In December of last year I started using Joomla and was looking for a Forum Component. Luckily I stumbled across Agora.
The support is second to none, all problems and questions are answered very quickly and professionally from the staff at JoomlaMe. The time and effort that they spend helping their Community is just amazing, and at the same time the Agora Project moves forward at a pace that seems to be unmatchable. The Installation is easy and went without any problems on my site. The backend is also well thought out and layed out so that there are no problems. The settings can all be quickly and easily made. All together, it is the best component that I have seen or used for for Joomla. Unfortunatly I can only give a rating of "Excellent" because Agora breaks the scales with everything it offers. How does that Tina Turner song go..... Simply the Best, better than all the rest... Thats Agora.

I've been working with Joomla websites since the early Mambo days. I went through the nightmares of integrating other forum's into Joomla with bridges and hacks and such. I used SMF, vbulletin, and PHPBB2 and 3, and many sites used Fireboard.

July of last year I discovered Agora. Without question, it is hands down the best component you can use in your Joomla Community. Support has been exceptional, and it is fast. Really, really fast. MySQL queries are kept to a minimum, there's not a lot of fluff (icon's graphics and such) and I'd say out of the 20 sites I have used it on, it has worked with every template, with little or no problems.

I did have one problem with a rockettheme template in December. Hazzaa was very quick to look into it. I provided him access to thwe backend of the site, as it was more than a css related issue. He found the problem, fixed it and in the next release, he fixed it there as well. Unlike the reviewer below, I am more than satisified with my experience with getting a problem resolved effortlessly. That is the kind of service people should be thankful for. Many developers do no more support on their product than a forum post and then, it may be one short line "Looking into it" and that's the last you hear from them.

The wiki recently underwent a change...for the better. The previous wiki was, shall I say, lacking. All features, controls, and administration are very well documented, and they are adding and refining almost daily.

I don't understand how anyone could complain about support from joomlame and Hazzaa in particular given they have gone out of there way to provide the Joomla Community a fantastic forum that is beyond anything we have seen to date.

After using this component for almost a year on many sites, I would recommend this forum to anyone that wants a stable, fast, and fully integrated forum on their site.

I needed to convert my DB from a dead IPB forum. Agora was a breeze to install and handled the conversion without any issues (required an additonal $15 Agora plugin but well worth it). Agora seems completely scalable to fit my growing needs. Plus their support is great. Thank you!!

After reading all of the reviews, I figured I'd give this forum a shot. The developers have made a great product, and I would absolutely recommend this to anyone.

Ran into a problem that the forum will not pull up if you have any sort of other RSS feed on your site, but the support very quickly helped me work through this.

Keep up the good work!

I build a lot of membership sites and permission functionality is a must have. The Agora forum has that and more.
Its easy to use and the developers are on top of any problems in a heart beat.
You can't beat the price either - free right now - It wouldn't bother me if they charged for it though because the support you get is second to none.

Lets face it, after something is installed the only thing left is the support of the product. Go search their forums and you will see the level of support.

Today I posted a couple questions and they were answered within 5 minutes. You can't ask for anything more than that other then they install it for you - which by the way, Hazzaa did just that today too.
I had an earlier version - prerelease version that needed upgrading and it was done for me (don't expect it done for free - their time is worth something as well). I made a donation. Everyone is happy.

They have more Joomla products coming out soon. I can't wait to try them. Knowing their level of skill and commitment to the Agora project I'm sure anything else they create will be just as great.

I've been looking at forum components for a couple months now and finally decided to install Agora. Very nice product. Documentation is very good and looks like it's going to keep getting better.

The support I just received for a start-up issue blows me away. These guys logged in to a test account and spent at least a couple of hours of their time figuring out my problem (all at no cost?!!?)

If you're looking at forums, this is an absolute no-brainer.

I've been contemplating adding a Forum to my site for some time. I was driven to check out Agora largely due to the positive Reviews it was getting.

Installation was to all intents and purposes trouble free and once I'd found my way around the well designed and clear Administrator, which also has its own Joomla Admin Menubar Button Plugin, so one can get straight into the Agora Administrator; I was ‘on the road’.

I was able to quickly set up several Forums and assign users suitable access levels. There's a Sync-ing feature too which tidies Users as per the Joomla User list, so any old, orphaned or disused accounts can quickly be removed.

And when I needed support, the Agora Support Team answered my Forum posts typically within 10 or 15 minutes, with clear unambiguous answers. The Agora Documentation Wiki is amongst the best I've seen and the editor of the Wiki was quick to add my suggestions.

I’m new to Forums, but I’d suggest if you are looking for a Forum Component that won't suck your brains out, it has to be Agora. 10/10. Donation coming very soon Agora!

After going round and round w/Kunena because it isn't Joomla 1.5 Native, and then discovering that there's a CB plugin for Agora (Also works beautifully!), I decided to take another look at jfusion and phpBB, but then agora tipped the scales, when I...

1.) read all the reviews (almost everything is 5 stars - you can't complain about that when you must have stability (even for an RC release!)

2.) checked out the forums themselves and noticed that there's also a akype field (Now I'm waiting for them to provide support for an online/offline mode for IMs).

I'm an avid user of skype and phpBB didn't have that particular IM listed in the users profile. Plus, I'm always leary of ANYTHING that isn't built from the ground up for Joomla, although I have integrated vtiger, rt, and nagios into some of my joomla systems.

Anyway, this particular product is most promising! It has come a long way in a short time, and doesn't suffer from internal community issues that instigate forks in the project!

This truly is Joom 1.5 Native too, and handles much larger test databases of users and traffic than the 'other' popular Joomla integrated forum software does.

And you don't have to enable legacy mode in Joomla 1.5 either!

I used to be a big Fireboard fan, and I can say w/o hesitation that I have jumped ship!

Great, no... uber-fantastic extension guys!

Kindest regards,

Bradley

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We needed a forum that would integrate seemlessly into Joomla without the need for bridging. We also needed our forum to cope with high traffic and work fast.

Agora is that forum.

It has all the features we need and the support is excellent.

I chose this component as a solution for a project that I will be working on, which demands stability, functionality, and simplicity.

This is what I have to say:

1. No crashes: Things are working as expected, no surprises, no problems added.

2. Simplicity: Incredible integration with the rest of Joomla CMS, and straightforward configuration.

3. Easy to use: I'm not a Joomla guru and I'm in a hurry, I needed something out of the box, and this is it!

4. Incredibly fast support: They are taking this aspect seriously.

5. Active development: The project seems to be under active development and improvements.

In conclusion; as a Slackware Linux user, I'm used to software that does what it is supposed to do, in an efficient way, without becoming an obstacle; well documented, and simple. This Component fits my requirements.

After tinkering around with this forum solution I feel that it has a great amount of potential and is an excellent native forum solution!

I will be removing phpbb and making the move to this forum solution.

I voted a few days ago, but wanted to post up my thoughts.
One of the best and most friendly support I have seen in a LOOOOOONG time. Very helpful owner and staff, and the best thing is, it is supported and easy to figure out.

If you are going to use a forum inside Joomla, I have to recommend this one. It is not phpbb3 or other external cms, but it is coming darn close!

Nothing bad to say, excelent component, excelent suport, very agil, easy to install, lenguage very easy to install, everything is perferct! Very recomended

We just launched our first full fledged Joomla site. Up until now I simply ran my site on an SMF forum. I've been trying to decide if I want to switch to a native J! 1.5 forum component rather than bridge my forum into the site.

I first tried Agora with the intial public beta 3.0 version. It was great then, but lacking a few features. I contacted Hazzaa at joomlame to ask about upcoming features. He promptly met with me on Skype and answered all my questions. AGORA 3.0 promises to be a strong competitor for a Joomla forum. Features will be in the final release that will make this forum a competitor with the likes of phpbb3 and SMF. Each release shows more promise for the future of AGORA

The developers on this one have superior support, even when put up against paid developers. I've since had multiple conversations with Hazza on Skype. He is always very pleasant and helpful.

I see bright things in the future for Joomlame and their components, and will be converting to AGORA once a final version is released.

I stumbled upon Agora 3.0 and I'm hooked. Great professional layout, feature rich, easy install, simple management.

I'm a complete Joomla novice and I had this thing up and running in no time.

When I first started my website, I went out and bought a commercial forum. I wasted a lot of money paying to have this and that done. Now with Agora, I don't need to pay anyone because it part of joomla. Everything is so simple. I can't be happier! And the support is second to none.

Does everything a forum needs todo, should even be a standard joomla component. Excellent support, nice community, and a 10+ Forum component.

Need a forum? dont waste time on anything else and install Agora 3.0

Not only is this forum application fully featured and amazingly versatile, it has the most active and aggressive support and improvement of any application I've ever used and that's saying something with nearly 10 years in the tech business, 8 of those spent in the field of application management and support. You will be very pleased with this forum, I promise you. And it has converters for most of the other mainstream forums our there so you don't even have to start from scratch if you have existing forums. Try it, you'll be glad you did!

I manage several web sites, and seems that all of them have one form of a message board/forum or another. I've tried all of the popular forum components and bridges from one time or another...each have strengths and weaknesses.

Then I stumbled upon Agora, first in the 2.5 version. I've followed Hazza and his team through Beta releases of 3.0 and am amazed at the skill and ease that they managed to do what seemed to be impossible. They have integrated a forum into Joomla without the need for bridges, they supported a growing community with support second to none...and I do mean none... and they released an outstanding product.

I have no doubt that this team will continue to lead the way in development of Joomla components. Hats off to the Agora team.

Best joomla forum extension so far! Simple, clean and more than exelent support form Hazzaa. I tryed bevor kunea and simple board. Kunea to complex and bad spanish translation, Simple board is to simple for my needs. Agora inclued most languages and again a exelent support. Thanks to the developer of this great extension!

Agora is Forum with big "F" like VBulletin but for Joomla 1.5
Only Agora.