K2 
- Yes
--- 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), a powerful plugin API to extend item, category and user forms, ACL, frontend editing, sub-templates and 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 and more, all this bundled under one package!
Give K2 a try and 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 (no section/category restrictions)
- commenting, integrated with reCaptcha
- tags
- item image (useful for articles/catalogs)
- image galleries
- videos
- attachments
- user pages (author blogs/user profiles)
- ACL for content
- Unique plugin system to extend item, category and user forms
- ajax-based frontend editing
- ajax-based comments moderation
- Google AJAX Search integration
- Native JSON/JSONP content output
- Native advanced SEF options (added in K2 v2.6.4+)
K2 fully supports the Joomla! API, which means all Joomla! plugins will function properly within the K2 component & modules, either in the frontend or backend.
--- AMAZING PERFORMANCE ---
ImpactWrestling.com, OnSports.gr, Gorillaz.com, Groupama-Transport.com, Harvard, Cloud.com (Citrix), the High Court of Australia, MTV Greece, Jaguar Greece are just some of the thousand "big sites" around the world, fully powered by K2.
--- REQUIREMENTS & LICENSE ---
To utilize the built-in video & 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 v2 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 and even more modules to do things like run a news site or a blog. Drupal and Wordpress have certainly met their match now! ;)
--- USEFUL LINKS ---
Visit the K2 website & community: http://getk2.org
I assume your knowledge on SEO is either non-existent or you haven't checked the HTML the K2 outputs...
K2 uses the "alt" and "title" attributes in images and wrapping links to either include image captions or if no image captions are entered by the user, then just the title. This is the best SEO possible. Waaaay better than any image filename which can contain from bad characters to cryptic numbers or word that have no relation to the real content of the article.
But here's another surprise!
If you're wondering why your images are not being indexed by Google, then I'm afraid Joomla is to blame. You see, by default, Joomla's robots.txt definitions block Google from indexing the /media folder which is used by K2 and every Joomla component known to man to store media files...
Simply delete that line in robots.txt and you should be fine.
K2 was designed to be SEO friendly since day 1.
And for that, K2 is priceless for many developers out there.
With this component, making sites is 10 times faster and easier.
Now I'm so addicted to the component that I can't go back to com_content.
The first thing I do after installation of Joomla! is to install the latest version of K2.
I love you JoomlaWorks, thank you for K2!
easy to customize and style, K2 is one of the best CCK's for Joomla.
Been using it for 1 day and now it will become part of all my new sites.
Very user friendly.
Loads of videos available on how to use it.
You can do so much with this extension.
Yes there is a small learning curve, put in the time and you will accomplish great things with K2.
Its very fast too.
SEO is good.
3rd party extensions for it are fabulous.
Such an awesome extension and its free !
Nice job Developer, you guys ROCK !!!
Some of the documentation seemed outdated if your using Joomla 2.5.
Actually, OSTraining.com - the premier training company on everything Joomla! related - has recently done a series of training videos that walk you through K2 on Joomla! 2.5.
This K2 Class is available on the K2 site at: http://getk2.org/documentation/k2class2012
This is incorrect. You'll soon find that if you try to add a menu link to "create item" you'll get a 403 page, this is because K2 needs you to register/login as a K2 user.
It'll integrate as far as having your username on a K2 article point to your CB profile, but CB users cannot create or edit articles because there's no way for K2 to automatically add new users registered through CB to the K2 usergroups.
A huge disappointment indeed.
Yes there is, you just haven't configured this properly. We've even gone one step further and automated the process even for sites that previously didn't use K2. Have a look at the K2 main configuration options and you'll see one that allows you to assign any new or orphan user to a specified K2 group. Have you set this up correctly?
If you do that, K2 and CB will work just fine together. If it didn't work, that because you "may" have deleted all K2 groups or didn't assign new/orphan Joomla users to the right (in terms of permissions) K2 group...
And of course it has a lot of specific extensions.
Thanks!
"Please think twice before adding a review and remember about Joomla community values: freedom, equality, trust, community, collaboration and usability!"
Couldn't agree more!
Actually, K2 is one if the most actively developed extensions in the Joomla! community. There is of course a separate bug tracker for that, but all bugs reported in the forums are monitored. Of course, most of the times, they're not real bugs but they are just generic Joomla! usage issues, which some users believe are K2 related (they aren't obviously).
Lastly, if you are making money off K2, then consider hiring some of the companies listed in the forum to help you out, or just post your project in the related forum board on getk2.org/community. Don't expect that the K2 dev team will solve project specific issues you might have, neither will any other open source project.
Then I realised it does not support pagination and wondered why I installed it in the first place.
Documentation is pretty bad too.
It doesn't do pagination... Hmmm... http://demo.getk2.org/categories
Since my projects also need's a good page ranking this is a no go for me and I have to switch to another tool. (As long as the support from K2 is also very poor as also others writing herein.)
The only thing I want todo with this posting is to get the SEO part in mind of each who is on the way to try K2.
K2's SEO is not just great, it's in fact amazing. For 2 reasons primarily. No.1 for its native URL construction (to the limit the Joomla! API allows it to be) and no.2 for it's HTML construction with the correct use and ordering of HTML elements.
If by SEO you just mean the URLs, then I suggest you try other extensions before moving away from K2 as you're in for a big surprise! What do I mean? If you don't create menu items to some Joomla! component, yet you retrieve this component's content from some module, you're bound to have /component/name/whatever in the URLs.
So do some homework first before judging something badly.
I'll say this now and I'll keep repeating for a very long time to come: it's no wonder why ALL today's big/popular Joomla! sites are built with K2. ;)
One final tip: Wanna improve your URL SEO drastically? Grab a license for sh404SEF or AceSEF. They both work flawlessly with K2 as we work closely with these 2 dev teams.
I wouldn't have a Joomla site without it. I have categories within categories within categories! It really takes shape after you modify the template or make a few.
I don't have a good feeling with this "I do everything" packages. Is not always possible to replace the components I do not like with 3rd party add-on.
Documentation is poor and dated.
Well, this is only my personal judgment. If you need a simple way to use Joomla with a lot of stuffs then give K2 a try.
Actually, a lot of people find K2 easier to setup and have running in minutes compared to the default Joomla! article system.
This boils down to a) setup parameter continuity in K2 (unlike the default Joomla! article system which mixes category specific parameters with general ones) and b) simpler yet more efficient template overrides. Just count the template overrides in com_content plus its modules. Or think "why do I need a newsflash module or recent articles module" when they could simply be 1 module with 2 different content retrieval filters (random and latest created)...
We've answered all these questions that puzzled developers minds years ago with the creation of K2. Anyone else who might insist that com_content is better than K2 in terms of content management (and I'm not referring to you - just some so called "Joomla! evangelists" who don't know the difference between HTML and CSS) is either lying or he's never used K2 or he's never used Joomla! at all - in my personal opinion of course.
Used latest K2 for Joomla 2.5.
1. The transfer of items from Joomla was not good - unwanted junk was transferred but the new categories that I created did not transfer. But hey this is small! Categories I can retype manually.
2. More important - comments do not work as promised.
Any unwanted user-spammer can type in his URL link and there is no way to switch it off, unless you ban the user. I did not find an option to forbid outgoing links.
While searching for the solution in K2 comments options - modules etc ( did not find any option to switch off URL from unregistered user) but found CAPTCHA option. Turned CAPTCHA on and it does not work at all - on the page there is claim to put in 2 words , but no words displayed. So no user can use it at all now.
Even worst - that CAPTCHA option disappeared form the module - WOW - not able to turn on, or turn off.
Too many bugs.
Tried to find info on the K2 forum and see that similar questions about comments and CAPTCHA are sitting there for months without any forum support.
So, K2 is for heavy programmers who love to struggle with bugs and debug things.
Frustrating experience.
Replying...
1. Migration from the default Joomla! article system is done manually. It's not automatic (why would it be). If you saw "junk" coming into K2 then junk was placed in your Joomla! articles. Of course new categories that you create in the Joomla! article system will not be reflected into K2 unless you import them first.
2. Comments work EXACTLY as they should. You just need to have a clue of the technologies involved before using them. E.g. for reCaptcha to work, you need to get to keys (free) from recaptcha.google.com. Had you read the tooltip explanations on each K2 parameter you would've known that of course. Got a problem with real human spammers? Cut them off by enabling the built-in StopForumSpam.com support and/or enabling comment moderation. K2 not only has the best possible anti-spam protection, it also protects your entire Joomla! site from spammers when you enable the built-in StopForumSpam.com options.
To recap things, you've mentioned no bug so far, just misconfiguration from your side. And if you got no response, that's because the answer was sitting right there for you in the K2 parameter tooltips.
Lastly, if K2 was for programmers only, a) it would not have 750.000+ downloads so far and b) it would not be used on high profile Joomla! sites worldwide...
So if nobody helps then why using it?
This is not entirely true. Let me explain...
Duplicate entries depend on your menu structure. If you have a menu that maps all your K2 categories (or at least the most imporrtant ones), then you won't have duplicate entries.
To further mitigate that, one of the things we want to add in K2 v2.5.7 is canonical URLs to prevent Google from seeing duplicate item entries (if they exist).
That should further improve K2's SEO features.
Unlike the default Joomla! content or other CCK extensions, K2 already sports much better SEO. From the "read more" links which contain the item's title, to the images, to author links etc. etc. ;)
