Question Community Builder: the right option?

Mr Livered wrote:
Yes, they say that if you want answers to detailed questions, you should subscribe to the documentation. That's fine once you have cb on your site but it's not worth subscribing to the docs just to decide whether cb is for you or not. I have a couple of questions that I didn't get the answers on their forums, maybe someone here can help:

I notice that to register on joomlapolis.com you can't have spaces in your username. That's no good to me; can cb be set to allow spaces?

Can users be imported from the Joomla core tables into cb reasonably easily?

Thanks![/quote]

You can have users with spaces in their username (you can change the settings to allow all kind of characters in the username if you like) and all joomla users are already in cb

if you need anything else let me know... i've spent enough time figuring out things to let you do the same )

Much appreciated, thanks for replying

My experience with Community Builder has been a very satisfactory one. Integrating Kunena with CB wasn't a major headache.

I agree, that the Joomlapolis website has been reticent about plans to integrate with Kunena. Whilst I'm pleased that CB 1.2 has been released as a Joomla 1.5 native extension, there are one or two features that didn't make it in the initial release, such as CAPTCHA as part of the registration process. (CAPTCHA is available for CB 1.2 provided you signup for the premium documentation service that costs €25.)

I had a couple of minor problems installing the modified "cbsimpleboardtab", CB tab for Kunena, but I found a workaround that overcame the problem .

Which makes me wonder what all the fuss seems to be about? From my perspective, Kunena works quite well alongside CB.

For my purposes, I'm quite pleased with the [tabbed] integration with other services, like Acajoom (for newsletters) and JoomGallery (for pictures). The best recommendation is to have a test site and try the software and see for yourself whether it meets your needs.

Mr L.. this is a very good question and this can be a good discussion! I'm running kunena + CB and no problem, but...

As you mention the look and the feel of joomlapolis isn't good (the frontpage is messy). They do run a old version of joomlaboard...

I will say thet the CB code is mature and solid, today I don't have any problem at all. But i inherit the site from the last webmaster some year ago running CB 1.0b and the noting worked! So they have fixed a lot of problem but release schedule is quite slow, and they release betas and release candidates (RC) that pepole start using in production environment. The last RC you had to pay for (no problem with that), but reported problem for latest stable in the forum (at joomlapolise) was replied with : "just update to latest RC, its much better anyway."

And people start discussing given the long period of paid RC if this component should be listed as commercial over at JED.

So what is CB? It is a bit of this and a bit of that.
- extend the user database
- user registration
- login
- user profile
- API for user related stuff
- user management
- user list

The two first item can be solved within J1.5 (and J1.6).
The profile can be solved by kunena, if you only looking for user image/avatar.
The API is not documented and differ from the old one.
The user management doesn't stand out compared the the one included in Joomla.

A local sport club, where I'm webmaster, mebers have to pay a yearly fee to use our gym. But everyone can register on our site and participate in the forum.
Some users register and never revisit our site, other users use our site for some years and move on. Therefor we have a need to clean our user database form time to time. This is not easily within CB. I have set up userlist based on last visit date etc, but I have to search the user manually in the CB-useradmin and block or delete them.
Because we are not able to keep the user database up to date our cashiser use excel to keep track of user paying fees. We probably miss grant/contribution from the government because we don't have a update user database.

I have been waiting for the CB paid subscription plugin for quite a long time, in hope of improving user management, and I have been looking at other solutions like AEC. Unfortunately it seems like the pricing of the CB paid subscription plugin is just to high for our community.

The default CB template isn't eye-catching, and the last announced paid template is just a copy of facebook! Why copy something that already exists?

I'm a bit concerned about the direction CB has taken the last years and have start thinking about what do I need CB for and looking for other components that can do the job.

So my question is do I really need it, and can I come up with other solutions?
If I could I would have leaved CB today.

Am I missing something here?

Joomunity is free (when I go to their website), but some people here say it is too expensive...?!?

Are you mixing joomunity and joomsocial?