built for big sites, just have a look at the redundant sql calls.

Ud be happy with 1000? dont think small... think a little bigger.. and I dont want to take over facebook either, i reached 6000 users in one year, my goal is to hit at least 50,000 in 5 years, maybe sooner, and have 200-300 online users.Dolphin is very cool and so much, that it pulls users wanting for more! but i guess dolphin couldnt handle that on one dedicated server ever?.... sniff my dreams have been shattered and no clear answer yet.

@acidcomplext "Thats just a flat out lie. Your telling me the people that designed this cant tell me what kind of loads it will place, any programmer worth there weight in salt would know this right of the bat. Lets take for example joomla whihc has a downloadable test file that can be run on a joomla site and simulate as many users and actions as you want, allowing you to see exactly what kind of users your server can handle and what the loads are like. Its free."

Hi to you too! What an interesting way to greet someone by calling them a liar.

Look here trollboy, it's not a lie.

And no, I made no statement that the people that designed the script can't tell you what kinds of loads the app will take. I am sure they know. Whether they will say is their business. So far they haven't. So too bad for you.

There are other ways to find out. Right now, there is no script that is offered by BoonEx to simulate users. Again, that is their decision whether they want to release something like that. So as I've said you either figure it out yourself or hire a professional.

Don't be troll acidcomplex, that is not how you get help around here. Not from me anyway.

@dosdawg "so i think your insinuation of the fact that dolphin is useless and will not get anybody anywhere, that may have been the facts in your instance"

If you are referring to me, then no I did not mean to insinuate that Dolphin was useless. Where did you get that? Please show me as that would have been an error on my part.

I said it was a good starting point and framework. What you do with it is based on your skills and bank book. And it is possible to make money using Dolphin.

Well it does seem we have come full circle here, which is why the user TOPHER was doing all those tests with his fake profiles in the first place. I guess it all depends what you want out of dolphin, but i do reckon that a dolphin is way more resource hungry than say a joomla, given all the things it can do, so its bound to need a lot more power behind it, and run into a bit of bother when things get a bit too busy for it if the server isnt pulling enough muscle power. Saying all this though, dolphin is improving all the time, 7 wont be long until its released, then the other thing with the fancy name that i just cant recall at the moment is the next step forward, so for those who aim for bigger things, i guess all is not lost in the bigger picture.

let me be the 'lone wolf' to inform...

Dolphin is only as limited as the 'infrastructure' you build it on. Because of its vast Media/Content Generation capabilities it is KEY to understand LOADs from this software will act COMPLETELY DIFFERENT then Joomla or may popular CMS.

So what to do about LOAD.?!

called Server Administration!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1 machine is a server

5 is a RACK

20 is a cabinet

20 cabinets make an ISLE

Enough isles and you have a MAIN FRAME BACKBONE

AND THE RACE BEGINs because MySpace and FaceBook are BackBones ALREADY.!

People purchasing (resellers) SERVERs as dedicateds from places like thePlanet will realize the machines our set to the basic level of performance. But each machine can improve by 80% depending on the RAM and DS (hard drives) you install. Along with a few other BELLs and WHISTLEs to optimize Hardware/Software configuration.

Dolphin optimized on a single QUAD CORE properly will do more then 100. Once exceeding the single server limit we begin to build RACK (no need to spend money till we need too) Optimizing each machine from the single optimized server. BASICALLY we are mirroring machines.

The KEY: is the begining of IP isolation and service when building into a RACK. This is the trick with any MAJOR web site. They serve IP's on Mirrored Systems. You think you are with everyone else but in reality they are 599 servers away from you.

Doing this allows to to focuse on sectors of site performance (basically country connections/blocks/etc). When in Isle formation it is easy to have Europe Sector go down while USA is fine. What you don't realize during that down process is a team of about 3 descend on a isle replacing full cabinets with mirrored backups minimizing downtime. This allows you to evaluate the hardware that failed after your service has been restored. Allowing you to notice failures in the delivery between software and hardware and optimizing as necessary.

The cost of Dolphin is PESOs compared to the Hardware Infrastructure cost of a MAJOR community.

When I found my TEAM may moons ago this was ALL I was focused on because it is the FATAL flaw of any software/hardware infrastructure. I wasted many thousands proving it works and is possible. DONT recommend until you can afford this but when ready ThePLANET will handle everything for you and you can claim to the IRS that you have legitmate site cost!!!!! Where are you going to put all those millions you make? INTO HARDWARE :)

If you don't have an extensive 10K plus network then 1 quad core should be efficent if optimized correctly. ABout $650-900 per month on one machine. YES there are ways to manage this cost best....I was just trying to answer the performance question in the HOW DO I?

No manuals, No hosting....HOWEVER, I am not concerned with the performance of this software at a high (MySpace/FaceBook) level as I am well prepared to build it when the traffic shows up or should I say when...HUH not the only one I see trying to build a community :) UNITY through COMMUNITY.

If you would like a diagram you are welcome to contact thePLANET. They will happily take your money and prove to you it can and will be done. But 'masters' at thePLANET are not cheap...Take my word for it.

Hope this clarifies and calms some concerns of a few ACIDmindedFREAKS as I am one too :) LOL PurpleMicroDot anyone.?! :)

wouaw nice! :)

i want more actually:)

I add checking of all dolphin requirements to install of dolphin. (since 6.1.5)

except upload sized of course :)

Thanks sombria.. very well put. 
Any personal experience? Do you currently host dolphin on the planet? how many members? what kinda server? 
purplemicrodot..lol send 2 ovah!

This is sort of off-topic, but, if anyone is just tinkering (like me) and wants to run this on their own server (again, this is for tinkering/testing - obviously for a production site with a crapload of members this would not be a spectacular idea) I have some shell scripts which will build everything you need for Boonex, painlessly.   You'd need some very basic familiarity with Linux and the ability to install Slackware Linux and achieve a working internet connection.  If you can get that far, you can download a tarball, type ./INSTALL (basically) and you'll have PHP5 with libxml, XSL, mysql 5.2.6, the GD library, Vsftpd, etc.  It builds Apache 1.3.7 or 1.3.41 with open_ssl (depending upon whether or not you're using Slack 12 or 12.1) , etc.  Just a simple way of getting everything you'd need for Dolphin, server-wise, up and running.  It really simplifies building a server for this thing, to say the least.  I haven't run these on Slack 12.2.

Here's my dink-around test site: http://www.flint-zone.com

I have no idea if anyone would ever find these useful.  At any rate, you can download the tarball(s) here:

http://www.guymerritt.org/?p=89

One more time: is this useful to anyone here?   I have no idea...... If nothing else, it's a good way to test Dolphin and experiment. It works for me - but, hey, I'm an idiot!

And by the way, the site that I've linked to above runs from an incredibly cheezy computer I built about 5 years ago - a P4, 1.8ghz tower with 768 meg of RAM.  Woo-hoo. I wouldn't exactly recommend those sorts of specs for running a production server.

One final note: if you run this yourself you'll need to edit your /etc/hosts file and add your Boonex-driven domain name; otherwise, certain components on Dolphin will not load properly.

lol 88guy!

michael moore is from yur town? i like the one about the US health care system...

and yeah you are right about you P4...

here is a link i like to watch from time to time, i promess the mod i will send him some viewers, it 24/7 broadcasting, check it out! there is a big community overthere but they are not well organized, because they dont have the tools yet:)

http://fr.justin.tv/montydj

Yeah - your friend's site is extremely well done - and the content is interesting.  He should do well with that thing.  I need to mod mine but I just installed it and really haven't done a damned thing other than change a couple of graphics.  His looks super - hey, damnit, I'm envious!

Yep - Michael Moore is from my home town - Flint, Michigan.  I don't know the guy but a lot of my friends know him...  He lives in the Northern, Michigan, now (not crazy enough to stay in Flint, where they're stealing manhole covers to buy crack - and food).  There ain't much left here, anymore.  and with GM going down the proverbial shitter, as our Governor remarked a few days ago, it's gonna be "a long summer" in Michigan.....

Anyway, very nice site there.....

And, yeah - the ONLY thing good about running this thing the way I'm doing it that it's free....lol.

hey 88guy, no this is not a dolphin website lol! its www.justin.tv

i just know the guy that has a channel on it!

the site is free, they broadcast any kind stuff you could imagine lol!

yeah i like moore too, but always question his method and who is paying him to do his documentary... lol

but poeple need to know what he is doing too, some may wake up :)

Oh....damn.  I thought that somehow the guy had jacked with Dolphin to make it look like that!  Actually, if you were a PHP whiz it could probably be done.   And on the Moore thing, the guy's basically correct on a lot of issues but I have learned - through that film that I referenced in my post - that he takes wild liberties with some facts (which surprised me). In "Roger and Me" he says an ABC Video truck was stolen by an unemployed auto worker in Flint; I live in Flint and I'm a news junkie and I never recalled that actually happening - but I figured it did, because he presented it as something factual in that film.  Turns out that story was complete fiction.  He made that segment up, totally - even used a reporter named barb Schroeder who was actually a reporter at the local ABC affiliate in Flint.  I was just really surprised.  The guy is not above just making shit up - which surprised the hell outta me given the documentary genre....

Ok, guys, i'm going to try to write something definitative here.

First:

Who am I? I've been a .com technical engineer since 1995 mostly on the east coast and mostly in things like PHP and Cold Fusion. At one point I ran the largest Unix based CF shop in the country. I run www.masonicplanet.com on Boonex Doplhin 6.2 and a number of other PHP and Java sites.

Performance:

Site performance and server performance are inter-related and inherently complex. The systems losely follow queing theory in their performance footprint, and can become unstable over time. The systems also tend to increase load exponentially as the system must server as both the que processor and the request processor at the same time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory also look up "server load performance optimization" on Google

Solutions:

Good server. A server should have performance characteristics greater than a desktop. This seems obvious, but I guess not. After all your desktop computer only serves you, but the server serves 1000's of requests at the same time. I'm currently writing this on an ibm T-60 with 2 2.3Gh'z CPU's and 2 GB of Ram. If this is a standard laptop from 2 years ago, the servers today should be more powerful.

I recommend at least a dual processor box with 1GB of ram, but preferably a quad with 2-4GB.

Optimization: Now that you have a good machine optimizing it's performance is key. Any one can write code to spin the CPU at 100%, but doing the job with the minimum of resources is where the art is.

MYSQL: There are a number of good guides out there on MYSQL optimizations. Opening up dedicated connections, having a lot of RAM for the Caching process to work and optimizing the queries through the intelligent use of indexing are some of the steps.

PHP code: In my own code there's a lot that can be done including minimizing loops, usign array's intelligently, and caching server results for re-use. In the Dolphin code, it's my experience that it's not bad. There is always room for optimization, but it's not always neccesary.

Images: image load takes up 90% of the system connections. By using a CDN (cache distribution network) you can reduce your server load drastically. However CDN's cost $. Personally I use CacheFly.

Website optimizations. There's a ton of stuff written about this, so I'm not going to go into it. Download FireBug and follow the threads from there. In my experience the Dolphin code is not bad in this regard.

chapeau Mondrus for this post!:)

"Any one can write code to spin the CPU at 100%, but doing the job with the minimum of resources is where the art is."

Mondrus

Thank you! its good to know about your experience about the server requirement, plus you you are using it with dolphin script; i guess i can always come back to your post when ill be trying my VPS or RPS :)

thanks for sharing:)

Mondrus, I don't think you're really qualified to be giving suggestions, here - JUST KIDDING!  You've really got an impressive background of experience with UNIX, etc.  I started learning this stuff at 50, with no real computing experience.  Your mention of MySQL optimizations, in particular, really piqued my interest.  I do a stock install of MySQL and just run the thing. I would certainly like to get more performance out of my server (I intend to assemble a real one, soon) and - of course - squeeze as much efficiency out of MySQL as possible.  Just wanted to say "thanks" for some well articulated and thoughtful comments.  I will be reading on ways to improve MySQL performance, certainly.  Keep sharing that brain, please....

Not patronizing you, here, but we need some more eggheads on here like you! ANyone who can work with Cold Fusion has my immediate respect - I could never wrap my head around it, whatsoever.