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
K2 is really nothing special on its own.
All it does is that it allows you to add extra fields to its own articles called items (which is something that should exist in joomla on its own, but no, they're more concerned about making a responsive back-end, like someone is gonna run their website from a mobile).
Now, when you couple that with a good filter for k2 and a related items filter, you get something.
But its also missing guest article submission with extra feilds (the one for reg users exists but sucks) that an admin could approve and it would appear in selected category.
All these things are simple and should be in Joomla core but they're not, which keeps joomla from being a great CMS.
All it does is that it allows you to add extra fields to its own articles called items (which is something that should exist in joomla on its own, but no, they're more concerned about making a responsive back-end, like someone is gonna run their website from a mobile).
Now, when you couple that with a good filter for k2 and a related items filter, you get something.
But its also missing guest article submission with extra feilds (the one for reg users exists but sucks) that an admin could approve and it would appear in selected category.
All these things are simple and should be in Joomla core but they're not, which keeps joomla from being a great CMS.
I have been using K2 for years. The is a small learning curve but intelligence usually prevails. Its well structured and easy to manage once you use it extensively. My customers love the ease of use through the front end. A very powerful component that should get the respect it truly deserves! Thanks for the hard work on such a brilliant component.
Great Extension. I love it and I cannot wait for updates.
I installed k2 on a domain I was experimenting with. I found it to be very buggy. I even paid a developer to help me with my issues. I then just got fed up and uninstalled everything including joomla. I did a fresh and clean install of both Joomla and K2. That fixed the problems I was having except that I noticed that there were still some issues with SEF extensions. Not anything that worries me too much. I don't absolutely have to have them right now and I'm sure soon there the issue will be resolved...
I must say though I am completely turned off by the owners replies he/she are giving. Free extension or not, hold a professional demeanor. You are doing JoomlaWorks a great disservice. Maybe you should see how other developers respond and aide and take notes.
I installed k2 on a domain I was experimenting with. I found it to be very buggy. I even paid a developer to help me with my issues. I then just got fed up and uninstalled everything including joomla. I did a fresh and clean install of both Joomla and K2. That fixed the problems I was having except that I noticed that there were still some issues with SEF extensions. Not anything that worries me too much. I don't absolutely have to have them right now and I'm sure soon there the issue will be resolved...
I must say though I am completely turned off by the owners replies he/she are giving. Free extension or not, hold a professional demeanor. You are doing JoomlaWorks a great disservice. Maybe you should see how other developers respond and aide and take notes.
I have tried this extension,and this is good to use.I feel that it is also easy.
GOOD Extension!
GOOD Extension!
K2 component is easy to use and easy to set up. It is mighty, you can built many powerful things with it. Thats the good side.
The dissatisfied side is: if you need help from K2 community or developers, you lost. K2 team doesn't care about community. Very very important bugs with thousends affected users, like duplicated urls issue, are not answered from team till year. The answers, which was given, was just "go away"-answers, they gave no real solution. Active users are just spamers for K2 team, which must kept away from posting through filling captchas, even after registering and more then 40 topics. In the forum with more then 13k threads is 1 (one) active moderator, who isn't knowledgable enough, like team members must be.
Yes, K2 is free. You can use it, there are many good extentions for it too. If you good know, how k2 works, you will be happy with it. And you can let it be, if you plan a project, which must earn money and you need developers help.
I use k2 at a commercial project and i'm really scared, what will happens with the project, if my knowledge will be once not enough and i haven't somebody to help.
The dissatisfied side is: if you need help from K2 community or developers, you lost. K2 team doesn't care about community. Very very important bugs with thousends affected users, like duplicated urls issue, are not answered from team till year. The answers, which was given, was just "go away"-answers, they gave no real solution. Active users are just spamers for K2 team, which must kept away from posting through filling captchas, even after registering and more then 40 topics. In the forum with more then 13k threads is 1 (one) active moderator, who isn't knowledgable enough, like team members must be.
Yes, K2 is free. You can use it, there are many good extentions for it too. If you good know, how k2 works, you will be happy with it. And you can let it be, if you plan a project, which must earn money and you need developers help.
I use k2 at a commercial project and i'm really scared, what will happens with the project, if my knowledge will be once not enough and i haven't somebody to help.
Owner's reply
First off, the right place to post verified bugs is not on the forum, as they can easily get lost inside any kind of request. The proper way to submit a bug in the K2 Bug Tracker at http://getk2.org/bugtracker - in there you'll see that we address ALL bug reports. If you have a valid bug please post it there.
The K2 Community moderators are doing a great job, far better than many other communities. If they don't reply to some request, that's probably because you didn't search first.
Now as for K2 credibility, I'll never stop repeating that: a) K2 is supported by a company that's been around since 2006, is profitable and going strong year after year and b) K2 is used by the most high profile Joomla! websites being built since 2009.
K2 seems like a nice extension, it looks good in the advertisement and it probably would have worked great, if it worked.
But it has a lot of bugs. I have tried it before, it did not work and was messy. I gave up. This time I decided to try it once more with the new version in Joomla 2.5.8. It does not work and has bugs. You can not post items, you can not change any items from Joomla, because of errors and bugs.
When you ask for support at Joomlaworks, they do not want to help you out. In the forum nobody can help you with this issue either, because nobody is there.
I will probably give up for the second and finale time with K2 if it is so messy. It takes a lot of time and effort to come anywhere with this.
Not good at all!
But it has a lot of bugs. I have tried it before, it did not work and was messy. I gave up. This time I decided to try it once more with the new version in Joomla 2.5.8. It does not work and has bugs. You can not post items, you can not change any items from Joomla, because of errors and bugs.
When you ask for support at Joomlaworks, they do not want to help you out. In the forum nobody can help you with this issue either, because nobody is there.
I will probably give up for the second and finale time with K2 if it is so messy. It takes a lot of time and effort to come anywhere with this.
Not good at all!
Owner's reply
Well, this is strange. K2 has a vibrant and active community yet you couldn't find any help. Now let me wonder, was it because you posted questions like "K2 doesn't work" without actually mentioning "what" doesn't work? Trust me on this, if K2 "didn't work", it wouldn't power the most high profile sites in the Joomla! community...
It's a fact that a lot of Joomla! newbies go straight into K2 and thus face issues that are some times related to the "Joomla! way". We can't do much with the current version 2.x which was largely based on the "Joomla! way", but we are going into a whole new direction of user friendliness and ease of use with the upcoming version 3.x. A blog post will soon unveil more in getk2.org.
It`s simply one of the best Joomla extensions, facilitating the customization of my sites, integrating into the system cleanly.
Congratulations on this great extension, has been very useful for my work, I also bought other commercial extensions of this group of developers and are excellent!
Congratulations on this great extension, has been very useful for my work, I also bought other commercial extensions of this group of developers and are excellent!
I have refrained from posting this review up until now, but seeing a year old serious SEO issue not addressed by the developers leaves me with no other choice.
K2 produces for any items, tags multiple, in fact endless duplicated URLs.
For over a year people were desperately trying to get help from the developers, but they simply didn't respond.
You can read everything in this thread: http://getk2.org/community/New-to-K2-Ask-here-first/6472-K2-SEO-issue---Can-it-be-fixed
The developer responded though to a bad review about K2 addressing these SEO issues, but all he had to say is praising K2 for its SEO (although he apparently lacks some SEO knowledge himself because there are tons of things to optimize SEO-wise) and saying that these duplicated URLs are Joomlas fault. Later he said that these duplicated URLs can be resolved by
a) making menu items for each item (meaning hundreds of menu items for each tag)
2) install a third-party SEO component.
So basically he admitted that a K2 vanilla installation is not usable for production sites because of the horrific SEO issues.
Ironically a user later submitted a K2 core hack that apparently resolves those issues, but it has some side effects on other parts of K2.
Other components such as flexicontent prove that those issues can be resolved without installing a 3rd party SEO extension.
Support is horrific, the developer makes false claims and people are loosing traffic due to the mentioned SEO issues.
So unless you are willing to pay for an SEO extension, I strongy discourage anyone from using K2. But even then, hundreds and thousands of duplicated URLs will be stored in the database.
I highly recommend the developer to overthink his attitude and finally address those duplicated URL issues. And please, if you don't have a clue, ask other developers for help.
K2 produces for any items, tags multiple, in fact endless duplicated URLs.
For over a year people were desperately trying to get help from the developers, but they simply didn't respond.
You can read everything in this thread: http://getk2.org/community/New-to-K2-Ask-here-first/6472-K2-SEO-issue---Can-it-be-fixed
The developer responded though to a bad review about K2 addressing these SEO issues, but all he had to say is praising K2 for its SEO (although he apparently lacks some SEO knowledge himself because there are tons of things to optimize SEO-wise) and saying that these duplicated URLs are Joomlas fault. Later he said that these duplicated URLs can be resolved by
a) making menu items for each item (meaning hundreds of menu items for each tag)
2) install a third-party SEO component.
So basically he admitted that a K2 vanilla installation is not usable for production sites because of the horrific SEO issues.
Ironically a user later submitted a K2 core hack that apparently resolves those issues, but it has some side effects on other parts of K2.
Other components such as flexicontent prove that those issues can be resolved without installing a 3rd party SEO extension.
Support is horrific, the developer makes false claims and people are loosing traffic due to the mentioned SEO issues.
So unless you are willing to pay for an SEO extension, I strongy discourage anyone from using K2. But even then, hundreds and thousands of duplicated URLs will be stored in the database.
I highly recommend the developer to overthink his attitude and finally address those duplicated URL issues. And please, if you don't have a clue, ask other developers for help.
Owner's reply
What you fail to understand is that K2 simply follows the Joomla! framework guidelines when it comes to URLs. For example, take this URL from a recent Joomla! announcement on joomla.org (it's the core Joomla! article system):
The URL is http://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5471-joomla-3-0-2-released.html
But one can easily do this too:
http://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5471-joomla-3-0-2-released-wow-some-extra-stuff-on-the-URL
Both URLs will render the same page of course. Now, this is not a bad thing SEO wise. SEO - which you fail to understand obviously - is not related in any way to how one or more users can manipulate a site's URLs. This is stupid if you think about it... SEO is about ordering/organizing a site's content so that search engines can pick up that content easily. The easiest the better for a site.
Anyone can read the URL you posted back to the K2 Community, but sorry, I'm not admitting anything.
As for the other claims...
a) "other extensions offer better URLs": if they are native extensions, no they don't
b) "K2 support is bad": define bad support for a free extension first. We're not elitists. If we were, we wouldn't have released K2, better yet, we wouldn't have launched a community.
You might wanna look for some other CMS perhaps. I strongly suggest Google's Blogger cause a) it's built by Google (= "beautiful" SEO for the paranoid ones) and b) it's free like K2.
Give us a break will ya?
It seemed like a fantastic tool, but it is complicated and there is no help on how to manage this. This has taken me a lot of time and I have not managed to make this tool work properly. At the moment I will not use K2, because it take to much time to make this thing work without support.
Owner's reply
K2 has a very active forum monitored both by the dev team and by hundreds of pro/expert volunteers. I find it hard to believe you couldn't find help...
I'll repeat the title. I will give my first born to the creators of K2. Never in my entire life with Joomla have I encounter a better coded component. It is so unbelievably well structured and named that I almost cried when I first saw it. It's so well created, that I was able to customise the layout in ways I didn't know how... K2 improved my coding. You might think this is an over exaggeration, but if you had the amount of experience with extensions that lack even basic structural coding... well... you would be in tears before you even knew what hit you.
I worked with K2 since 1 year and a half. And I can honestly say, the experience has been excellent.
The user experience was easy and confortable. The firt days, I spend a couple of hours understanding the K2 panel. But it was so easy to work with, that I never asked the documentation. Also, the new demo page is very useful.
The support was (is) very good, whereas it is "free". Nowdays, the supports is much better than the past. You can go to the forum and check it yourself.
But, the BEST part is the features of the Content Consruction itself. The level of development and editing, to the way the articles are presented, is TOO FLEXIBLE. With only a few of html (most) and php knowledge, can create articles with custom extra fields, custom data, videos, images, and rich format content, like schema.org. The overriding of templates and modules, is REALLY SIMPLE and you can create unique styles.
The only CONS that I found is some things related of SEO, I mean there are a few of duplicates by page, and this is worse when using tags. But I bought the SH404SEF component, and this resolve my problems. Others things that lacks is an advance search (like live ajax finder), that include extrafields (but I think that there are some extensions that achieve this).
But I can't complain of K2... it's ismply THE BEST CCK out there... admit it
The user experience was easy and confortable. The firt days, I spend a couple of hours understanding the K2 panel. But it was so easy to work with, that I never asked the documentation. Also, the new demo page is very useful.
The support was (is) very good, whereas it is "free". Nowdays, the supports is much better than the past. You can go to the forum and check it yourself.
But, the BEST part is the features of the Content Consruction itself. The level of development and editing, to the way the articles are presented, is TOO FLEXIBLE. With only a few of html (most) and php knowledge, can create articles with custom extra fields, custom data, videos, images, and rich format content, like schema.org. The overriding of templates and modules, is REALLY SIMPLE and you can create unique styles.
The only CONS that I found is some things related of SEO, I mean there are a few of duplicates by page, and this is worse when using tags. But I bought the SH404SEF component, and this resolve my problems. Others things that lacks is an advance search (like live ajax finder), that include extrafields (but I think that there are some extensions that achieve this).
But I can't complain of K2... it's ismply THE BEST CCK out there... admit it
I think everything has been said about K2's value. let's face it. Joomla with K2 beats wordpress and drupal. joomla without K2 simply lags behind.
When J!1.6 was announced, I though that many of K2's briliant workflow and usability features might had been incorporated (or even K2 itself replacing com_content). It didn't happen. When J!3 alpha was lauched, I hoped more of it was incorporated in the core. Not again.
K2 has been, by far, the best "off-the-shelf" com_content joomla has had in years - seblod is too complicated and Zoo is not integrated with many other extensions, standard com_content is really a usability challenge for customers both in the front and in the backend and the other CCK's are in between these.
K2 really adds value to Joomla and I simply feel it's getting further away from joomla in J's most recent releases: more and more extensions rely mostly on com_content (for example, multilanguage, native translation or light cck's) and if one has such needs for customers, well, then it's "plain vanilla Joomla com_content" or wordpress (which, by the way, customers love).
So I think this has been mostly a missed opportunity: a briliant content creation component that should have become part of J! core or at least most it's solutions incorporated. And joomla (apparently) becoming more and more like Drupal in terms of complexity and less "end-customer" friendly.
When J!1.6 was announced, I though that many of K2's briliant workflow and usability features might had been incorporated (or even K2 itself replacing com_content). It didn't happen. When J!3 alpha was lauched, I hoped more of it was incorporated in the core. Not again.
K2 has been, by far, the best "off-the-shelf" com_content joomla has had in years - seblod is too complicated and Zoo is not integrated with many other extensions, standard com_content is really a usability challenge for customers both in the front and in the backend and the other CCK's are in between these.
K2 really adds value to Joomla and I simply feel it's getting further away from joomla in J's most recent releases: more and more extensions rely mostly on com_content (for example, multilanguage, native translation or light cck's) and if one has such needs for customers, well, then it's "plain vanilla Joomla com_content" or wordpress (which, by the way, customers love).
So I think this has been mostly a missed opportunity: a briliant content creation component that should have become part of J! core or at least most it's solutions incorporated. And joomla (apparently) becoming more and more like Drupal in terms of complexity and less "end-customer" friendly.
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