I honestly don't understand how some people can take direct shots at degrading developers of FREE extensions for Joomla, even if it is just one or two people.

People put their free time into developing extension to share with everyone. If you think you put out a better extension or could help with a project, why not put your free time into helping instead of degrading someone's effort. I think some people miss the point of Open Source. This is a problem with a lot of the Joomla community. If it's free give constructive feedback to help it get better.

As far as Fabrik goes, I think it's an excellent extension. Keep up the good work!

This component is full of bugs.
I installed last release (com_fabrik_2.0rc3.zip) and I can't publish forms on frontpage without mistakes.
There is the possibility to use svn versions but theese are full of bubs too.
I spent a week to fix this on my lamp without success.

In the few months I have been working with fabrik, developing a huge CV database and now a real estate site, has been excellent. I love the support, constant updates, and a good community in the forum.

It is a bit off a learning curve, but just follow the tutorials and you are on your way.

By far the best CCK component for joomla.

Thanx

See the tutorials before doing anything (flash tutorials on the official website).
Then, it's very easy to use.
You can use this for anything that you can imagine inside a table.
Examples: Selling products, clasified ads, etc.

big future for this component.
Really need to have search and sort function in table display.

This is the best software to create forms! Trust me, I have been looking for a software like this for a long time. And even though I hate writing reviews, this really deserves your attention...I suggest to read their instructions of how to use the software..very helpful for beginners and not.

When it comes to the customer service...I created a form with over 200 questions and for some reason there was an error and the database didnt see the questions...i sent a message to the fabrik forum telling them about my problem. They replied in less than 24 hours even though I WAS NOT a subscriber. They gave me instruction on what to do to solve the problem... i tried it and it worked!

One more thing...there was not a problem with the software to start with - as i was adding new questions i had to update the database and i didnt. So the fault was mine..some times we had to use common sense...

Anyways guys, this software is amazing and the customer service is great...download it and you will not regret...also don't forget to donate...it is important to show our support when people do such an excellent job.

Best,

Manos

Fabrik is far more than just a form handling extension. It truly is an application builder.

Follow the tutorials, a couple of hours, but well worth the investment in time.

Thank you for all the hard work and investment you've put into this extension.

I give this the MVE, Most Valuable Extension! It is always my first install. It works every time and comes with a pre-configured contact form as an example.

You can build pretty much anything you can imagine. At first I was under the impression that this was to build contact forms. It does do that but it also builds custom CRMs, rental applications managers, employee managers, office supplies managers, and an unimaginable amount of other choices.

If you can imagine it, you can build it. I still can't believe this is GPL! I do have a $20 Euro subscription, but that is well worth it. I post almost daily in the Forum and I always get timely response.

It really bothers me when someone gives a dog review on an app, especially one as stable, well written and powerful as this one, when they haven't even given an honest effort to use it.

"This app, as far as I can tell, comes with zero documentation or installation instructions."

It's all right in their forum, and easy to locate - there's installation instructions, Frequently Answered Questions (EXTREMELY WELL DONE), and the code itself is chock full of context help.

This is an amazing application, because it's not just forms. It's DATABASE oriented, fully customizable, and feature rich. It was also one of the few "BIG" applications that installed flawlessly and without a hitch (from a tmp folder where I had extracted it).

I'm very excited to play with this one, it's a must have!

If you haven't used fabrik you are missing out on one of the most powerful aspects of joomla. While the learning curve is a little steep the rewards are endless. Fabrik is a full blown application builder for joomla, You may be searching for an extension to do something specific and settle for something close but not exact, with fabrik your options and ability are limitless, you can literally build an application that will do anything you need, from simple forms to a complex classroom training application.

I have rarely seen such a dedicated team of developers. Support is great, even if you are not a paid subscriber. Being able to search all forums is excellent.

The extension itself is excellent. Yes, it's buggy. What do you expect? It's not a stable version yet, but it's so close! I've been using it on production sites for months, and will not bother to try any others again. Nothing else comes close to this component, and I've tried a lot of them.

Once you wrap your mind around it, it is very easy to use for simple forms. Going into more advanced and complicated forms takes a lot more work, but it sure is worth it!

It's a very smart extension. With just some time (maybe some hours) investing in to understand the principles of how Fabrik works, is possible to develop very good applications (form based, in my case), updating directly a database table exportable to CSV files... in resume: a good choice for those who needs complex forms in Joomla.

I've been using Fabrik for a couple months now and it actually helped me to secure a job from a client where I had to "convert" his original web site that was developed by a team of PHP coders. They dropped further development of his site and that's where I stepped in with Fabrik.

It not only helped me with the custom user forms, it actually allowed me to convert his database application where he is tracking bad creditors for various local business owners who don't pay their bills.

If you pay their very small nominal fee, the offer videos that gets you off to a good start. Yes, the learning curve is a bit tricky, but once you get an understanding of the application and with just a little php knowledge (like I have! :-) ), you will discover just how powerful Fabrik really is. I feel I only scrapped the surface!

I tried Zoo, MightyExtensions Resource, Breezing Forms, ChronoForms and briefly looked at K2 and none of them had what I needed to complete this project for my client. From a team of PHP coders to just me and Fabrik, I can say that the project is complete and my client is happy that his business idea did not go down the drain!

Thanks to Rob and the others at Fabrik for your help and creating a great product. Please, please keep up the good work and YES, get it to a stable release!

This app, as far as I can tell, comes with zero documentation or installation instructions. All I can say is good luck. I searched for an hour to try and find simple installation instructions and could not locate.

What you do get is a confusing website with a bunch of what seem to be random files to download. Downloading these files and installing them into your joomla installation seems to yield minimal results. Joomla says it's installed but... how the hell do you use it?

There is a wiki for the product with a page for installation instuctions. When you visit it, it invites YOU to create the instructions. Amazing.

Nothing should be this difficult to install.

By far the best free form builder available. Had a basic form set up in 30 mins...emailing and writing to a DB and no sign of stupid forced email links at the bottom of the form to the creators website.

Really looking forward to getting into building form based applications for this...

Thanks guys

2 hours of learning (concpets, tutorial)
2 hours of implementation
And I had my - admittedly simple - form running!

I love Fabrik and its features; I have followed the develop of the last release and I have read the feedbacks in here of the previous one, the 1.0.

The costant feeling I belong after all that, is it will be an extension unstable for ever.

Fabrik is the sole open source database extension and that is great. It is only because of the strong love of that extension that with this feedback I want to push the developer team to write a final stable releaase of it.

Thank you Rob thank you Hugh, indeed!


Ticonzero.

This is a really complete component: tables, forms, groups, elements... offers great organization for maintenance of complex form and data storage requirements. Yet, it is simple enough to easily generate a simple contact form. Its plugin features (with the possiblity of easily integrating with reCAPTCHA) has made me really happy!

Thank you for such a great and free component, Fabrik team!

Hello,


very promising extension but the advanced search and some other features like table joining and prefilter (left join atc.) works only if the last update due to the continuing development is ok.

So still instable for now.

I hope that in a stable release all the advanced features will work. It would be the only advanced database Joomla extension to be open source!!


Bye.



Aerostrato

We used Fabrik 2 to build a few contact and signup forms for our site. After a small learning curve they work and look great. We'll be using Fabrik 2 to build our web app very soon.