New to Dolphin, weird issues

Hello All. I'm new to the community having just found out about it. I've been working on a Buddypress site and have been having issues until I found dolphin which seems to have what I need. I did an install and have a few questions that I've had problems with. I'm trying to see if this is a good replacement for my bp site.

1. Modules- When I try to install modules, after I click install, I get a white screen that just stays there. If I hit refresh, I get "module failed". It shows that it's been installed sometimes. Other times, I get permissions issues. Are there basic permissions that I'm supposed to have set OUTSIDE OF the install verification checks to install modules from the back end? It seems like every time I try to install something, it gives me permissions issues and I can't believe I have to manually change them on the folders every time.

2. Yesterday something happened and it killed my front page. I have to uninstall all modules and when it came back, I just saw broken login page with nothing else. Has anyone seen that?

3. Is there any way to import old wordpress blogs into articles in dolphin? We're trying to convert an old single wordpress install to a community site and right now, Dolphin and Buddypress are my two frontrunners.

I manage my own server so I have full control over everything. I just need to figure out what's causing these issues because I'm sure I did something wrong that's causing me to even have issues. Everything seems to straight forward like installing modules, I can't imagine having to manually make changes when things are in the back end.

Thanks.

Is there anyone that can assist with these questions?

start all over again
install it in a sub dir..
make sure you check the software requirements  
http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/DolTech

correct folders/files permission is very important

1) Yes, some of the modules have folders that required write permissions. They should only have to be set once when the module is first installed, removal of the module and reinstalling should not require you set permission again. I cannot explain your white screen issue. I have never seen it happen.

2) No i have not seen it, and without more information we will not be able to help you solve it. The first thing to try is to go to admin, settings, advanced settings, templates and turn off all caching options until your site is complete and ready to go live. Then empty the contents of the folders cache, cache_public and tmp on the server. Leave the .htaccess files in those 3 folders.

3) No.

Unless your server is running suphp, having to manually setup permissions is normal. But needs to only be done once unless you delete things and have to start over. I know the permissions are a pain, but that's the way it is.

can you post a link to your server build, because to me seems like you have some issues with your setup.

also like prolaznik has suggested, start over, and install in a subdirectory paying attention to each step. if you want, i can help you walk through this and see if i can bump my head on the same rock you are hitting yours against about now.

Regards,

DosDawg

I paid close attention to the install instructions but took for granted that my php settings were ok. In the documentation, it has this listed in there and I didn't realize these were two different instructions.

open_basedir should not have any value memory_limit should be 128M or higher

I checked and my memory_limit was only set to 16mb since I have my server set up as a shared server. This seemed to fix most of the white screens which looking at the error log seem to be a result of running out of memory. I can at least now see the result of installed modules and see if there are permissions issues. I also saw this instruction and wondered if this was still valid on a Dolphin 7 install:

The magic_quotes_gpc extension is also required starting from Dolphin 6.1.5 version

I looked that up on php documentation and it's been deprecated because of security issues. Does this still need to be turned on?

I understand about the permissions issues, just didn't know if there was supposed to be a single place like a folder that if i set all files in there to 777, it was assumed that all modules would install properly and wouldn't have to change anything via ftp or shell. It seems like if you were handing this to someone that didn't know a lot about managing servers or ftp, someone couldn't do everything from the back end. That's ok, just wasn't aware that's how it was.

I'm just trying to learn the differences between something like wordpress/buddypress and seeing everything Dolphin can do. Thanks for your help guys. If anyone has any suggestions for importing/migrating blog posts from wordpress, please send them my way.

The only other big issue is that I can't edit my profile. It seems that the save button on the bottom is not linking. Any idea why?