Community Builder 
- This extension has additional addons listed in an extension specific category.
- This extension requires registration to download.
* Community Builder 1.8 runs on all Joomla versions, including Joomla 2.5, 1.7, 1.6, 1.5 and 1.0 *
CB has many CB plugins from CB Team and from third parties, including Profile Gallery, Profile Blog, Profile Guestbook, Profile Wall, Facebook Connect, Twitter Connect, Paid Subscriptions Membership management, Donations management, Shop, Captcha and many more. Over 200 extensions for CB are listed here (see link below) and on the Joomlapolis directory.
CB allows multi-criteria user searches, full field controls of core fields, ajax email and username checkers, image and integer fields, custom validations and many more features. CB is open-source and free.
CB 1.8 Stable adds Joomla 2.5 native compatibility to Joomla 1.7, 1.6, 1.5 and 1.0 compatibility and all known bugs fixed, as well as new Joomla 2.5 Viewing Access Levels support for tabs, Joomla 2.5 permissions support for administration roles, and Joomla 2.5 user notes support in backend. CB 1.7 brought Joomla 1.7 support, CB 1.4 added new modern validations for registration and profile edits. CB 1.3 added tableless profile and registration page output switch in CB config. Please see announcements on our homepage http://www.joomlapolis.com/ for details on these new releases.
CB is compatible with all Joomla! versions: Joomla 2.5.x native, 1.7.x native, 1.6.x native 1.5.x native, 1.0.x native and Mambo 4.5.2-4.6.5. PHP 5.0-5.3.x and MySQL 4.1+ database use are prerequisites.
Community Builder can be used on any number of sites (commercial and non-commercial) for free. "Non-commercial" above simply means that CB is free of charge. Optionally, Advanced and Professional 12-months memberships can be pruchased on joomlapolis.com giving right to priority or even same-or-next-business day guaranteed forum and/or private tickets support and access to many additional optional plugins.
* Please do not use the reviews to post support issues. Use our free community forums or paid support system at https://www.joomlapolis.com/support for that, so that we can help you if needed. *.
We have a thriving community using CB every day. Fact is: it simply works!
Find your way around it by using the excellent documentation.
There are many great additions to CB provided by the developers that we use too.
So, nothing really new in this review. See this review as a big Thank You for the amazing product, the excellent coding and the wonderful support.
Thank you for making the Joomla World a better place!
I am not a coder, nor a programmer, designer or anything like that and I was able to make it work just as I needed.
The extension is free, but paying a yearly rate you get lots of adons and stuff that were really helpful to meet my needs.
As I am not a coder, I had to ask in the support forum some questions that were rapidly answered and I got very useful and clear suggestions to do things I didn´t know how to.
Before paying the yearly rate I asked for a budget to do what I needed, it costed like U$10.000, proffesional membership costs Eur 95, nothing more to say.
I recently completed a project for a labour union, which required a robust pre-registration verification process, which the CB team helped me develop.
That doesn't sound very special on its own but having the confidence to have the team behind you when you are doing something for the first time just means everything.
I gave it a 4/5 only because some critical updates are late in arriving or becoming available for the free version. Captcha was a pay only feature for a while. Also, I know the 2.5 version is coming later this month, but ...
Having said that, the 1.7 version does appear to be stable on 2.5, so I'm moving forward with that in my development/test environment until the official 2.5 stable version of CB is released.
Overall, CB is great extension and highly recommended. If I was doing more professional projects that create revenue streams, I would probably do one of the pay subscriptions.
But its so buggy its unreal - heck its not even really compatable with JFBConnect which joomla.org themselves use.
Reading through there forums - unless you are a paid subscriber (which considering there awful free support i will not become) they just dont really seem to care and ask half empty open ended questions all aimed to direct you to purchsing paid support.
My advice - if you need a community solution THAT WORKS - forget community builder till they sort out there customer service and support issues and use the money you would have for there support for a more professional extension.
piprees,
1) Regarding your review subject:
You have posted 2 threads on Joomlapolis.com *free* community support forum areas, both addressed politely and professionally within *hours*. First one 3 year ago was addressed within hours requesting additional clarifications which you did not reply to:
https://www.joomlapolis.com/forum/70-cb-12-rc4-general-discussions/88885-kunena
Second, recent, thread, started on a global holiday (New Years Day) and was responded to *within hours* and got *resolved within 2 holidays days*!
https://www.joomlapolis.com/forum/149-usage/186859-j17-users-not-being-authorised-and-database-sync
2) Regarding the content of your review:
Your conclusion on the 1.1.2012 thread was that problem is *not in CB*, but due to *a bug in a third party CB plugin* (and that wasn’t in the list you gave in your original post!):
https://www.joomlapolis.com/forum/149-usage/186859-j17-users-not-being-authorised-and-database-sync?limit=6&start=18
And you also write in the thread “i never had a problem in the past”. Thus we can only guess that your review above was written while in troubleshooting mood and before even having the problem solved.
It should be noticed that if you would have had a professional membership, our support team would have gone to troubleshoot your issue for you on your site and to find the culprit third-party plugin for you. But you can easily understand that it is materially not possible to offer such personalized service to free members, unless it is a confirmed problem in CB itself, which you did and could not confirm as it wasn't a CB bug.
In the light of the above, your words “lousy support” of an issue in a third-party plugin (not CB nor JFB Connect) on New Year and statement “so buggy its unreal” while having “never had a problem in the past” should be put in perspective.
Installation is relatively complex on an existing site, but the documentation is detailled and support is provided even to the non paying suscribers.
The only major downside I found is that the latest version (1.7) still doesn't use the Joomla update system and has to be done manually. It is worth the time for major updates, but it's a waste of time during minor / security releases.
The component has an easy and stable API, and this year with all the new add-ons, but most important, the Incubator‘s new plgugins the whole extension have become very very flexible, just limited by your creativity.
Suggestions: Tutorials for newbyes and just for reference. The forum is big, but a little difficult to find a proper answer from the knowledge base.
Lacks: offers from the joomla community for templates commercial or non-commercial.
In general, i recommend this extension, and want to thank for the work done.
I have been using it for one full year the best thing i liked is the free version, anyone can use it. Now I have benefits from it and I want other users to use it free in their beginning with joomla, i will go pro i will buy the membership and enjoy its membership benefits also.
I am very much thankful for creating bug-free perfect component for creating community websites.
Hi bornakke,
Thanks for your review and rating. We need to address your remarks:
- CB has CB MVC and CB templating with CB template plugins (6 core free included with CB, and we offer separately optionally 3 commercial joomla & CB templates).
- For adding/changing redirects, there is the CB Auto Actions plugin (Incubator area for Pro members), that allows you to set workflows in 5 minutes without hacking: http://www.joomlapolis.com/cb-solutions/incubator
- CB is very flexible and versatile and suits many different needs by just configuration. Thus its code might appear more complex and using more design patterns than the average joomla extension. Thats why we created the CB plugins API which is much simpler to understand than CB core:
- In CB, to the contrary of many other extensions, there is no need to hack CB code, as there is a powerful and highly backwards- and upwards-compatible CB API with a CB Plugins installer. We do not recommend hacking core code for maintenance and security reasons, but using or creating CB Plugins instead. That way you can upgrade easily CB core without having to redo any changes.
- We have support: Free community forum; For Advanced members we have priority forum and for Pro and Developer members we even have SLA levels forums with guaranteed *same or next* business day answer (!) as well as private tickets) as well as consulting services should you have any questions or issues. More information on support here (general remark: please do not use the JED review system for support): http://www.joomlapolis.com/support
No support unless you pay.
It's not easy, unless you pay.
The application should be called "Commercial"
I noticed a couple of reviews complaining about paying for the add-ons/priority support. How can anyone expect an extension as huge and comprehensive as Community Builder to thrive without a proper revenue stream? Practically all the good extensions out there now are commercial ones. Programmers have to eat, just like everyone else! At least you get a chance to try out the main component, which is free, before paying for any of the commercial extras, most of which add really valuable functionality to what is, in my view, a first class extension.