Question Community Builder: the right option?

peetree21 wrote:

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i think as well that the joomlapolis site needs a revamp. Get a new better looking and functioning forum like Kunena (then they would know the issues that occur with Kunena and CB integration!!).

Also i think the CB Paid Subscriptions system is aimed too high. It is a commercial venture that would only be useful for large sites and corporations, but then i think if a business or site with a large turnover to generate the sales of that nature would have a more custom (and probably not joomla site). I think the Paid Subscriptions could be made into a commercial licence with no ongoing costs, as otherwise it means smaller websites cant use it.

The CB team need some designers and css gurus to undertake a big templating drive and make heaps of cool templates (aka jomsocial style and more). They could do this by doing a fundraising drive then paying a designer to do it. The engine of CB is great and is stable but it doesnt "sell" itself and looks a bit outdated thats all. a revamp of the joomlapolis site as well would help, i think there is a large enough community to all chip in and fundraise more template and design work.

Anyway just some thoughts.

Thanks for sharing, agreeing on most of these items.

- Forum: we had to stick with a security-fixed version of simpleBoard for performance reasons. We are in contact with Kunena team who is aware of those issues, which will be fixed as we heard.

- Paid subs plugin system will be affordable for smaller sites too. We have listened to feedbacks regarding our proposed pricing scheme (which was in fact very affordable to start, but that fact got unfortunately misunderstood) which has been withdrawn in mean time, and will be announcing a classic scheme when the RC is ready, soon.

- 2 designers are now on board, as well as template designers, more to come

- Yes, site needs a revamp. We will be improving little things on the way (suggestions welcome) and more will be done once we have all those little plugins, docs, and perfect Kunena integration in released

- There are many add-on plugins which are on their way to release, so we are busy like hell, but with fun.

I'd also make a couple of other comments in relation to the CB integration with Kunena:

There is a known problem with signatures not working within the Kunena forum. Although it's possible for an administrator/manager to modify users signatures (from the backend), it's not possible for users to do that for themselves.

There is still no "official" Kunena plugin for Community Builder. Although it's possible to view a user's forum posts from within their CB profile, the mechanism to achieve this is a kludge of the existing cbsimpleforumtab plugin ... and there are known problems installing this feature.

I'm also waiting on the integration of CB's CAPTCHA as a public release as part of the user registration process. It's difficult to justify the expense of €25 for a feature that really should be part of the core build. On the other hand, if you install Community Builder it's a bit like moving into a brand new home for free ... but having to pay for the front door key.

beat wrote:

Thanks for sharing, agreeing on most of these items.

- Forum: we had to stick with a security-fixed version of simpleBoard for performance reasons. We are in contact with Kunena team who is aware of those issues, which will be fixed as we heard.

- Paid subs plugin system will be affordable for smaller sites too. We have listened to feedbacks regarding our proposed pricing scheme (which was in fact very affordable to start, but that fact got unfortunately misunderstood) which has been withdrawn in mean time, and will be announcing a classic scheme when the RC is ready, soon.

- 2 designers are now on board, as well as template designers, more to come

- Yes, site needs a revamp. We will be improving little things on the way (suggestions welcome) and more will be done once we have all those little plugins, docs, and perfect Kunena integration in released

- There are many add-on plugins which are on their way to release, so we are busy like hell, but with fun.

cheers beat!

thanks for listening to my thoughts

CB is a great component but the unfortunate problem is that people dont realise the power behind it as they simply judge it on its looks. If we can 'freshen' up the site and also templates i think the community will grow even bigger and better.

Also a better functioning forum will allow more community interaction, i find the current joomlaboard solution abit clumsy and sometimes a little hard to use.

As you can see by uservoice the integration of CB1.2 stable is the top priority of kunena users and so if joomlapolis is using it then you will see the issues we are facing at the moment.

Keep up the great work!!

* on a side note, the Kunena CB forum plugin needs to ensure it does not show registered members forums that are set to Author, Editor, Admin access level. Which the current one does.

Hello,

two suggestions for CB-optic:

1. make it possible to show the Tabs in Slides (like Tabs and Slide from www.joomlaworks.gr/ ). More better to have two slide options: First click it open only for the first X entries (for example first five friends), Second click on the tabs it open complete.

2. make it possible to have a icon for every tab and to have a tab which includes every icon as a menue..

This make it possible to build a layout like facebook...

Further to my earlier posting (#6327)

There is a known problem with signatures not working within the Kunena forum. Although it's possible for an administrator/manager to modify users signatures (from the backend), it's not possible for users to do that for themselves.

This matter has been addressed and resolved in the "Extra" information about forum user discussion, for which the solution is to disable the Kunena integration with Community Builder!

I notice there had been no response on the other two matters I raised in my earlier message.

I still think there's a use for Community Builder on my website. Other developers, like Acajoom and JoomGallery, have successfully integrated their products so that users can access them directly from their CB profile. Likewise, registered users can see the last n messages posted to the i]Kunena[/i forum on a CB profile tab.

The signature (and 2 other settings ordering and threading) have been half-way changed in Kunena 1.0.8, where the CB set integration link was removed, and thus don't work.

We are in contact with Kunena team almost daily to fix that issue for Kunena 1.0.9.

We will be addressing the "extra" information issues properly too, probably not for 1.0.9, but who knows....

... and the other two matters I raised in #6327: CAPTCHA and plans for the release of an official CB-Kunena plugin?

Beat,

please have a look on the simpleboard-plugin...

There are a CSS failure. The complete tables are always marked as sectiontableheader... This makes problems with a lot of templates...

tonywoodhouse has solved this issue here: www.joomlapolis.com/component/option,com...mit,6/limitstart,12/

sozzled wrote:

... and the other two matters I raised in #6327: CAPTCHA and plans for the release of an official CB-Kunena plugin?

There will be an official CB plugin for Kunena, actually the core one is already adapted 80% to Kunena 1.0.8, we are working with Kunena team on fixing the 20% remaining which needs a change on both sides.

roland76 wrote:

Beat,

please have a look on the simpleboard-plugin...

There are a CSS failure. The complete tables are always marked as sectiontableheader... This makes problems with a lot of templates...

tonywoodhouse has solved this issue here: www.joomlapolis.com/component/option,com...mit,6/limitstart,12/

Yes, we are aware now of this very old problem (was there in CB 1.1 already ! nobody noticed....), but have seen it only after releasing CB 1.2 stable. Will be fixed with the new plugin as well.

EDIT: what is #6327 captcha, not sure that's regarding CB ?

Thank you, beat, for providing an update - the first I've read - about CB's plans to develop a CB-Kunena tab plugin. This is welcome news, indeed!

I'm sorry if I appear to be pushing my one pet criticism, about the lack of response on the issue of freely integrating CAPTCHA into the user registration process but, if you look at the previous mention I made at the Joomlopolis website , my remarks were not satisfactorily addressed.

#6327 refers to the message number in this, Kunena forum. You might also review my earlier remarks in this forum @ #5945 .

Overall, I think that CB is a good option to use. I don't want this forum to become a back-door way of airing complaints or criticisms about Community Builder, but I think several contributors have already expressed a certain "frustration" with the feedback model used at Joomlapolis, and maybe that matter needs to be taken on board.