The gigcal component cannot be installed on latest versions of SQL as it gives some errors during installation. I tried implementing certain corrections on the forum but it did not work.

I have been using Docman on my site for 3 months now and it has proven to fail miserably. It is very good when it works, but the only problem is that it doesn't always work! When it crashes, there is no solution. First time, I had to reinstall it and re-upload everything. Many files were lost. Now it happened again. There is no support available on the website as well.

I would recommend people to stay away from this component even though it is very popular.

I backed up a 120 MB Joomla website which is already up and running and tried to install it locally to test the component. I am running 1.0.12 and it worked PERFECTLY! This is THE component I was looking for... It effortlessly backs up sites, even the big ones.

Since there is no documentation available, I am posting an outline of the steps:
1] Install the component and backup your website. You can view the ftp path of your backup through this component.

2] Download/transfer the backup file to your desired location. This file must then be unzipped in the desired location.

3] Now, you might need to change some parameters. If your site has a huge database, you need to change the maximum execution time for a php script. Find the 'php.ini' file for your server (not sure where it will be), which is the file with the php settings for your server. For local testing, I had to restart the server but I'm not sure what you'd do for remote hosting. Anyway, the value for 'max_execution_time' in the 'php.ini' file should be increased to around 200 seconds for larger databases.

4] Now, point your browser to http:///install/
where the is the exact location of your unzipped files.

5] You will notice a joomla installation screen. Follow normal procedure, just make sure the name of the database is the same as that you had in the initial website. Change the database server in case there is already a database with that name in your server.

6] If you do not get past step 5, in the MySQL settings screen, try increasing the max execution time mentioned in step 4.

7] Make sure you use the same password for admin in the final screen,

8] Remove the installation folder.

9] Download via ftp, your configurations.php file for joomla. Change the '$mosConfig_live_site' to the path of your joomla installation.

Thats it! You have your entire site backed up!

Thanks a lot to this empowering component.

This component is really really awesome!

If you are looking for people to rate specific content items according to specific criteria, and also write reviews, nothing is even close to jReviews. It has great flexibility and functionality. You can have weighted criteria where you define which criterion is more important. It is very easy to allot criteria to different categories.

Best part is, its completely AJAX! Even the backend is! Everything is really quick and looks really good. The front end template for rating is also very attractive. There are great modules available for listing your reviews.

A must buy for all who need an extended ratings component. I just wish it were GNU/GPL...