I am not a developer, I'm just a user, but I take a keen interest in helping the Kunena project and the community that supports it. This is my first "'blog" about Kunena and I thought you might be interested to know some of the exciting news in tandem with the hard work put into the project by the team of hard-working developers.
Joomla and Beyond 2011
I did not have the pleasure of being able to attend this very important event that took place in Amsterdam between 5-7 May 2011. The benefit of internet technology has delivered a way for all of us to share some of that experience courtesy of the efforts of the Joomla and Beyond team, captured on video, edited and published for all of us to see.
Like most people, I have always looked at Kunena as a text-oriented, web-based discussion forum - a product that has the same kinds of features that you would normally expect in many other web-based discussion forums and bulletin boards that have existed on the 'net for the last 15 years or more. Indeed, Kunena did not just appear on the scene as "Kunena" - the project was itself a fork of earlier generations of forum software that have existed for several years even before Joomla was first conceived. The major difference, however, between Kunena and other forum software is that it integrates seamlessly with Joomla and that has always been its main appeal. But, unlike other forum software, the project is not content to leave things like that. There is an ongoing need in the world of web apps to have a robust and scalable communications platform that can adapted to emerging technologies (e.g. mobile apps) and the needs of games, 'blogging, e-commerce, etc.
The most telling part of this tale, for me, was summarised by what Oliver Ratzesberger had to say at JAB11:
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“The idea was to build a platform that can become a communications engine that you install into Joomla and deal with any sort of commenting and discussing – any user input of text that is not necessarily an article or is not done through an HTML expert (and a form-driven interface is just one way of dealing with that, right?) “We use it for our own internal discussions – for the Kunena project, I mean – for localised conversations (about an article for example), for localised forums of groups of people, for example – whenever we need people to talk and discuss something.” |
I was recently asked, by the members of my local Joomla Users Group, to give a presentation; I chose as my subject, Web-based discussion forums: using an old idea to energise and grow your Joomla website. To address that subject, it irrelevant about what you choose as your forum. It's also not a question of whether Kunena should be a strategic choice: the strategic goal is to achieve a high-yield return on your investment of time to increase user participation in your site. In that sense, Joomla and Kunena together make an ideal tactical solution to address those needs.
Kunena 2.0
At the JAB11 conference, Matias Griese presented his outlook for Kunena 2.0 as a new communications platform. Here is the video of that presentation:
Kunena Forum 2.0 - Communication Platform - Matias Griese from jandbeyond on Vimeo.
The slides used in that presentation are available here.
The Kunena 2.0 Project
Currently this is the main focus of the project team. An enormous amount of work has been poured into the design and development of the product that will be a substantial improvement on what people see today with K 1.6. At this time there are already a few websites using K 2.0 as their forum "engine" and the early indicators are impressive. The current area of development activity is, at this time, focused on Joomla 1.7 compatibility and giving the product a bit of a cosmetic make-over. The main benefit to users of this community is that K 2.0 will be available free of charge to download and install and that the support services for it will continue to remain free. K 2.0 will be able to be used on J! 1.5 (natively), J! 1.6 or J! 1.7 platforms.
When K 2.0 is released, this will make all previous versions of Kunena obsolete. More importantly, support for K 1.5 will be withdrawn and the K 1.5 forum categories will be archived and locked. The project team has always encouraged members of the community to maintain their sites with the latest publicly-available stable release of Kunena but this message is even more urgent at this time when the "sunset clause" on K 1.5 support will soon be activated. Upgrading to K 1.6 is easy (see K 1.6 Upgrade Guide) and upgrading to K 2.0 will be even easier.
Joomla 1.6 continued support
Most of you will be aware of the upcoming release of Joomla 1.7. What many of you may not be aware of is that the Joomla core team has indicated a very early end to J! 1.6 support. You can read the details for yourself: Under this broad direction, whenever the support "plug" for J! 1.6 is pulled, likewise, support for Kunena and J! 1.6.x will also be unavailable here. After that time, users will be able to use K 1.6 or K 2.0 on either J! 1.5 or J! 1.7 until Joomla withdraws support for J! 1.5 (expected around April 2012).
