Question Procedure for JomSocial/Kunena Full Integration: templates, private forums, links, subscriptions...

Dear colleagues,

We've been working to fully integrate JomSocial and Kunena for more than two years, and thanks to the latest Kunena v1.7 improvements, specially that one regarding JomSocial Access Control integration, we can say we've made it.

As this subject matters many of you, I thought the best way to help you, and show you what we've learnt, is posting this message here. It's about a commercial product. I know many of you won't like the idea, but please, bear in mind that probably many other Kunena users can find it interesting and we can easily help them. That's the point of writing here.

The first thing you notice when you try to integrate JomSocial and Kunena out of the box is that a lot of limitations arise, that fall out of the scope of any of them (because they were not designed to work together in the first place). So, over this two last years we've been developing a product called JS G-KUNENA to work all these limitations out. Today, version 7.0 has been released.

This is how it works.

Group/Forum Assignations
Using JS G-KUNENA you can assign each JS Group a Kunena Forum. This way, group discussions are handled by the much more powerful Kunena forum.

Template Substitution
JomSocial groups are not designed to work with anything else that comes from the outside. There is nothing like plugins or anything similar to replace group discussion contents by Kunena forums. To work it out, JS G-KUNENA replaces a few JS template files to insert Kunena content.

Subscriptions
Group members can be subscribed to group discussions and be notified when a new post is placed in the Kunena group forum.

Automatic Forum Creation
When a new JS group is created, automatically a new Kunena forum is also created and they are linked together. The advantage over the Kunena JomSocial Group plugin is that, in this case, the Kunena forum is really visible in the JS Group, and each thread or comment posted in the forum is automatically displayed in the group.

Public/Private forums
Thanks to the new Kunena 1.7 improvements, JS G-KUNENA can handle Kunena forum access based on JS group membership. And it allows full flexibility to set whether the group forums are public available or only group members can see them. The way JS G-KUNENA handles user access rights is much more powerful and flexible than that of JomSocial and that of Kunena, because it combines both of them together and you get the chance to select which one to use in each case.


The overall result is that JS Group forums are no longer held using the plain simple JomSocial discussion solution, but instead are handled using the much more powerful Kunena forum, that greatly improves the user experience. All that, in a completely transparent manner for your users and without losing any of the features. You'll be getting more flexibility instead to operate the forums than before.

If you need any further information about how this product works, how to configure it, or even why we have developed the features in the way we did, please feel free to contact us and we'll gladly answer your question.

Kind regards.

Do you have a working demo site for this?
As far as I can see there isnt much here that warrants the cost of €24.95 when most of whats been shown can easily be added with non commercial mods and by altering the settings in JS or Kunena.

Hi Hangman,

I run a living site, but it's in Valencian language: www.elforofaller.com

There are many installations around (many hundreds of people are using it in their sites, indeed this is our most popular product).

I have to disagree with you: what JS G-KUNENA does, cannot be done by any non commercial mods (not even commercial ones) or by altering the settings. That's why we developed it in the first place, because we needed it ourselves.

JS G-KUNENA modifies JS Groups template files to display the corresponing Kunena threads as group discussions, in the group view and in any other view that links to the forums (administrative mods, lists, footers...).

It also allows automatic forum subscriptions for group members, automatic forum creation when a new JS Group is created, and full flexibility to set the group forum access permissions as either public or for members only.

The Kunena JomSocial Group plugin, that is non commercial, does not integrate Kunena forum in the group views, does not handle group discussions from the group, does not allow to set Group forum permissions apart from Members Only; and that last one is only achieved through a not very usable plugin parameter: when you have to manage large sites, it becomes very unpractical (several tens of numeric values separated with a combination and commas and semi-colons, with no other configuration, can be hard to manage).

On the other hand, JS G-KUNENA administers the integration with a Joomla! component, handles two tables for Group/Forum assignations that can easily be managed (added, deleted, modified, ...), allows full flexibility with Forum access permission (Public, Members Only for both Public and Private groups), and, above this, really displays the forum threads as group discussions in all group views (real integration).

About the price, I don't know about you, but I am not rich and I have to work to make a living. I know how much effort and time is involved in the development. As I've told, we've worked on it for two years, and now JS G-KUNENA is a set of 1 component and 3 plugins wih more than 200 files.

If you think it can suit your needs, fantastic. It will help you. If you feel the price is not worth it, no problem. It's your choice. We have several promotions for product translations, and also for non-for-profit organizations. And we all need things from one another, so if for any reason the price is a barrier for you, you can contact us and we'll sure find a way to collaborate with one another.

Kind regards.