When I bought this extension initially it was good but not great. After the last upgrades it has become excellent. The guys from CMSJunkies are awesome and always happy to support and jump in when needed. For me,as a website developer, they have gone way beyond what was expected of them. This is the extension to buy if you are building a business directory.

Excellent extension and great customer support, George is very responsive and knowledgeable. I had trouble with the extension that was absolutely frustrating me which turned out to be a setting on my MySQL server.... George fixed it on no time - I should have asked for support sooner.

Recently I purchased the directory module offered by CMSJunkie, and with pleasure I can say this is a great product with some of the best support I have seen in a long time. These days most developers only focus on the sale, not value in service when small issues come up. These guys were on top of it from start to finish. Great job and thank you one more time!

This is overall a great extension. That's why I rated it by 4 stars. It has a lot of what you need on it to promote business and that was what I was looking for what I bought this product. A bit high, especially for only 3 months of support and upgrades. There are a few pros and cons that you should defiantly consider before purchasing the product. I normally dot write reviews that lean towards the negative however, with the problems I experienced, I thought you may want to know as a buyer beware before you purchase.



I did however run into some issues when I installed this product. First problem I ran into was, it does not get along with the K2 extension if you have it installed on your site. I currently use K2 because of its vast amount of features for articles. When I installed it, id did not work and threw up errors and would not load. So, I searched the internet for any related issues. I found a small forum post about it on the vendor's website and it really was not clear as to how to resolve the issue. Apparently, if your running K2, you have to have a patch to their product that this vendor provides to resolve the issue, but you have to ask them for it and then they e-mail it to you. Apparently, the vendor blames the coding in K2 is flawed/out dated and that was causing the Directory not to work. So, once I got that patch and installed it (into K2's directory) the JBusinessDirectory stared working. Frustrated with what I had to go through to get it to work, I suggested to the vendor in his support forums that he should add that patch to their website to download or, fix the issue inside their product so it doesn't conflict with another products coding causing your product to not work. I also asked for a few other items as well. I was alarmed to find that the vendor deleted my post from the website and responded to the effect that, "The problem is with K2, and they have been contacted about it and they needed to fix it with their coding, not us". I should have noticed the red flag there, but I was happy it was working and let it go at that point. The vendor pretty much passed the blame of their own product not working properly on someone else instead of resolving it on their side.



Next, Joomla released 3.2.0. The only problem I had to deal with unfortunately was with JBusinessDirectory. The prodcut stopped working again. So, I questioned in their support forum as to if anyone knew what was going on. I got a response again and was told I needed to download a newer version of jlist and install it on my side and it should work. So, I did and the problem fixed. I suggested the vendor should make an update so that this issue wont come up again for others, again, I find the post deleted. I asked what happened to the post, and the vendor responded that "it was not relevant to the problem". Wow, that told me a lot. So, what was happening is, all the problems and issues being reported was being deleted by the vendor/admin so that no-one would see what was previously reported so they knew how to fix it. If you look at their support forums, you can confirm, its very clean and not very many posts. I was satisfied that I was getting the problem resolve, just was a bit frustrated with the vendors responses to the request for help.



The final straw was when they released an update to their product, JBusinessDirectory 3.0.0 Beta as listed on thier website. I'm thinking YES!, finally an update that fixes the issues, as well as brings some new features. So I started trying to find it on the site to download, I looked in my profile for it, and search the section where it allows you to download product that you have purchased. I clicked it to find out it was still the old version. So, I looked on the website and just found some posted where people where already asking about it and posted an question on how to get it. A few hours later, I get a e-mail with the update. That was weird because the other extension product that I have, you re-download it from their site under your account profile. Not with this vendor apparently. So, I got it off the e-mail, uploaded and installed it and, the product stops working again. Frustrated again, I contact the vendor with the issue VIA the support forums (because basically that's the only place you CAN go). I explained the issue and made suggestions to help better the product. Again, I find the post is deleted again. I get a email from the vendor saying, "If you have an issue with the product, you should have just e-mailed us". Really? What was the support forum for then? Anyways, so the 2 problems this time was 1) The lists were blank & 2) the grids were not showing up at all. So, the vendor DID fix the grids issue and that started working but the data was not showing up at all. So, then the vendor wanted FTP access to my site to fix the issue. I am VERY cautious in doing that, you don't know who your dealing with and they can potentially damage your site. Still frustrated, I let him have limited temp access (I quickly deleted it soon afterwards). I then get a response back that the new events section of their product has a table conflict with another product I use which is called DT Register. He said that he could fix the table, but would take time or disable the events. So I asked him if he could please fix the table so I could get it backup running because it was a key part of my site. I got back from the vendor what I thought was a smart type remark that said "You could always just disable the events". What kind of response was that? Needless to say, the customer support I received was horrible in my book.



So, in summery of my experience, buyer be aware!



Pros: This is a GREAT product, when it works right and when they get the bugs out of it. It has many options and potential to become a great class A product.



Cons: 1) The price is a bit high for what you get. The product support is only 3 months long and that includes upgrades, and support. Most vendors I have dealt with have a 1 year product support and update, especially if you are paying $100 USD for it. 2) The product still has a LOT of bugs in it. Its advertised as a clean code product, and that may be true but it is a bit buggy. Once those bugs are squashed on their end, it will be an awesome product. 3) My experience with the customer support was horrible. I find it hard to believe there are such great reviews of this product but I assume some didn't post here. You wont find a complaint on their website though, the vendor/admin deletes everything negative on his website, event the reviews. 4) The process to receive upgraded new releases is ridiculous. You have to ask for it and wait for an email. I have other paid products and they are all accessible for download on your profile under your purchased items on their site. This one is not that way making it difficult to obtain it instead of accessing it yourself.



Again, this is a GREAT product. Don't take this review as being a denture from buying it. Just be aware of what your going to run into. Good luck and hope this review helps in the purchase of this product.





If you have questions about anything I have posted, please just send me a message.

The customer support with this company is amazing. George has been very helpful with the setup and installation of this component. I look forward to all future dealings with CMS Junkie. The component is very easy and straightforward.

I had some problems with the extension playing nice with the template that I used but George was able to get it working the way it should. My only suggestion is to take the corrections that he made and apply it to a new release. Looks great, works great and I am thrilled with the results.

I must says this: it's not only great module, it also has very good support team. Good work guys

I dont review often, laziness I suppose, but the developer has been very supportive and helpful, so I decided to review this extension.

If you are looking for a directory extension that is easy to use and install, I would suggest checking out JBusinessDirectory.

I confess to being a little wary because of the price. This is not a cheap extension. However, you get what you pay for as they say.

Installation is really easy, just upload as you would any other extension, and your pretty much ready to go. There are some sample businesses preloaded, so you can check out how everything works.

General Settings in the back end covers currency choice, date format, whether to enable packages, Offers and SEO. You can also choose whether to enable ratings, reviews, numbering, google maps, filters etc.

Currently the only payment processor is Paypal, but Im sure George will add more in the future.

Some business categories are preloaded, but easy to change up to 3 levels deep.

Company entry is easy, as is the alteration of email templates.

One feature I think is great is the ability to enter companies yourself, and the company owners can claim thier business on registration.

An ingenius way to fill up your database before you even start, so your site doesnt look empty!

You can setup packages to include or omit certain features such as maps, reviews, ratings, website address links, business logo, video upload, images, contact forms, html descriptions etc.

So you can easily setup a basic FREE package for business owners to claim with options to upgrade thier listing!

Just email all your contacts after you have loaded thier basic info, and you are off!



The layout is clean, easy to read, and navigate.



I had some minor issues which George corrected for me promptly with no fuss.

Some of these my be down to the fact I am using a custom template, but it was no hassle.



This is easily the most complete directory I have come across, and after the initial pain of the price was glad I bought it.

Support is good, and it just works!

I would recommend this to anyone.

Thanks George for a great extension.



Chris

This is the first time I have bothered to review an extension. I have wasted a lot of money on other directory extensions and all have frustrated and disappointed. I wish I had found J Business Directory first! It is easy to install and configure, has good documentation, cms junkie provide excellent support and the functionality is comprehensive. Does everything I and my client needed. Quality. I would have no reservations recommending this extension.

We've tried multiple business directories in the past and most fell short of features and/or functionality in some way or another until we found this one. This one had everything we needed right out the box. The accompanying template made very little work for us to do because it already looked great. The admin interface is very intuitive and easy to dive right into. We had some trouble getting the 3.0 version installed and set-up properly on our hosting environment but support was fantastic in fixing/addressing our issues quickly.