3rd party support question..

 Great to hear that you will be providing third party modules for Cheetah.  

 Great!!!

This is confirmation that my modules will be available for Cheetah. Within the next two weeks, my activity here should increase significantly.

 Thank you, GG. we're good, you and I. :)

Have a great remainder of your weekend.

 My apologies if that came off as rude and aggressive; it wasn't meant to be.

 That was it, Dean! Thanks a lot for that discovery on your part. After reinstalling the stable 1.0.0, all of the modules I converted are working just fine now. :)

@johnk

Me:  "That said...Thank you for the detailed explanation. I'll certainly try it again, as you went through the effort to make it as simple as possible."

johnk: "It took me a long time to explain how to upload files correctly and you couldn't even take the time to acknowledge the effort I made."

Are you kidding me John?! What more did you want, John? Should I instead have stroked your hair and called you a "sweet sweet boy"? I figured my thank you for your efforts was the right touch, but APPARENTLY not.

And John? the way I uploaded the files wasnt even the problem. it was my using Beta. Yet STILL I thanked you for the time and effort.  So... please. just stop.

johnk: "I for one don't appreciate people who find fault with everyone except themselves."

Are you drinking tonight John? Are you drunk? You tell me "This isn't a physcology(sic) forum and we're not expected to know your mindset", yet here you... trying to pretend you know my mindset. Know what john? You're either "acting" like a jackass or outright BEING one. Time will tell (see how I gave you the benefit of the doubt there??)

You are being negative with me at every turn and i really don't wish to hear anything more from you. No help, insight, or thoughts requested, wanted or needed from 'you'.

Please and thanks.

Mac

@Macfionn to steal a quote from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "You're as subtle as a wad of cotton wool - wrapped around a house brick!" This isn't a physcology forum and we're not expected to know your mindset, and indeed compensate for it. Deano, Geek_Girl and I have been around a long time. The others are very knowledgeable, and between all three of us and others here, you should get the answers you need. They may not always be what you want to hear, but that's life. Please try to accept that Cheetah is a fork of a program that was full of bugs and Deano is doing his best to help, as are Geek_Girl, myself and others. It took me a long time to explain how to upload files correctly and you couldn't even take the time to acknowledge the effort I made. Instead you impolitely responded with "   . . . . please don't fall into the mindset that a couple others have that I'm being rude to you. I'm still shaking my head at that.  Regardless... Thank you again, Dean. :)"

It seems you've imported your "bad-ass" attitude from the Boonex forum and I for one don't appreciate people who find fault with everyone except themselves. I quote a post you made on that forum yesterday:

"Im so SICK of boonex dolphin not able to even INSTALL properly!! Why in the HELL would I abandon the $1000's of dollars I've already invested in Dolphin, and go to their NEW software, UNA, when they cant even get the "Final" dolphin version to install properly?! Will NEVER happen! Can ANYONE explain this STUPIDLY vague installation error, please??"

Please try to treat others with the same respect you demand for yourself.

Thank you.

 You're absolutely right! I did indeed install the latest beta! Good catch!! Thank you. I'll revive and try the stable version. Thank you for responding, and please don't fall into the mindset that a couple others have that I'm being rude to you. I'm still shaking my head at that. 

Regardless... Thank you again, Dean. :)

Addendum: Being involved with Dolphin for years, I'm excited as hell to see you taking up this project and incredibly thankful!

 Ok. Elephant in the room first! My God! Certain people need to quit being so freaking sensitive!!! I NEVER criticized Dean in ANY manner, NOR his work!

My statement was black and white, cordial, and to the point. Any shade of grey "sub meaning" is YOUR mind at work, and not mine! 

Knowing full well it's a new project, I wasn't going to ask anyone to hold my hand. I simply tried it, the way you first described, btw, and it didn't work for me. Did I slam it? Mock it? Attack it in ANY manner?! Please! Show me where I did and I will own it! But don't come after me because I stated a simple fact in a non-derogatory manner! 

I'm new here. I get that. And OBVIOUSLY you don't know me or my mind set yet, so why don't you both (Geek girl, included here.) give new people a chance to actually show who they are rather than simply assuming? And speaking of being new here, you may also try to keep in mind that I DON'T have the luxury of knowing his timelines, who working on what, what works or doesn't. I'm finding my own way, and as fast as I can!

That said...

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I'll certainly try it again, as you went through the effort to make it as simple as possible.

Macfionn, btw.

Hi Malcom, I actually felt you were being a little unfair to Deano because he's taken on a massive project which is in its infancy and you're already picking it to pieces. We need to remember that Deano didn't write Dolphin, but he's the one to step forward to keep the project alive, albeit under a different name. Dolphin consists of several hundred files, all of which do something. It's a mammoth task to wave a wand and convert a meat pie into an apple pie, so Deano is essentially reverse engineering the script and fixing what he can as fast as he can. I think he's currently adding a little sugar to the pastry and trying to figure out how to convert meat into apples.

There have been more changes and more improvements to Cheetah in the past 12 months than Boonex achieved with Dolphin in several years.

Okay, to answer your questions:

Deano's first task in forking Dolphin was to give it a new structure identity. Essentially that involved changing thousands of prefixes from "dol- bx,BX-DOL etc" to CH, Ch, (or similar) etc. This is an essential requirement to avoid copyright and attribution issues. He then debugged several known Dolphin bugs that Boonex should have done in version 7.4.3.  What you're looking at is Dolphin 7.4.3, but under a different hat.  Those changes, plus creating this website and a GitHhb presence have taken most of his spare time. At present, this is a part time job for Deano.

For a Dolphin database or 3rd party module to work, you need to change all references to  Che etc. Deano has created a script to do these changes automatically. Otherwise the scripts operate the same on both platforms.

Regarding the 3rd party modules, let's look at Anton's and Modzzz separately

Anton:

When you receive a module it's in a zip file: Pages helper.zip

This unzips to a folder Pages Helper which contains a couple of files, plus another zip file pages_helper1.2.zip

This creates a folder pages_helper  - This is the folder you upload to your /modules/aqb/  directory.

Create a Zip file of this folder.
Run it through the converter
Unzip (?)
Upload the file to /modules/aqb directory on your Cheetah site.

Modzzz

When you receive a module it's in a zip file: Personals.zip

This unzips to a folder Personals which contains a couple of files, plus another one or two zip files Personals - Dolphin 7.3.zip and Personals-Dolphin 7.4.zip. Choose the version you want and unzip it.
This creates a new directory for the version which contains several folders and files.
Open Modules
Open Modzzz. You should see a file "personals". This is the folder you would upload to your/modules/modzzz/ directory on your server. 
Make a Zip file of personals and run it through the converter.
Unzip (?)
Upload the folder to /modules/modzzz directory on your Cheetah site.

If there's a Folder for Boonex and there often is,  work your way through the various folders boonex/forum/integrations until you reach personals. This is the folder you would upload to your modules/boonex/forum/integrations directory.

Zip this folder and run it through the converter.
(Unzip?)

Upload the folder to /modules/boonex/forum/integrations/ directory on your Cheetah site.

It works for me, but a warning. Firstly, don't try to convert an entire Boonex site in one hit just yet. The current version of Cheetah is a beta version. Practice with module conversions until the new version is released around Christmas.

The instructions above are pretty much what I said in my first post.

I just checked the converter, and it is converting the compatible_with array in the modules config file. So i have a feeling you may have installed the current beta version of cheetah rather than the latest stable final.

You can zip up the folders. Just Don't have more than one module in a single zip file.

So best to navigate to /modules/developer/ and zip up the folder for the actual module.

The converter should convert the compatible_with version, however it has not been updated for the 1.1.0 beta, so i have to ask. Did you install the 1.0.0 final, or the 1.1.0 beta?

You should not be running the beta. The beta will not be able to be upgraded. Same as the Dolphin betas.

However, the compatibility error is a easy fix. Edit /modules/developer/modulename/install/config.php and edit the compatible_with array to match the version of cheetah your running.

    'compatible_with' => array(
        '1.0.0'
    ),

I will check the converter to make sure it's replacing the compatible_with version array.

Updates to modules can be done by hand. I have not written up a doc on what needs to be changed. It's a lot of case sensitive search and replaces through out the code and on large modules it could take a hour or more per module to do it by hand. But i will write something up on it when i have some time.

 No sir, I didnt try that because I was advised beforehand to not have them in subfolders, or it would fail. But it wouldn't hurt to try.

Honestly, id love to know whats being changed with the converter and try to alter them by hand. But out of the 5 I've tried, all failed, and so I don't have anything operative to compare against.

Do I strike you as a rude person? I'm pretty sure my wording wasn't rude, so your reply didn't need to be either.

Thank you for the addendum. Ill try them. (Update: Actually, as I mentioned, they ARE for 7.4.2, and ARE packaged as you repeated.)

Please don't feel you need to be aggressive in responding to me, in the future. I, like most people, don't generally respond well to that.

Cheers.

Mac

Also, don't forget that the module must be ready for Dolphin 7.4.2 before you can convert it.  If it isn't, then you need to make it 7.4.2 compatible.

And yes, you can do the conversion to Cheetah manually but the converter does work and is much appreciated by those of us that have used it.

Is this it?  One little hiccup and you are gone?  That is OK, you can just throw away your Dolphin investment.

For the converter, you want to zip up just the module as it would be sitting under the /modules/developer/module-name.  Extract out the module until you have just the module-name directory.  Then zip that up to module-name.zip and upload it to the converter.  

Since it reported that the module was not compatible with version, that means the config.php file doesn't have the correct info there and that probably means it wasn't packaged properly for the converter.

what if you tried file.zip/aqb/mld/files?

Edit: Wait a second. Before I throw the baby out with the wash, what "exactly" is the converter doing, and can I not do it by hand?
And although doubtful, is there a "new" file structure under modules for third party mods?

Well as much as I love the idea of this, I may have to pass.

The first couple of rattles out of the box with the converter failed.

Must Love Dogs for 7.4.2 by Anton

tried in these uploaded configurations:

file.zip>mld>files (placed in modules\aqb\)

and

file.zip>files (placed in modules\aqb\mld)

Installation of: Must Love Dogs Failed

Though I LOVE the idea of a supported and working "dolphin", without my plugins... most by AntonLV & Modzzz, ive got nothing.

Thank you though guys.

Thank you both for the full and well thought out answers! I appreciate your time.

As John as answered most of the questions, i will just elaborate a bit on a couple of them.

1) So far, all modules that i have tried that are compatible with Dolphin 7.4.2 have converted without any problems. But as John has pointed out. There is no guarantee that every module will convert.

3) I can't. My time needs to be spent on the development and continued improvement of Cheetah itself. If i offered any kind of support plan, it would not take long before it takes all of my available time away from Cheetah. So any type of support would have to be left up to others.

4) As john pointed out, Modzzz is here, however at the moment he is in the middle of converting all his current modules to UNA. I believe he will start with Cheetah after that is completed. I have not contacted any other developers yet. As of now, i am not even sure what developers are still around and active.

1. There's no guarantee at this stage. They should work, but the only way to know is to test them - one at a time. Deano is running three or four of Modzzz Modules here..
2.  https://www.cheetahwsb.com/m/developer_tools/convert/ If you wish to convert 3rd Party modules, read my note below.
3.  I'll leave that one to Deano but I don't think that service was ever offered by Boonex.
4.  If you look at our membership list, you will see that Modzzz is a member. I don't think Anton would be interested. He's employed by Boonex and won't even answer emails. Anton is not interested in Dolphin and hasn't been for some time.

Note: When uploading a module, only upload the actual module you would upload to your server. The module can't be in a sub-folder, but it's components should remain in their sub-folders. Before uploading the module, create a zip file and run it through the converter. 

So I'm thinking of buying into your endeavor, Dean, but have a question or two...

One... I LITERALLY have thousands of dollars of plugins. If they work for 7.4.2, will they mostly work via your converter? Any caveats?

Two... Where "is" said converter?

Three... Think you could come up with a support plan to help with needed core item changes that stayed within a certain scope?

Four... have Anton, Modzzz, etc... been made aware of your branched project? maybe they would willingly bring their items to your store...