K2 
Version
2.6.5 (last update on Feb 9, 2013)
Rating
Compatibility
Reviews
228
License
GPLv2 or later
Non-Commercial
Type
Date Added
14 April 2009
Uses Updater?
- 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
Images
5 out of 5, very capable component!
Recommendation of the K2 Component, Modules and Plugins is amazing and it is FREE.
Unbelievable!! It is the most comprehensive bundle out there and you should be clicking the Download button without even thinking too much about it.
You will NOT regret it… I’m lost for words which is hard for me!
You install it to J1.7 and off you go, you make an article form and once you have the basics, you go to tagging which normally you have to remember all the keywords in your website yourself, but no it does it for you. It is a no brainer.
The ratings and review process is also a godsend and thanks to you it is perfect.
One small bug to me though, is the process of not being able to copy and paste from articles in word or wherever to inside the K2 article process which is really annoying, but other than that it is perfection.
Thank You guys.
Unbelievable!! It is the most comprehensive bundle out there and you should be clicking the Download button without even thinking too much about it.
You will NOT regret it… I’m lost for words which is hard for me!
You install it to J1.7 and off you go, you make an article form and once you have the basics, you go to tagging which normally you have to remember all the keywords in your website yourself, but no it does it for you. It is a no brainer.
The ratings and review process is also a godsend and thanks to you it is perfect.
One small bug to me though, is the process of not being able to copy and paste from articles in word or wherever to inside the K2 article process which is really annoying, but other than that it is perfection.
Thank You guys.
If possible, I would rate K2 6 stars.
I've been using K2 in all my customer's sites and portals and have no plans of changing: it just works, like they would expect.
For now, it's an essencial enhancement to the way one can build and display content. And if you want customers to upload content themselves, there is no easier way of doing it: not only frontend editing works like a charm, even in multilingual sites, but also K2 ACL is powerful enough to manage publishing workflow.
And the inbuilt K2 presentation capabilities (the category "blog" layouts) will blow your customers mind, without making waste a ton of development hours to get the right view.
To get the most of it, some of the K2 plugins are truly mandatory, like the extended image and the extended fields. Play around with them and you will find out why.
Of course K2 has it's limitations (field search, image cache, user profile extensibility,...): it's a trade-off between ease of use and flexibility. But for 80% of the sites (not web-aplications), K2 will do the job with an ease of use and presentation flexibility no yet available in Joomla core. And the great news it that even a newbie will be able to get it up and running in no time. A great advantage over other CCK. Not to mention the no-thrills frontend editing that customers love.
The community sometimes takes a while to reply, but they eventually do, and there is lots of information in the forum, one just has to dig-in.
Overall one of the best components available for content publishing.
Thank you Fotis, you are great
I've been using K2 in all my customer's sites and portals and have no plans of changing: it just works, like they would expect.
For now, it's an essencial enhancement to the way one can build and display content. And if you want customers to upload content themselves, there is no easier way of doing it: not only frontend editing works like a charm, even in multilingual sites, but also K2 ACL is powerful enough to manage publishing workflow.
And the inbuilt K2 presentation capabilities (the category "blog" layouts) will blow your customers mind, without making waste a ton of development hours to get the right view.
To get the most of it, some of the K2 plugins are truly mandatory, like the extended image and the extended fields. Play around with them and you will find out why.
Of course K2 has it's limitations (field search, image cache, user profile extensibility,...): it's a trade-off between ease of use and flexibility. But for 80% of the sites (not web-aplications), K2 will do the job with an ease of use and presentation flexibility no yet available in Joomla core. And the great news it that even a newbie will be able to get it up and running in no time. A great advantage over other CCK. Not to mention the no-thrills frontend editing that customers love.
The community sometimes takes a while to reply, but they eventually do, and there is lots of information in the forum, one just has to dig-in.
Overall one of the best components available for content publishing.
Thank you Fotis, you are great
I have been trying to migrate one of my sites into a joomla blog site and k2 offers everything I need. However they almost never respond to the forums posts and offer no email info to report bugs. I installed over a month ago and have been several bugs still present that were there from a fresh joomla and k2 install. I am still awaiting a response.
Owner's reply
First of all, we have a distinct bug tracker for posting any bugs. It's here: http://code.google.com/p/joomlaworks/issues/list
Secondly, I doubt the "several bugs" you mention have anything to do with K2. K2 is a solid content platform for Joomla!. If you are a newbie with Joomla! in general, I'd suggest more trial/error attempts if you don't want to wait for someone to answer to you in the forum.
K2 is quite popular, so some posts may skip answers. But that usually happens to posts that are already answered and the posters are really bored to run a search before posting...
I use this component for many, many different kinds of Websites. It's a realy cool replacement for the joomla core content system. It's well styled und formatted. You can control every aspect of your content with K2.
K2 best feature is the templating system. It's easy to understand and very mighty. You can use K2 as a blog, answering system, magazin style portal, for static content, as download system, even as a forum. As a middle class developer, you can understand the code of K2 really fast. It's no magic.
The support is very good. I have wrote Fotis much times over twitter, joomlaworks forum and the google code issue tracker and he responses very fast. And most of the problems was Beta related. The stable versions until K2 2.4.x have almost no bugs. I can't find them...
As you can see the flexiblity of K2, you can use it for 98% of the entire Websites of the world.
Where are the cons? I have'nt found any cons!
K2 is really a rock solid component. And when i have in the future three wishes from a genie. One of my wishes are, that K2 replaces the Joomla Article System!
Give K2 a try - it's a big step forward!
K2 best feature is the templating system. It's easy to understand and very mighty. You can use K2 as a blog, answering system, magazin style portal, for static content, as download system, even as a forum. As a middle class developer, you can understand the code of K2 really fast. It's no magic.
The support is very good. I have wrote Fotis much times over twitter, joomlaworks forum and the google code issue tracker and he responses very fast. And most of the problems was Beta related. The stable versions until K2 2.4.x have almost no bugs. I can't find them...
As you can see the flexiblity of K2, you can use it for 98% of the entire Websites of the world.
Where are the cons? I have'nt found any cons!
K2 is really a rock solid component. And when i have in the future three wishes from a genie. One of my wishes are, that K2 replaces the Joomla Article System!
Give K2 a try - it's a big step forward!
I think this exptention is important and necessary as it enables Joomla! the flexibility to work with content, which it lacks. Of course there is more to aspire to, but is developing K2 right way. And the excitement in anticipation of the release under 1.7 is proved.
Thanks K2!
Thanks K2!
K2 is an old one but it is still the content construction component which has the most professional features.
It may take a while to understand K2 but once understood it is king.
Just try it.
It may take a while to understand K2 but once understood it is king.
Just try it.
K2 is powerful and greatly extends capabilities of a site. For some matters that need further customization there are suited add-ons.
I missed in old versions, however, such as I do in 1.7, small things which for a few people are really important.
1) Tagging is painful; these guys in our websites do work intensely in writing news, so they do in an internal system and then copy and paste contents for different fields in each item. As tagging (or in the old way keywording) has to be congruent to provide a good related-grouping, they select keys in their own system, and then copy all the block with comma values and paste. They hate K2 tagging, one-by-one, being such a slow method. So they go to keywords pasting in the old good joomla basic system. It's faster, it's reliable.
2) As we're running different websites, we've hosted all pictures and media files in a big 'materials site', where they are FTP uploaded: I'll not describe the full internal system, but in joomla we paste the url for pictures and so. In K2 you've to upload each picture, one by one, to same website hosting server (or you could FTP them and then selecting manually one by one). Only in case you have internal pictures within the news (not the main one), they can be pointed to an external url address.
So, if you don't need these kind of small things (which in our case do increase a lot productivity, but probably you'll not work in this way), K2 is really big.
I missed in old versions, however, such as I do in 1.7, small things which for a few people are really important.
1) Tagging is painful; these guys in our websites do work intensely in writing news, so they do in an internal system and then copy and paste contents for different fields in each item. As tagging (or in the old way keywording) has to be congruent to provide a good related-grouping, they select keys in their own system, and then copy all the block with comma values and paste. They hate K2 tagging, one-by-one, being such a slow method. So they go to keywords pasting in the old good joomla basic system. It's faster, it's reliable.
2) As we're running different websites, we've hosted all pictures and media files in a big 'materials site', where they are FTP uploaded: I'll not describe the full internal system, but in joomla we paste the url for pictures and so. In K2 you've to upload each picture, one by one, to same website hosting server (or you could FTP them and then selecting manually one by one). Only in case you have internal pictures within the news (not the main one), they can be pointed to an external url address.
So, if you don't need these kind of small things (which in our case do increase a lot productivity, but probably you'll not work in this way), K2 is really big.
I have installed K2 2.5.1 in Joomla 1.7.2 in my local system and also in my online server, but it is not displaying the dashboard. I am using the Joomlart T3 framework for their template JA Teline IV. I purchased the Joomlart membership after watching the recommendation video by Fotis Evangelou. But after installation of K2, the megamenu, headlines module etc. of the template are not working.
I replied my problem to a post in their forum dealing almost the same issue : "K2 items disappear in administrator Joomla! 1.7". But nobody is responding for the past one week.
I want the extension badly if it works as it promises.
My suggestion is that it would be better to have a scheme for paid support so that I can demand it, since these kinds of extensions are used for massive content based portals.
I replied my problem to a post in their forum dealing almost the same issue : "K2 items disappear in administrator Joomla! 1.7". But nobody is responding for the past one week.
I want the extension badly if it works as it promises.
My suggestion is that it would be better to have a scheme for paid support so that I can demand it, since these kinds of extensions are used for massive content based portals.
K2 the whole component and its functionality is superb. K2 takes Joomla to the next level. Really happy with its function, power of article creation.
one thing bothers every K2 users is the Search function. Because Search provided by K2 does not work for the following
- cannot search with tags.
but filters the article by tag, when a tag that is displayed below the article is clicked. doesnt return any result when the same is used in search box.
- cannot search with user names
but filters articles by user when username is clicked
- cannot search with category names.
- and I couldnt find any fix for it
apart from this lag K2 is excellent. if developers of K2 improvise the search it would be the best component ever.
used applications
Joomla 1.7.2
K2 2.5.1
one thing bothers every K2 users is the Search function. Because Search provided by K2 does not work for the following
- cannot search with tags.
but filters the article by tag, when a tag that is displayed below the article is clicked. doesnt return any result when the same is used in search box.
- cannot search with user names
but filters articles by user when username is clicked
- cannot search with category names.
- and I couldnt find any fix for it
apart from this lag K2 is excellent. if developers of K2 improvise the search it would be the best component ever.
used applications
Joomla 1.7.2
K2 2.5.1
The combination of subscribers and users viewing articles and comments - good idea. But, big but, K2 manages all of the articles and not related to articles of JOOMLA, so we must accept articles only from the application, and if working with multiple applications in various fields it is a problem. In addition, adding a article is problematic, and I could not for a long time to add new article.
the pop up window for new item looks bad .
Too bad, tha total is a good application.
Very difficult to get help.
In summary the application is good only for those who need just only that, his flexibility with other applications is very low. And if you could get more help at all that was excellen
the pop up window for new item looks bad .
Too bad, tha total is a good application.
Very difficult to get help.
In summary the application is good only for those who need just only that, his flexibility with other applications is very low. And if you could get more help at all that was excellen
Owner's reply
Dear "ginatnoy", K2 is a lot more flexible that the default Joomla! article system. In fact, the new Joomla! 1.7 release has been significantly influenced by K2 in many points, e.g. the use of "featured" articles, the use of "sub-templates" in the component and modules etc. The true difference remains however: K2 is still more flexible.
You have probably not understood K2's value yet. I recommend you dive into Joomla! a bit more and when your needs grow, then have a second look at K2...
just another "good looking extension ! the idea itself is good, the features just don't fit the really. No extra field can be used to filter content, unless you pay for it, and the result is not that good. Extra fields types cannot be edited, enhanced. You can't even cross categories, make sub-categories or add level inside an article. Stucked again, just like Joomla basic's article management. K2 IS NOT CSS compliant and goes way back in history in term of standards. Well, it's free ? ok. Should I write a review that says "great job" ? No because I won't help users who see's everywhere the great marketing adds, the good looking site. Oh and if you planned to ask question to support : make yourself to the idea that you be a master in everything. Answers will come with a very few explanation. So long K2. Do you you promised, or just go away !
Owner's reply
I really wonder... Did you even install K2? Cause if you did, you'd certainly see (to be more precise, it would poke your eye out) that K2 features NESTED level categories. So your claim that you cannot make sub-categories is utterly false.
So are your other claims that extra fields cannot be edited, K2 is not CSS compliant and other crappy comments.
Jeeez, how do such reviews pass on from JED control?
The potentiality of Joomla increases exponentially! I appreciate a lot the Extra Fields and the way you can filter articles by those. It's a bit complicated but just due to the features it has. Now I would say, Joomla without K2 is like a bycycle without pedals..
For my latest site I needed commenting, social integration, smart photo resizing between items/article (in the component and module areas), smarter, and better tagging. K2 has all this out of the box, and is very powerful. It does require time to learn and set up for clients however, as all the features 'sit within k2', and the templates used will almost certainly require some tinkering to get it 'just right' for your site. I am glad I chose it.
It is underdeveloped at this time, it is not user friendly, it very difficult to understand how create articles, it is easy to install but not at all easy once that is done, do not try this unless you have a tech person handy, I never got the articles to display correctly and it caused me to screw up the main article system already installed.
Owner's reply
Some misunderstandings on your review...
The K2 workflow is almost identical to the core Joomla! article system. Of course, it does not mess up with existing Joomla! articles (and that's the point in the first place). So if something happened to your Joomla! articles, that's your fault. K2 can only import Joomla! articles, it cannot write back to them.
K2 is of course actively developed. Don't forget it powers some of the biggest Joomla! sites worldwide.
Hello All: Even though K2 may be a very nice extension, I want to warn those that are trying to convert large sites to K2. Most shared servers will only allow 30 seconds to perform the conversion of articles, etc. If your site is large, it will not convert in time and error out. There is no option to convert portions of the site at a time yet. Therefore, you may have to wait until that feature is added or a work around created. I posted this issue twice on the support site but nobody has replied with an answer to get around this problem yet. Thanks!
Owner's reply
If you run a large website, you are obvious using a hosting company/server that "supports" such a site. If that's the case, it's easy to tweak your server and avoid any import timeouts. In any case, importing can be simple if you do the process "locally".
99,9% of sites importing their Joomla content articles into K2 will not have any issue...
I would have gave this an excellent rating, however there has been limited information about upgrading to Joomla! 1.6+
I love this component and use it on almost all my sites. That's the problem! Ive became accustom to this component, now some of my clients require functions of J 1.6+ What am I to do? Upgrade to 1.6+ and re submit all articles? Help JW, Help!!!
I love this component and use it on almost all my sites. That's the problem! Ive became accustom to this component, now some of my clients require functions of J 1.6+ What am I to do? Upgrade to 1.6+ and re submit all articles? Help JW, Help!!!
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