Introduction

Content Construction

The powerful award-winning content extension for Joomla with more than 4 million downloads (and counting)!



WHAT IS K2?

K2 provides an out-of-the box integrated solution featuring rich content forms for items (think of Joomla articles with additional fields for article images, videos, image galleries and attachments), nested-level categories, tags, comments, a system to extend the item base form with additional fields (similar to CCK for those acquainted with Drupal or ACF in WordPress), a powerful plugin API to extend item, category and user forms, ACL, frontend editing, sub-templates & a lot more!

Using K2, you can transform your Joomla website to a news/magazine site with author blogs, product catalogs, work portfolio, knowledge base, download/document manager, directory listing, event listing & more, all this bundled under one package!

Give K2 a try & you'll instantly love it! It's easy to use and fun to develop websites with! If you need any help or want to contribute to the project, join us at the K2 community.


FEATURES

Since K2 is extensible with additional fields to its base item form, you can easily create category-specific content types, e.g. article, blog post, product page, directory listing.

K2 offers as standard:
- Nested-level categories
- Tags
- Distinct item image (useful for articles/catalogs), generated in 6 configurable dimensions by default to allow precise image size loading for your site's frontpage, categories/tags etc., side modules and items.
- Image galleries
- Videos
- Attachments
- User pages (author blogs/user profiles)
- Commenting, integrated with Google's reCaptcha & Akismet
- Smart ACL for frontend editing
- Unique plugin system to extend item, category & user forms
- AJAX based frontend editing & comments moderation
- Rest-like JSON/JSONP/RSS/Atom content output
- Native advanced SEF options
- Google Structured Data built-in
- Facebook OpenGraph & Twitter Cards support
- Built-in media manager
- 100% mobile-friendly backend user interface - a joy to edit your content on-the-go
- Total options control, with minimal hassle. Instead of configuring category options over and over, use K2's category option inheritance to allow one category to inherit all options of another category! Or create categories that act as "configuration templates" for other categories (e.g. one set for news/blog posts, another for products, a third for events and so on) and assign them to groups of categories.
- The most advanced, yet easiest to use templating system (with multiple template override sets) to create any type of content you want - the true power of K2!
- Secure & robust by design. In its nearly 14 year history (as of Jan 2023), K2 has only had low priority vulnerabilities you can count in just one hand, which were swiftly addressed. Just search for "K2" in the Joomla Vulnerable Extensions List (VEL - https://extensions.joomla.org/vulnerable-extensions/resolved/) to verify directly.
- K2 aims for stability and strong backwards compatibility with regular incremental improvements & fixes. No "move fast and break things" mentality here.

K2 integrates fully with the Joomla API, which means any third-party Joomla plugins will function properly within the K2 component & modules, either in the frontend or backend.


AMAZING PERFORMANCE

Pixeden, Groupama, Harvard, High Court of Australia, Amnesty International, Arturia are just some of the thousands of top Joomla sites around the world, fully powered by K2.

K2 also significantly outperforms the default Joomla article system in any real-world configuration, especially in high-traffic scenarios like media/news sites.


COMPATIBILITY

K2 is currently compatible with Joomla versions 1.5, 2.5 & 3.x on servers running PHP versions 5, 7 & 8.

Starting January 2023, K2 is provided in a rolling release development model by default. These rolling releases are identified by their build number/date. Point releases will still be used for reference, so it's easy for example to define compatibility with current Joomla & PHP versions. You can read more about these changes here: https://getk2.org/blog/k2-v2-11-rolling-releases-joomla-4-and-more


DEPENDENCIES & LICENSE

To utilize the built-in media & gallery features you need to install AllVideos (free) & Simple Image Gallery Pro, both provided by JoomlaWorks.

K2 is developed by JoomlaWorks & licensed under the GNU/GPL license.


WHAT NEXT?

Try K2! Install it, hit the "import" button to bring your Joomla articles inside K2, start playing with the component to see the flexibility it provides first-hand. Moreover? You no longer need a dozen of components & even more modules/plugins to do things like run a news site or a blog.

Visit the K2 Community website: getk2.org

Functionality
Good functionality, most everything that was there worked well, save for UI issues.
Ease of use
Awful. Ex:Users need to check a box to delete an existing item image, save, then specify a new image to replace it. All just to swap images.
Support
N/a. Didn't contact support.
Documentation
Almost completely nonexistent; the extent of my K2 knowledge is a product of my coworkers experiences with it.
I used this to: Developing sites for future users with not much tech knowhow.
Owner's reply: Some clarifications:
1) You can simply choose a new image to replace the existing one. The checkbox exists if you want to completely remove an already uploaded image, it's not required in order to upload a new image in place of an existing one.
2) We have a very good set of video tutorials on getk2.org, one of which is provided by OSTraining.
Generally I had no important issues with this extension (at least nothing I couldn't fix) but only a couple of things drove me away. First was the Simple Image Gallery (found it a bit hard to work with), and second and most important was the Joomla! 3 association option for multilingual websites, which really makes it piece of cake to associate content in many languages. If this option was available in K2 I think it would be back in the game at least for me. Anyway I think it's a very very nice extension, really worth to give it a shot!
Owner's reply: The current release of K2 (v2) as well as the upcoming one (v3) both fully support multilingual content by default, without the need for any other extension in Joomla 2.5 & 3.x. That is why in all backend forms in K2 there is always the "language" option to associate your content with your desired language.

Very good component



Posted on 22 September 2014
Really love the way one can present articles on the front end using K2.



Thank you.

I love K2



Posted on 04 June 2014
This is wonderful.

  It takes a bit of work to set up, but it's great to work with.

  Also the design could be better. Still I love him.
I've recently implemented this nice plugin, works like a charm :) I'll rated Excellent!

Almost Perfect



Posted on 05 March 2014
It does so much and it makes organizing a web site with a lot of articles really easy.



Set up is a bit of a pain, however, especially if you're importing a large number of articles. Every image has to be removed and replaced and that takes a lot of time. And then, if you change something in your layout, say decreasing the image sizes by 20px, you have to do it all over again: delete and replace.



If there was a way to get around that issue, this system would be perfect.
Owner's reply: Actually there is. For imported articles from Joomla!, you can use the IAKI plugin http://getk2.org/extend/extensions/616-iaki-import-as-k2-image (a featured K2 extension in getk2.org) which makes the first image of your content a K2 image. So in such a case, you really don't need to manually import your images as K2 images, this plugin does everything for you and it respects the image dimensions as set in your K2 categories. As for what happens when you need to change your K2 image settings inside category parameters, well, the answer is simple: K2 will keep the existing images and HTML resize them to the new dimensions. If these dimension changes are less than 50px upwards, then the effect on image quality is nearly unnoticeable. If you need to change the dimensions more, then simply swap your image settings to use the next bigger dimension. So, e.g. if you used the "Medium" dimension setting in your K2 Category listings, swap to "Large" and let K2 HTML resize them downwards. The result will be what you need.

K2 rocks



Posted on 27 February 2014
Well I have been using K2 for a few months on Joomla 2.5 and Joomla 3.2. And my conclusion is that it is well worth taking the time to learn K2. As it does a lot more than it appears to, once you get used to the interface. I have read a lot of negative reviews, which actually point to server configuration issues. I know this as I am a system admin. And have found miss-configured servers give the biggest problems. And not the product its self.

With a little bit of exploration the security that can be set is amazing. And it is easy to set up a forum or blog with all the security needed to keep spammers out.

So take the time to explore this product as it is well worth it in the end. Keep up the good work.
I was very excited about this component and I created a new website using K2 only to discover that nothing works as promised. Form an SEO perspective this componenet is a joke, with lots of duplicate URLs created by the search functionality and some modules displaying K2 items. This issue was first reported 2 years ago but no one really cares (google this phrase 'K2 SEO issue - Can it be fixed' for more details).

K2 also has big issues with the cache system. It generates a lot of cache files and you will quickly realize you need extra hosting space. For every image you upload, K2 generates an additional 4 or 5 cache images that take lots of space. Again, this issue is more than 3 years old and no fix or update.

I would strongly recommend against using K2 until these basic issues are fixed.
Owner's reply: K2 creating multiple sizes of an image is not a bug, it's a feature. Furthermore, K2's SEO is far better than more content components' is. Not only can you NOT have duplicate URLs by simply creating a hidden menu item pointing to all of K2 categories (this fixes duplicate URLs which would be normal to have depending on where you're browsing the site), we have also included an Advanced SEF section which can alter the URLs to your liking and even remove the item id creating URLs that only commercial SEF components can - and without the DB overload they bring.

K2, like all good things, needs some time and devotion to learn. If you can't see the benefits of it, then you might as well make a static website. I hear Jekyll is all the rage nowadays (good luck with that).

:)

A poorly documented gem



Posted on 28 December 2013
This extension is brilliant, and it shines even more the longer you work with it. The folks at the support forum is friendly and provides competent help.



The only real downside at the beginning is the documentation. It is something between real bad and simply non-existing. When you come to their document site the very first time you get the impression you hit the wrong link ;) - so hopefully the owner will take care a bit more about that in the future.



The CCK is built upon extra fields. You first define an extra field group and add the wanted fields and their types to it. After that, you assign this group to a category, and all content within this category will inherit the group. This concept helps organizing your additions to the standard Joomla content very efficient.



Unlike other CCKs like ZOO the extra field group is blocked within your content and added on the bottom, so your design capabilities are a bit limited.



The real benefit comes with the carefully integrated database support - you e.g. can easily fetch all articles from any single user, something I felt should be trivial however is found only within K2.



Joomla content, categories and users can be easily transferred to the K2 universe. Unfortunately, there is no integrated import/export tool for/to external data sources. The only import/export tool supporting K2 together with Joomla 3.x I found is Hexdata. It offers great possibilities like importing relations, however its current version has a bug and is not working with K2 at the moment.



K2 comes with its own tag system, that is a bit outdated now that Joola 3.x has arrived. Maybe this hopefully will be updated in the future.



K2 is rock solid and can be used on productive sites without worry. This makes it the first choice over SEBLOD, that appears to be in permanent early beta stage ;)
k2 is by far the best component i ever used. for me it's a must-have for every single site, and function as the basis for all my article creation.



if you have some basic php skills you can use the k2 templating features which gives you endless possibilities for templating and designing your site's articles.



the only thing i don't like about k2 is it's front-end publishing / editing interface, which requires lots of work if you want it to look and feel good for a common user, not to mention RTL. but that's only applies for editing, the content templating itself is actually great on that matter.



recommended.
Owner's reply: The good news is that K2 v3.x will make frontend editing a lot better overall and definitely easier for users.
AllVideos
Free

AllVideos

By JoomlaWorks
Multimedia Players
AllVideos (by JoomlaWorks) is the universal media player for Joomla and a classic must-have extension for any Joomla based website. Use the plugin to easily embed video & audio content from all major 3rd party media providers (in alphabetical order: Dailymotion, Facebook, Flickr, Mixcloud, SoundCloud, Twitch, Vimeo, YouTube) inside your Joomla articles, K2, Virtuemart, Kunena or any other Joomla...
Simple Image Gallery
Free

Simple Image Gallery

By JoomlaWorks
Galleries
Simple Image Gallery (by JoomlaWorks) is truly the simplest and most effective way to add image galleries into your Joomla content and a classic must-have extension for any Joomla based website. WHY SIMPLE IMAGE GALLERY? Adding image galleries inside your Joomla articles, K2 items, Virtuemart/HikaShop products or any other component that supports "content" plugins is dead-simple. The plugin can...
Simple RSS Feed Reader
Free

Simple RSS Feed Reader

By JoomlaWorks
Social Display
Adding RSS/Atom syndicated content inside your Joomla website is now super-easy and simple with the "Simple RSS Feed Reader" module from JoomlaWorks. All you have to do is add a few feeds to the module parameters, publish the module in some position and that's it! You can even publish multiple feeds at the same time (meaning in the same module instance) and have them display combined! The "Simple...
Disqus Comments
Free

Disqus Comments

By JoomlaWorks
Social Comments
Disqus Comments (for Joomla) integrates the popular Disqus comments system & service into any Joomla! based website. Disqus (pronounced 'discuss') is a service and tool for web comments and discussions - currently the most popular comments-as-a-service provider worldwide. It makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion communit...
Quick Menu
Free

Quick Menu

By JoomlaWorks
Admin Navigation
Quick Menu (by JoomlaWorks) is a Joomla 4 administrator module which adds a handy quick menu to the Joomla 4 backend. FEATURES Less clicks to important content management and admin tasks in the Joomla 4 backend Neatly organize the menu in 2 columns (for admins), one to access common content management tasks and one to access common admin tasks. Keep in mind that not everything is included and f...

K2

Version:
2.11.20240213
Developer:
JoomlaWorks
Last updated:
Mar 28 2024
1 month ago
Date added:
Apr 14 2009
License:
GPLv2 or later
Type:
Free download
Includes:
c m p
Compatibility:
J3
Download

Uses Joomla! Update System

Score:


Write a review