The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

I've always wanted to put a forum on a band website I maintain, and now I have! The users are loving it, the site is stickier and it really lends importance to the site overall. Perfectly made, easy to install and configure. zero trouble with this. Thanks!

I ran a bridged phpbb3 board and decided it was time to eliminate the bridge and find a Joomla based forum. I searched and found Kunena to be a good choice as they offered a way to import my phpbb3 posts and custom smilies. Only downside to the process was it didn't do attachments. Oh well, I moved each one over 1 at a time, all 1100 of them. Once installed my users loved it and for me, a lot easier to manage. Also support and add-ons are top notch on there website. Best choice I made for my site!

This is certainly a 5 star extention! It's got pretty much all the features that I would want for a forum, and exceeded my expectations. I also must say they have a pretty good support team, so I'm not left hanging when I want to modify something. Thanks Kunena team for freely sharing this, you guys have come a long way with your software.

Cheers Josh Lewis.

I have used Kunena since it was Fireboard and I have seen it go from strength to strength. Not only does in now look really beautiful but it is SO easy to setup. Just recently I had call to use the support forums and the guys were ace, they tried really hard and had me sorted before the end of the day.

Can't rate it highly enough and cant recommend it strongly enough. If you want forums and you have Joomla! you NEED Kunena. 'Nuff said.

I've been using Kunena and before it, fireboard, for several years now. The development and support from the Kunena team is second to non. Incredibly easy component to run, the upgrades are frequent and easy to implement. Every release is a little neater and a little more functional.
I very nearly jumped ship when Fireboard could no longer do what I wanted, but thank goodness I stuck with it! Kunena forms the core of my site, its my primary consideration when adding any other features to my site.
The improvements in the recent 1.6 release make this a serious contender for anyone wanting to setup a forum, even over its non-Joomla counterparts. I readily recommend Kunena.

I agree with others that this is the best forum for Joomla. And I agree that version 1.6 has lots of very nice improvements, such as automatic resizing of images when users upload. Kunena is a significant forum system that deserves respect and support.

However... I am surprised at all the glowing reviews because there are some problems yet with this new version. If you have a restricted or private forum for registered users only, then bad things can happen.

1. Category setup. If you have a restricted or private forum, Administrators cannot access the forum at all unless you ALSO specify the backend access. I fiddled with that a lot until I was able to get it to work. Not only do you have to specify who gets access but you MUST appoint moderators for that forum (including yourself) or nobody with an Admin ranking will be able to get in. ALSO... remember to publish the SECTIONS as well as the categories. I got so twangled up in forum settings that somehow the sections got turned off. (It's easy to get twangled when things aren't going right.)

2. When you're done setting up a new component, the last thing you do is make a MENU item link, right?? Oh, this was worst nightmare I've had in months. If you have a private forum, the MENU links won't work! I read everything in the Kunena forum, I followed all instructions and I spent 6 or 7 hours simply trying to create a menu link that didn't generate error messages. Apparently Kunena's router needs some tweaking? I don't know what's wrong but IMO, this problem should have been fixed during the BETA testing stage.

I believe this is what you must do to create a menu link that doesn't generate errors:

a. Make sure your Joomla is UP TO DATE and create a NEW Joomla menu. Create an entirely new JOOMLA menu (not a third party menu.) Don't use your old Joomla menus, make a new one. (You can copy links over to the new one.) But you need to create an all-new Kunena link, keep reading...

b. Go into the Kunena configuration and go to the CONTROL PANEL. Select the icon that says CREATE MENU. This will generate a menu link that works. You may have to search through all your menus to FIND the link that Kunena just made. It doesn't matter where it lands, you can move it to the menu you want.

c. If you have other forum links with the same unique id name, there might be conflicts. Since Kunena generates a FORUM link with the unique name of forum (which is not very unique), you may want to change it's name to something much more original. Or delete other links which have the unique name so there's no confusion.

d. It might be necessary to use entirely NEW sections and entirely NEW categories in order to discard old kunena code. I'm not entirely sure if this is right, but 7 hours of trying to create a menu link; I discarded everything that was from Kunena 1.5 in case legacy code was the problem. Some of the error messages did indicate that legacy code was the culprit. (But we all know that error messages usually have nothing to do with the real error.)

If you're successful in generating a forum menu link that works without errors, don't change it and don't touch it. If you want to try to tweak your Menu link, make a copy and adjust that instead. I found that no kind of tweaking worked no-how.

ANOTHER BIG PROBLEM: you can't link to a specific Category or Forum directly. This is a real pain because we only use one category for my Forum, but we can't make a menu link for it; not without breaking the router.

SO, I created a hard-coded link at the top of my HOME page that goes directly to the category I want, and it works without errors. But I can't set up a Joomla menu item for that category and as a result, I can't set the forum as my DEFAULT home page either, even though it's the main purpose for our family website.

I really hope the Kunena developers address this issue soon because I'm not the only one who's had major frustrations with simply making a Menu link. It shouldn't be this hard, it really shouldn't.

This extension was installed in just minutes and was easy to configure. I have not tried every forum but of those that are top rated, this one is THE FORUM for Joomla! It has transformed our website into a real community!

It is simple to use and easy to manage. Thanks Kunena Team --you guys ROCK!

Great component where one can see that the authors put a big deal of work into it.
I give just 4 stars because for a normal user with a simple web page this component is surely an overkill.

kunena1.5.11 is good, I use it for a half years,works good, but have some default(eg.not support muti files upload) compare with other forum such as agora3.0, but kunena1.6 is a milestone, it has so many good features. but i can't transtion to 1.6, because my old site has some js script of mootools1.1, it can't compatible with kunena1.6, since 1.6 need mootools1.2.

I have just tried to build up a simple forum (my idea was SMF). But it would take more time to manage my joomla website and SMF separately. I tried Kunena found it was great.

I have tried many forums and I can speak from experience that Kunena is the pick of the litter. The developers are really into it and listen to feedback. They are constantly improving the product.

plain & simple if you want a modern forum to work with Joomla and friendly with other extensions like JomSocial then Kunena is THE choice. Beyond the code, the development team is phenomenal. They have raised the bar for Joomla and frankly are more responsive to their users/community than almost all other software/apps I use both Commercial and Open Source. The best word is "Professional" Thank you

The best free forums in the world. Excellent technical assistance by staff members.
Component installation and support of developers are a guarantee of success.
Simply the best!!!

Excellent Component. They dont come better than this really. Nice work.

I registered an account just to rate this component. It installs nicely and I had it up and running in minutes. It was easy to style and setup and has many great features!

I have been using Kunena 1.5 for quite some time. I decided it didn't fit my needs so i browsed among other Joomla / Non Joomla free forums.

Tried Phpp witch worked fine but it was very difficult to integrate it to my site, didn't want a new complete page for it. I tried Agora, SMF and ... I realised Kunena was by far the best.

Now since 1.6 I am completely satisfied with it.
The support on the forums is awesome, I had some issues that were fixed in a matter of minutes so hat off to that.

It could do better for themes & design, but other thatn that 5*

Application integration, friendly user interface, easy configuration, SEF, alot of modification is what Kunena offer. If there is better forum please tell me :D

We're using Kunena quite a while now, and with great pleasure. The developing of K1.6 was a nice surprise: a lot of new features, a lot of options and several possibilities to integrate other extentions.

Installations is extremely easy; upgrading from K1.5x versions is supported, as is a roll-back function. New is also that after configuration changes, one is able to "undo" the settings and go back to the last known state. Great!! Deleted some messages? No problem. This forum has a waste bin!

There was some trouble with the template we used for our site, and the Kunena team responded very quick and with thorough solutions. They not only pointed me in the right direction but took (a lot of) time to "spell it out" for me!

Bottom line: if you're looking for a forum on your Joomla site: don't search any longer, and get Kunena! Keep up the good work over there!!!

I have just started using the new 1.6 version and all i can say is superb!!

********** star rating from me :)

Keep up the great work.

Kunena forums(1.5) installed without a hitch. Configuration is a little clunky, but it looks like they are working that out for the 1.6ver. Runs superfast and integrates well with CB and uddeIM.