The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

Azrul has never been my favorite company. They have the most strict support policy of any I've come across. Truth is, I think they're over worked and spread too thin. Still, they charge a significant price and should support their product (in my opinion). The software works great but once your subscription runs out, you're on your own ~ you can't even access most of their forums. On top of that, they won't let you buy a support package - you must pay the full amount for the software again! I've bought three of their products and it's always a tech support nightmare. Still....., the best community software for Joomla. Ugh.

I was apprehensive about using this as there were so many Modules, Plugins and Third Party concepts that I thought I would lose myself in the code.

How wrong I could be, what a superb and innovative component. worth every penny. Three cheers for the developers of this wonderful bit of software.

Hip hip - Hooray, Hip hip - Hooray, Hip hip - Hooray - OK, I know that was over the top... but if you don't buy this, you would be making the worse mistake of your life. Thanks Guys. :-)

I've only scratched the surface of this community networking system but wow..... what a beauty.
Hip hip - Hooray!

This is a superb extension backed up by an enthusiastic support team. One small compatibility issue with an Artisteer template was fixed promptly. Highly recommended.

jomsocial is the heart and soul of our web site. the updates are easy, support is quick and concise and the component itself is just awesome!

continued updates show that the dev team is serious about keeping this as one of the best components available for joomla! today.

we are in our second year of running this component and it just keeps getting better. can't wait to get some time to be able to help them develop it even more - we have so many more ideas for improvement! :)

we are also using JReviews and the integration between the two is fantastic.

it's not a simple component, but after a bit of time it becomes clear that to anyone with a bit of patience, you have an extremely powerful component at your disposal.

facebook connect encourages even more people to join and our search engine results are all looking good!

thanks jomsocial - you rock!

Upgrading to 2.2.2 (and before to 2.2.1.) I had some problems caused by any wrong settings in my DB. I asked for help in the Jomsocial support-Forum and within two days the problem had been solved. It´s a good tool with a fast team behind...

Often we buy a product and never get time to write a review, now I'm really willing to do it: since 2.2.2 version of JomSocial I starded to see my (little) webcommunity expand, users liked all new features and improvements, and now they are enjoing my site, I too. Sure, a so fully featured community hides always some little bug, not easy at all to manage it, but I noted JomSocial staff always offers a good support and everything get a solution. Sure, sometime is annoying to explain problems in a detailed form (when an admin has a problem he would like solution in a flash time, that's not possible) but I noted detailed infos bring always a quicker reply and solution. I hope JomSocial staff will keep updading their product without negleting suggestions and requests coming from people using JS.

For me this component is one of the best components I have used so far. If you are creating a community website then JomSocial is the way to go. It basically covers all basics a community component should have; status updates, photo and video uploads, groups, events, like/dislike, activity stream.

The component makes the members (350+) of my website www.testdriveunlimited.nl come back daily, making new friends, discuss topics in the groups of which they are a member, upload photos and videos. Without JomSocial my community would not have been this active. For me this shows the power of JomSocial.

Yes, the support is not always that great but in general I get my questions answered. The team of moderators is getting bigger and lately I see that support is slightly improving.

Hopefully the development team behind JomSocial will now first focus on stability before they will add new functionality. Also a few more default templates would be great. Especially different colours schemes on the existing templates would help a lot of users to have a better integration with their website. I am using a Rockettheme template and there the fonts and font colours within JomSocial are generally being used from the main (Rockettheme) template.

If I can give potential new users of JomSocial one tip, try not to customize the component too much. For me this works great especially when a new update has been launched. If you are an average Joomla user then you should be able to get the component to work as you want it to work. The backend settings are not rocket science but because of the many settings you should take your time to get the best settings for your site. Just go over them one by one and you should be fine. It is all organized in a logical structure.

I am giving this component 4 stars because stability and support can both be better and hopefully 4 stars is stimulating the JomSocial team to make it 5 stars ;).

There're already many things mentioned right under me. So to keep it short, I'll try to focus on the most important:

This is definitely the best extension to build a community. The design is great, mostly easy to customize and the social stream is really cool.

They have basically two support sections: One is official and the other is not "managed" by the team. Sadly they support officially only installing errors. Any customization must be done by yourself. You won't be able to rely on the support - nevertheless, they often help you if they have got the time.

All in all it is worth the money and the 5 stars.
But, they should work on their support!

For the last year I have endeavored to start my own niche community. I began with Boonex Dolphin 7 and it turned out to be incredibly buggy. The forum software included with Dolphin was not very good either, so I was forced into a number of core system hacks to integrate phpBB3. Ultimately, it became a huge exercise in patience just to add maintenance patches. The entire site finally crashed on a holiday weekend.

I restarted with phpFox, which was significantly better. Members can be pretty finicky though, a lesson I learned with the previous setup. Based on user requests I ultimately added WordPress for blogging and vBulletin for the forum. Though it again required core file changes to phpFox the site is still running. I have problems with performance and the bridges used to create linkages between the software are not consistently reliable. Though the members are trucking along with this site, I still felt there had to be a better way.

That is when I discovered Joomla and Jomsocial 2.2. They form the hub of my new social networking site Reasoned Spirituality (http://reasonandspirit.com/). I added EasyBlog for advanced member blogging and the free forum Kunena. Once I overcame the steep Joomla learning curve, I have to admit that this setup is wonderful. One login for all areas of the site and no core hacks. Everything plays nicely together and the site runs much quicker and more efficiently than the other setups.

Of all the components, I really appreciate the power of Jomsocial. It works extremely well with the three templates I tried and integrates nicely with components. I highly recommend Jomsocial as part of a complete social networking site.

I've been using JomSocial Pro for over a year now. I've had very few problems with it and support is good.

Pros:
Ready to use
Easy to set up
Easy to update
Activity stream on the home page with comments and likes.
Privacy settings for individual comments, photo albums, and video.
Easy integration with Kunena forum.
Members love the karma points/Top Members.
Front end member control to ban.
Ability to feature members, groups etc.

Cons:
Server resource intensive.
Templates are hard to customize for my experience level.

Level of support received:
Support is provided via forum and email.
If I had a big problem they've always come through quickly. For any minor problems, you may have to wait.

Purpose of using the extension:
I use this extension for a gaming fan site.

Your experience level with Joomla and web technologies:
I started using Joomla over a year ago. I'm not proficient in PHP, JavaScript, or SQL.

I bit the bullet and spent the money on this extension but was disappointed from the start.

The software does not play well with templates not specifically made for or edited for JomSocial. I uploaded an Artisteer-created template and found that much of the alignment was off(buttons overlapping text boxes, text cut off, etc.)

BTW, the template worked beautifully with Community Builder.

The next thing I tried was adding photos. JomSocial said I uploaded 3 and even showed the thumbnail of the first one but that picture would not open saying no photos had been uploaded. The second picture would not open (or at least I gave up after 5 minutes of watching the opening gif spin.)

Also, for $100 U.S., why do I have to put up with a link back to their site from mine?

Could these problems all be worked out? No doubt. But for $100 (the cheapest version) I expected it to work a lot more smoothly. I bought this extension to save time, not to spend more of it to make it work like I want.

This community component is bigger than the developers can handle.

Is great if all you want is the core application but once you decide to expand and add something simple like a music player it gets really complicated. You have to rely on 3rd party products that really do not measure up to par and can get really expensive or time consuming due to the lack of an actual demo without registering with every site you come across.

This community is not as wide used as say Community Builder therefore it is not as well developed. I would have personally liked to have seen the developers spend more time making applications (at least basic ones that function).

Support is your typical post on forum or open ticket. You will spend a lot of time searching your email for your reference number to update your product. They do not have a registered area that remembers who you are and what you bought so you can quickly access the things you need. I have yet to successfully update to the current version.

This is not the way an open source community operates and therefore I have no use for them and will discontinue my usage of their product. I build and design websites for a living and every site I build this on would have to be registered with them and have its own reference number I would have to remember. Who has time for that?

Post Script?
If I am wrong about any of this, fault lays within the confines of a really poor support system. At $150 a pop I would expect a little more personal support but alas it is mostly automated. The contact page doesn,t even have an email to contact.

I've been using CB on my site for some months, and have recently decided to checkout JomSocial. Having implemented a JomSocial test platform a week ago, I can now share my thoughts and experiences on the Pros and Cons of JomSocial.

Some advantages of JomSocial over CB:
Smooth, clean, professional looking application.
Built-in “make featured” option for profiles, which allows easy switching between featured & non-featured members.
Latest photos thumbnails display.
Easily administered photo galleries, with Admin ability to edit on the frontend.
Automatic listing of activities.
In-built video sharing, but cannot upload videos unless you have access to either a paid service or special server software.
Ability to insert modules into the profile pages

Some (important to me) areas where I believe JomSocial is lacking:
No support for animated gifs as avatars – unless you have server access to ImageMagick
No possibility for members to select from a library of default avatars.
No possibility to have admin set global restriction of access to specific fields (restrict access to registered members only for phone number for example).
No possibility (at least in core JomSocial) for Admin to edit member profiles in frontend
No possibility AT ALL for Admin to change which “profile type” a member has selected (except by going into the SQL database)
No possibility in core JomSocial to add custom tabs to the profile (except by hacking)
Poor layout of information on the profile page (eg a multiple selected list is displayed as a narrow vertical column of information in JomSocial – ie CRLF-separated items; in CB it can be displayed as comma-separated items)
In-built private messaging system, but inflexible (no possibility to setup autoforward, setup autoreply, cannot choose whether message is replicated in email notification or not, etc), and no possibility to use a 3rd party PMS instead.
And finally - JomSocial is not free!

To be fair, I have to say that (given that I have now done a lot of "hacking" of core code to get my JomSocial page to look just the way I want) I have recently decided to go ahead with a full migration from CB to JomSocial.

I just wish there were a few less "cons".

What can I say that has not been said already!

The JomSocial Component easily installs with out a problem. A new release came out while I was in development, followed the instructions clicked a few buttons and all upgrades went without event like it was a new install. Very smooth...
The administration panel is easy to browse and manage settings.
Setup is simple to understand with plenty of documentation on developer site and forums.
Integration with rockettheme's templates is a breeze.
Plenty of out-of-the-box addons for making your sites information and navigation user friendly plus plugins for Facebook and Twitter, features that are a must these days on any site.

The best part of this great product is the A-#1 support received when your specific question cannot be answered in the forum and documentation. I was a little confused on the sign-up and purchase with the two different logins and Ajmal quickly cleared things up and made sure my account was setup to my liking. The support I received was one of the most professional, courteous experiences I ever had on the web to date.

Here's to the JomSocial Team!

Cheers!
IRISH

I'm JS customer from the very begining. I have to say that I've used it to create small comunities and it had worked well. I think that it has a lot of functionalities that can be used to build a community out of the box.

However, from time to time, its Facebook connection functionality doesn't work propertly. This is not a good thing for a community where some of your users are connecting using FB. As I told, the good performance of this functionality is random and it depends on what you are updating or installing on your Joomla (I think).

Once you see that something is going wrong you decide to ask for support and then you discover that nobody answers or they answer late and with vague responses (in this particular case). This is not acceptable if you are running a community and you have spent money on advertising. Not professional.

So, in summary, if you are looking for a community component to build an small and isolated comunity and nothing else, maybe Jomsocial will be your component. But if you are trying to expand its potential using FB users it's best to combine it with other solutions (and spend more money).

Do not try its support desk and forums because it's really bad.

A powerful extension. I love it. The pros list is too long to write, but basically it does it all, group creation, photo and video sharing,inbox,walls, etc...but why I really love it, is because the quality look and feel of it. Everything is clean, professional, and easily configurable, really top notch. Only con would be having the ability to put the activity stream at the very bottom...Other than that..it is simply amazing.

* A full evaluation of the extension
For an out-of-the-box component, Jomsocial is great. I think reviewers might be a little harsh because they are expecting a more simple solution. While I do agree that bringing my Jomsocial from 1.8 to 2.0 was a pain, the files itself upgraded flawlessly. Theming is something that could still use some work but like I mentioned before, this component can get a full community site going in minutes. How do I know this? I paid a lot of money a while back for a completely custom coded solution that does not even scratch the surface of what Jomsocial brings to the table. My site (www.mythrottle.net, sorry about the plug) works great and is way better than the original custom concept thanks to Jomsocial.

* Courtesy and Honesty
I have not had an experience in this area since I have not had to interact with support. My questions have been answered by reading old posts in the forums.

* Pros & Cons of the extension and its performance
Pros - Up and going in minutes, by far the best application that gives you a little of everything.

Cons - Theming is a nuisance. I had to migrate my theme using Winmerge to capture all of the new CSS code and save it on my template. In the end I got frustrated and used a hybrid theme between my own and Blackout. This will be remedied within the week as I am working on a custom 2.0 theme with Vrosa.

* Level of support received
None to date - no need for it...yet

* Ease of usage and deployment
Simple enough for an entry level developer to do it.

* Purpose of using the extension (i.e., "I used this extension for a magazine site.")
I use this extension for a motorcycle community.

* Level of difficulty
moderate if you are integrating additional extensions with Jomsocial. If you use it as a standalone it is very easy. Currently I use some big components but I have Alphauserpoints and Friend Suggestions woven in. Once The JEvents component is able to get events posted in its visual calendar, I will go review it and give it 5 stars.

* Your experience level with Joomla and web technologies
A few months but I feel like I've been doing this for years. It is really easy to configure and make changes.The forums have helped me a lot for Joomla and Jomsocial.

I have used JomSocial since it's first release and have been an active members of the JomSocial community. I have built and maintain a large social community using JomSocial.

I was greatly impressed with the first release of JomSocial and its core social networking capability. If your community requirements match that of the un-customized JomSocial, then it is a good choice.

Unfortunately, as my community has grown, I need more robust community capabilities and better product support than is currently offered.

Pros:
- User Profiles
- Messaging
- Photos
- Groups
- Template modification

Cons:
- Support - many / most troubleshooting support forum posts go unanswered currently. JomSocial has no customer system for reporting and tracking resolution of confirmed bugs. Bugs are not address update after update.
- Architectural issues - The functionality in JomSocial is tightly bound to their own user interface and does not directly work with Joomla Templates easily unless JomSocial is customized. There is no method to customize functions so that changes are not lost during product updates - so the support staff recommends not to customize.
- Lack of Product Direction - After its initial release, the newly delivered functionality, like Events, has been greatly lacking in design and execution. This no long term vision / statement of direction for Joomla communities.
- There is very poor support for administration and maintenance of communities.

My Fair rating of JomSocial may seem harsh, as my JomSocial community has grown and prospered. If I still had an immature community, I would not be so critical. But I have invested in JomSocial technology and they are not growning to deliver the more robust features and support that will keep my community healthy. Now I am stuck with increased cost of operation with any sign that JomSocial understands large community issues at all.

Special thanks to the developers, this had to be one of the easiest and smoothest advanced modules I have worked with ... the users feel they are in a familiar environment already ... charge more ...its worth it!

I'm a Jomsocial user and I need to say that this is the best component for creating a communty website. Easy and clear. There is a lots of extensions and integrations for Jomsocial and have got the best support center and forums that I have seen.