I don't thing there are many other options out there like it. Many approach tagging from the built in meta tags but this goes much farther. Approaches tagging functionality found in wordpress. I have found it to be a bit buggy, but Phil is always ready to come in and fix it with no hassle. Templating of the system is getting better too, needs independent templates for component and module.

There don't seem to be that many options right now for capable download managers within joomla. Docman is near the top of the pile and it offers some pretty great features. There are a few bugs, one really annoying one where the editor spreads 3 times the width of your template when uploading a document from the front end. The developer claims it is a bug within templates or editors... even though they make the only component that exhibits this kind of faulty behavior. And on that note is my concern... this is a release candidate from 2005! Why has this component not been developed since, and why is there not a commercial version available with better options and support. Its a great tool... why abandon it?

Mike really makes some great ajax plugs for use with CB. This is the best connection module i have found. The graphics for the buttons needed to be tweaked, but other than that it was perfect. For $10 its a great little mod...

Is Cron really the only way to automate a backup? I had been using a tool that sent me an e-mail of the database every night; that was awesome, then the db got to big and it stopped working. That is why i tried this. It does work, but it seemed like i needed to babysit it to work. Some of the selection menus for which files you want to update are missing check all / uncheck. Why would you put the option on one menu and not the next? I don't understand how i can copy the database and all the files, but still exclude components... It did manage to backup a very large site with a ton of files to a zip file on my server. I think it will be a great tool when i figure out the cronjob setup. It says that it is a cloner, i have not tried that feature yet... could prove to be very useful for deploying a base site with a base setup of components and plugins installed.

Again, XE makes an awesome flash interface and couples it with a less than stellar php backend and front end php code. The backend of all their gallery tools are desperately in need of a control panel where you can quickly jump to the different sections of the component. Does not support variable bit rate mp3s, but i think that is a flash issue more than anything. You will still need to ftp collections of files and it will take a little while to organize them in XE. Should show the length of a song in minutes and seconds. Once it it setup it really works well. The community uploads are a good idea, but it seems like more of an afterthought...

XE seems to be finding a nitch of creating really awesome flash tools to fill in the holes of the joomla multimedia offerings. I have been a bit disappointed by the surrounding PHP and backend controls. This comp does a great job of playing back FLV files. You get a fair amount of control over the colors and behavior of the swf, but i still want more. Every video has to be buried two sub categories in order to get it to play. The flash interface really needs tooltips over the buttons to help people navigate the interface, i couldnt figure out what some of the buttons did (or where they were) after playing with it for a couple of days) The component does allow you to link directly to a specific video and you can use it to embed videos in content. They just came out with a module to display recent videos... more modules and better php around the flash would be appreciated.

I recently paid for the upgraded "Plus" version. It looks like this just gives you a few features ahead of the free version and more responsive support for a year. I would like to see a better laid out support center on their website, but they are good about answering e-mails. It does the job of a mailer very well and makes it easy for people to sign up and manager their subscriptions form the front end. One click and you are signed up! The e-mails that it sends out are easy to format and include postings from your joomla content sections. I was a bit disappointed at the backend management tools. The workflow of creating a campaigne seems to be a bit too difficult for how simple this tool is. Needs better management of the the lists, right now you have to do a lot of exporting and importing to excel to organize your lists... this really needs to get fixed. Sometimes it seems a bit buggy in the backend, shows a bunch of errors in the headers space... but it still works... You can automate through cron, but its not overly easy to setup. I would like a newsletter tool that i setup once and forget it for the most part. Every month, send out the top 5 posts from this month to these lits, something like that... i have not see anybody do that though. Great product overall, hoping for more in the future.

I had found one other cobbled attempt at an invite component / plugin a while back, this one is the missing link. Anyone who is serious about contact managment uses plaxo, and this does a great job integrating with it and most any other contact database. The e-mail invites provide a working link to community builder registration, and the CB plugin does a great job of organizing your invite status. In order to get a compoenent interface seperate from the CB plugin you have to shell out another $30, making the complete solution cost about $80. But it works and it works well, mike is really good about support and the forums are active at his site. I think we are going to see some great stuff from this developer in the future. Layout of the plugin and graphics could use some help in areas, but other than that it is beautiful and it works!

I think the XHTML suite is a good editor, but it seems to be lacking some of what makes open source great, constant development by other people. It does a lot out of the box and it does it pretty well. But i would like to see a plugin for connecting to the gallery2 bridge... i can do this for JCE but when i asked the developer when it would be coming, he could offer nothing. The backend gives you a lot of control, setup of the toolbars is a bit tedious. But you can have custom toolbars for user groups which is nice to be able to hide extra stuff for your standard users. Spellchecking built in was awesome, until it became a standard feature in firefox. Still good, but i was hoping for more.

Its not easy, but installation is possbile with a little bit of work. I thought i could use it as a universal CRM and modify it into my community needs... but it seems to be rather specific in its target audience. All of the internal workflows and procedures are well thought out and work, but they do not seem to be all that adaptable to other groups.

If you are running a civic organization that needs to keep track of a lot of people with their demographics and you want to do fundraising... this may be for you