CB is not the latest and the greatest. Apparently it was at one time, but it's very old fashioned now.

Their CB website is a real mess. It's hard to find things. No help on the Forums whatsoever. I got more help over on the Kunena forums.

CREDITS PAGE... The enormous credits page that is REQUIRED is the absolute FIRST link on the profile: this is one of the most obnoxious things about Community Builder. Even Shareware was never this obnoxious about their credits. I do believe in giving credit where credit is due and I'm perfectly willing to have a link to their website but I am totally offended by three pages of credits to everybody who ever worked on it, and required to off it as the very first link a the TOP of the profile page. WHOEVER heard of something like this?? This definitely crosses a line. I've never seen any software or shareware anywhere that demands this kind of exposure.

The code is hard to customize.

And CB is designed entirely around tabs, which means every time the page refreshes, all the tabs fly apart and bounce back together again (which I find very annoying... why not just use a menu system, REALLY.) But since it's all designed around tabs maybe it's not easy to change it now.

The good thing is, it's FREE. But to bring it up to a level where it's a real social networking system, all the desirable accessories end up costing a lot more than readymade integrated packages such as Jomsocial. So it's not actually a bargain. Not at all.

I did purchase their manual and extra accessories, but the accessories did not work on my site. There was a severe javascript problem with their Wall, Profile Book and something else so I couldn't type anything into the editor. I was very disappointed that they didn't work because the accessories would have made CB a little more modern.

It's useful for some simple member management where you want a user profile, but I wouldn't recommend using this for a real Social Networking site.

I so want to love this component, but it just confuses the heck out of me sometimes. I'm a pretty tech-savy guy, but I have to have the manual next to me to do much of anything with CB on my site.

Don't get me wrong: it is strong, robust, powerful and feature-rich... but it's not intuitive. I hope the developers will look into that in the future.

If you want to use this extension--by all means accept my recommendation--and be sure to put on a pot of coffee as you set it up.

I installed the latest version of CB to see if it was what I needed. I have a bi-lingual site (English/Spanish) and everything I´ve installed so far work wonderfully with Joomfish which I use for the translations. It seems amazing to me that both CB and Joomfish are always on the list of the best extensions for Joomla, but they are not compatible!!! In the event of this, I tried to install the Spanish language plugin for CB, but without success, since I get the message that the plugin does not exist!!! I have searched the forums for help, with no avail. So this problem is somewhat a mystery. It´s a real shame that I can´t use CB on my site because of the simple language translation problem. I can´t really select a rating at this moment because I can see that CB in English seems wonderful and Joomfish is excellent. I just wish the two could get along easily like many other extensions.

This component is a must have for any community site, mainly because it is highly customisable and lots of people have written add-ons for CB or have made their software compatible with it! The range of plug ins is just baffling.

The only bad thing I have experienced is that the public relations guy on their website, 'Nant A' I think, is really unfriendly. But otherwise full marks!

Quite good, although I would love to have a whole suite of facebook extensions integrated in CB.... Installation was easy thanks to the ease of use instructions, i installed jConnector, but that doesn't do what i'm looking for.... keep up the good work!

Ok i will try to be as fair as i can to CB while writing this.

I wanted a community for my website and as CB is free i turned to that. It installed ok and there was way too many config options and not in a eye pleasing format either.

Software code was very messy and hard to follow at times. I paid for membership as i wanted a couple of extra features so thought i would give it a go. Wish i hadn't as a big waste of money. I installed their audio captcha and needed help, wow it was slow it took a month to get anywhere with them. I found there forums very slow to.

I finally moved on when i had issues integrating it with Vbulletin. Thats a big no no unless you edit some code. (They both share some code functions so it causes fatal errors) Again no help from CB.

I moved to a paid software totally different and that's way better it even connects with facebook.

CB was prob fantastic when it was first created. I now find it dated and messy. Its certainly lacking in web 2.0 features.

In my opinion your better off paying for a well written package with modern options. Thats if you have the ££ to do so of course. CB will give you head aches unless your a very good coder. Oh the templates are very poor to. I cant speak for the premium ones but the standard certainly are.

To recap
Poor response
Poor code
Poor Design
Fatal conflicts
Poor captcha
Good plug ins you have to pay for
Dated design and not web 2.0
Way too many config options
Very time consuming to set up
Temperamental
Poor standard templates
Does not integrate with modern social networking
Does not work straight out of the box

I hope that you found that useful. I have held off to be appropriate and constructive.

This is realy the best component ever :)

I first want to say this is a good componet easy to install takes some time to learn all the ins and outs.for me a beginner i was almost over come by all the options it has,,except for one no captcha unless you pay for a membership?? i find this odd since alot of other mod's or comp's out there offer it built in..would have given a higher rating it it had it....

This is the best Joomla component ever. It is fast, easy to manage and works well in the backend of the Joomla site.

When I first installed CB 1.2 I was overwhelmed with the amount of modules, plugins and general information that CB has. I found myself playing with a lot of those items. If I would have Stopped here I would give this an excellent rating. But my reviews do not just concern one aspect of anything.. After 4-5 months of use I realize that CB is not for me or the site I'm currently working on... I uninstall all the modules and components. I uninstall Cb it gives me 2 errors. One about how it can't find the uninstall and the other I do not remember. I manually go through my components, module, and plugins. I find a few items listed by beat and joomlajoe AKA joomlapolis. I'm think I do no want to start over on this site since it launches Sunday Oct 11, My backups all have the CB builder in them so that wouldn't help... So I go to the joomlapolis forums and do a search for uninstall community builder. it drops the builder but brings up 109 options. I'm thinking ok this should be fun but I want this fixed right. So I search all 109 (4 pages) and find 4 asking how to uninstall CB properly or how to remove the databases and if it will mess things up. Only one that I saw had any responses to it and it was not directed towards the uninstall but towards the error the user was recieving. the only 3 had the topics close and I quote "The topic has been locked. " with no response or link. I decided what the heck I'll try and get that answer questioned myself. Low and Behold "The topic has been locked." No answer. I posted it in the correct area CB 1.2 Stable General Discussion Area Didn't scream, cry, whine, or be unpleasant in any way shape or forum. I just asked for a list of files that need to be removed. I currently have 3 modules that I think should be removed. I just wanted comfirmation.. This is why at best i will give a fair rating. I hope you have better success with thim

I am using your Components, Plugin and Modules they are with very good functionality and working properly. Cong to all of you your team you have done excellent job.

we found best for custom & small amout is really returns more then it worth

Ultra easy to install with the detailed instructions. Very versatile. I like best that it gives admin the ability to add unique items to user profiles. Thank you for a great tool!

The extension is the best choice to use for community sites as it is powerful, has a lot of plugins for almost every need. Though there should be more modern execution, I guess. But as it is free - it's great

Simply the best community extension for Joomla, yes even better than the other "social" extension you have to pay for. As you can see, whatever you need there is a CB plugin for it. Would it be nice to have all of the extra features like User Activity, User Blogs, User Photos and etc included in the box? Yes but the beauty of CB is that it is a framework, an API for developers to create awesome additions.

I notice though that some users (my clients for example) have some trouble understanding the power of CB and its installation, but give it a try, read the installation PDF slowly and you'll have an install community!

P.S. I see even bigger things in the future for CB, with the CB developers taking over GroupJive's development and partnering with the guys at Kunena for increased integration of CB and the forum extension, things are only going to get better!

This offers a lot of good functions. Together with other "plugins" like the uddeIM it is a very complete solution.

Thanks!

/Anders

Community Builder is great, it has many many extensions and you can customize it in any way you want. The only downside is that it takes some time to customize and get it to run like you want. I was very afraid at first, will this be what I need, it has so many files to install, will it invalid my site ? Answer is try it for yourself and you'll like it! It deserves 5 out of 5!

This product is powerful and there is good amount of add-ons to do just about anything. I have used it for a while and managed to integrate forums and AEC tabs within CB. However, some of the plugs in CB site are outdated and does not work.

CB is massive in size and would make any Newbie such as myself shake in his/her boots. However if you follow the excellent simple instructions given to me by Hazzaa (read the whole post) http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=472&t=391482&p=1660693#p1660693 it installs and works like a dream. With her instructions its pretty well fool-proof. From there on it becomes a learning curve so read the Documentation and use the Forums if you get stuck.

I spent a week assessing a number of other community software builders. I decided to give "Community Builder" a try and have not looked back nor regretted my decision.

The software has good logical layout for the backend and is extremely easy to setup. It's well worth purchasing the "Documentation" package not only for the well written User Guide but also the access to powerful extra plugins.

As an administrator you can set the display options for the plugins to make it look similar to a Facebook account or have everything under "tabs". I personally prefer the tabs approach as it keeps the profile page nice and clean.

My only negative is that the forum / calender being supported both need to run in "legacy" mode but that said I have seen no issues turning legacy mode on and the forum software (Fireboard) integrates perfectly. (I did ask about this and the issue is being addressed, hopefully soon I'll be able to go back to pure native mode).

So, in short, this package has everything you need to build a community. The forums are active and my questions where answered incredibly promptly.