I remember a few months ago I looked into the Dolphin free software but it appeared like you needed a dedicated or at least a VPS in order to run their social networking software. The site is kind of confusing, so thought Id ask you guys.
I don't know about Dolphn in particular, and there's no clear statement on their site regarding hosting (might be hidden away someplace) but most full-featured social network apps are very resource intensive and would likely need dedicated hardware to offer reliability for a growing user base.
Not necessarily, but you need a fleet of programmers to professionally deploy that mess. You can search dp about that stuff hope that helps... your question is largely a traffic related matter. I have had various builds running on various test or junk servers. Nigel
It was a piece of cake to install, its just not alot of fun to mod up for your purposes. Whether it be graphical or functional. I mostly had problems with the ray suite of stuff like the forum. Nigel
No, I don't recommend it. However, your options are quite limited in this area. I don't really have a viable option for you. The programming department sorta wrapped up something similar a few weeks ago. I will grab a link from them. I didn't have to do much on that job. In theory we have a cms built to do this sort of thing. We have not really discussed deploying it except for clients though. I think it as all in RUBY now as well. Not too helpful if you don't have a RUBY programmer handy for minor things.
A dedicated box would be overkill, but I'd strongly recommend using a mid-range VPS from a reliable provider. It's always a good thing to be ready for growth.