I have used this component on 1.0.x and had little trouble, and it was usually my own.

Since the ByoSTech site has gone "Charter" pay per use, I have seen no real improvement in the product, very little forethought and even less progress in the current 1.5.6 version.

The installation "guide" is not current, the Zend Optimized files don't work with my Zend 2.2 install, and I can't get responses from the company.

The forum is stagnant and unanswered. After using JACL for many years, I can say, its not worth it ANY more...Lets just hope that J1.6 and beyond can handle this internally so that we no longer have to wait for hacks and rip-offs to accomplish what a site needs.

This component will make you appreciate the sites that really do support their work for free! If you don't donate to their cause, you'll wind up with JACL...and very few can use it.

I have to agree with the previous reviewer: finding the component for download on their site is not the most obvious thing on the planet. A little search work will get you there eventually. Here's the thinking behind it: you want to 1)download a 2)commercial 3)protected component, so you go downloads, then the chartered member area and then the encrypted area called Zend optimized.

Anyway, once the component is installed and the core hacks are copied to your Joomla installation it takes a little thinking on the side of the admin. First what do you want? E.g. what's the membership structure that you want to create? You have to have your answers ready before you start creating levels and assigning access rights. Therefor I highly recommend to read the manual before you start.
And I have to admit the manual is not up to date: no big changes but still some things to wonder about where and what to look for.

Aside from the manual and knowing where to find the files (bookmark!) is another point to bear in mind: because a major part of this component is a core hack and your site's security is at stake: it takes a while until the updates become available. The programmes does some extensive testing to make sure it's safe and working. Small but important security updates (like the 1.5.6. update) is delivered pretty fast by the way.

This component enabled me to create a couple of membership levels and assistant admins. It works as advertised: great!

Needed to extent the User Permissions for a school web site and at first I was a little fearful of this application based on the most recent reviews. After trying all of the others and not wanting to spend a large amount of money for a program to do this task, I finally broke down and installed JACLPlus. What a 'sweetheart' application doing just what I needed with just a slightly higher then expected learning curve to get it to function properly. Once I got over the 'hump' it was smooth sailing and was able to provide to my client something they wanted yet not native to the Joomla system. Lastly, it was all done without one forum post for assistance, FAQ reading or email support. Not bad when you consider that I have this Joomla install residing on a Windows 2003 IIs server. Now if all of the other installs played this nice, my days would be a whole lot shorter behind this machine. Thanks for a wonderful and well designed application doing what I believe the core Joomla system should offer out of the box!

Already to problems to download this component from their website gives you worries or they know what they doing. After a lot of stress I was able to download it and to install. Oh what was that one of the biggest mistakes I have ever done with Joomla. The component is simply not working. It will try to change some files who simply not excist (using a standard installed J1.5.3!). Then I tryed again with a fresh installation of the latest Joomla version and same problems occur. I even doubt or even this component can work at all! When I tryed to uninstall it, I ran again into many error messages and I was unable to remove it. Lucky I tested it on 2 test installations else it would totally screw up your website.
ADVICE: spend your time better with something else instead of trying to download this one and to install....

i was looking for a joomla extension to extend the standard public/registered/special etc. , and this seems to be the only extension that does what i needed. Difficult to get the correct download, their website is quite muddled, but providing you test it on a test site first, getting the correct file, it is brilliant and it is free.

Aside from the fact that after working with both, IMHP Juga is a better option, I spent hours trying to uninstall JACLplus to be able to log back into the back end of my test site, and noticed the following:

The manual uninstall which can be found only through the forums on the BYOS site only covers the Frontend and database.

To make sure you clean out everything, make a note of the date/time you installed, and you will have to restore all the files changed at that time - site wide (including numerous /administrator/ files.


Anyone who makes it this difficult to uninstall a component (and not even tell you where to find out how) is suspect as an author at best.

Well, i was reading the whole reviews and by reading it this Component look like a Trouble Maker not Life saver :)

But This is the Best Component which Extends the way you work with Joomla. I've installed it on my local system it works fine after doing lot of changing once i happy with that than i installed it on my production site and its great.

One suggestion for the people who messed up their sites, PLEASE USE IT ON TEST SYSTEM FIRST BEFORE YOU DO IT LIVE. This is already said in the readme file.

JACL ROCKS and its great component but people need to learn how to use it, check the documentation and forum.

I've been using Joomla for about 3 weeks after leaving Plone/Zope behind, and despite some heavy perspiration on my part during the install of this extension (due to the other comments I'd read), I really don't understand why some people are having trouble - it's a Ronseal product; "does exactly what it says on the tin". no more, no less. I've had far more trouble out of Community Builder plugins than from this. Many thanks for a much needed extension!

I installed this on my production live site and it totally screwed up my site (excuse my language) but I cannot hide my disappointment. According to the description if you uninstall it it will go all back to normal? Wrong. Now when I publish articles, front end user cannot read them as they are denied permission, beats me since it was working fine right up to the time before I install this component. So I will give this a poor grading and warn all to stay away from and pray for the joomla core to come up with a viable permissions level system. :(

This used to be a great FREE component, but now that it's gone to a subscription version it's a real pain, especially the Zend encoded subscription.

1. If you don't have Zend on your site - it doesn't work - which means that any of my sites on IIS - I can't get it to work whereas the previous non-Zend version worked just fine on IIS. It leaves me totally stuck as I now can't upgrade my IIS sites to Joomla 1.0.15.

2. The auto generate the code for your website that you need to insert into your configuration before you can get this to go - just doesn't work for any of my Linux based sites. I have to ASK by email for a code to be generated which gives me a 24 hour turnaround time. Not good enough when you are trying to get things going quickly - and it totally scares me for upgrading from Joomla 1.0.13 to 1.0.15 as potentially my live sites will be down while I get the correct code.

Since I really really needed a conponent like this, I went ahead and purchased the 38.00 "Chartered Membership" I've looked all over the place for a component like this and haven't found one. After several days I didn't receive a link. Then I read the forum. More than just me haven't recieved this link and those that have had to request it 4 and 5 times. I had to cancel the subscription, and I would be very warey.

this extension is great once you understand how it is supposed to be used! it's the perfect thing for sites were 3 levels of access is not enough... the extension worked perfectly for me... but i don't like the hacking way it's done and think it should be built in to joomla... i was hoping it would be in by 1.5 but i guess not...

This is one of the components that make your Joomla site professional. Should be integrate into core of Joomla.

Keep doing your best !

hi.
I am NOT new to joomla. I followed every instruction, set up a trial site and things seemed to be all right. Tried it on the production site and bang! I was unable to do anything any more.
I uninstalled it, but the component does not "go quietly". Ended up doing the whole installation again.
The system is not hard, but to my view, it should not be installed in production sites: too many variables can go wrong.
Also,you will need a patch for every upgrade and not all components are supported.
Beware also, if you site is in another language... it changes everything back into english.
To add up: it went down and took a good site with it. I hope it does not take my client as well.

JACL installed perfectly for me the first time on my live, heavily modifed site and caused no complications. It provides a tremendous amount of flexibility although it takes a bit of time to learn how to use it.

The documentation PDF is also excellent because it a) shows how to use the component in detail with screenshots, and b) explains how the entire Joomla user access system levels are structured.

One bug I found is that it denies permission to create an admin account even through you're logged in as a superadministrator. This was fixed by commenting out a few lines as suggested in the support forum.