K2 
Version
2.5.4 (last update on Dec 8, 2011)
Rating
Compatibility
Votes
Favoured
410
License
GPLv2 or later
Non-Commercial
Type
Views
484881
Date Added
14 April 2009
--- 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
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, Cloud.com (Citrix), the High Court of Australia, Jaguar Greece are just some of the thousand "big sites" around the world, fully powered by K2.
--- REQUIREMENTS & LICENSE ---
K2 is PHP 4/5 compatible.
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 new K2 website & community: http://getk2.org
Images
I have used k2 for several years now and i have come to the conclusion that they are not worth the time you put into it.
Do not expect to get any support with this product at all.
Personally i would rather PAY for something and get answers to my questions then be completely ignored on their forums.
Do not expect to get any support with this product at all.
Personally i would rather PAY for something and get answers to my questions then be completely ignored on their forums.
Owner's reply
K2 is a FREE extension. It's community supported. Saying K2 is "bad" because you don't get any support is like saying e.g. Joomla! is "bad" because no-one replied to some question of yours in the forums.
If you ever wanted premium support, you could have used the forum board dedicated to that. You simply post what you want done by some professional and people get in touch with you.
I would honestly consider what you wrote if you didn't have the option above, but you do. If you're getting paid for the site you deliver, you should also consider paying people to help you out.
I've been working with Joomla for a short time. I had a few problems getting extensions to work exactly how I would like, so I did some research and found K2.
At first I was really excited. I installed the extension and went off to find tutorials on how to use it. This is where my problems with K2 begin and end. I found videos and text on WHAT K2 is designed to do, but not on HOW to actually do it.
I've searched and searched for the documentation and steps on how to perform steps, but I can't find them. If they are out there, I sure couldn't find them on the K2 site. I did find a good start on webcafeclub.com but unfortunately the author is still quite a ways from finishing her tutorials, though she has outlined the steps involved beautifully.
In my opinion, K2 is not for beginners. If you are a seasoned developer maybe the lack of good training documentation won't be a problem for you, however if you are a beginner I suggest staying away from K2 until a complete training series is available.
If I do find usable documentation on how to use K2, I will come back and share my findings if they make the extension usable.
At first I was really excited. I installed the extension and went off to find tutorials on how to use it. This is where my problems with K2 begin and end. I found videos and text on WHAT K2 is designed to do, but not on HOW to actually do it.
I've searched and searched for the documentation and steps on how to perform steps, but I can't find them. If they are out there, I sure couldn't find them on the K2 site. I did find a good start on webcafeclub.com but unfortunately the author is still quite a ways from finishing her tutorials, though she has outlined the steps involved beautifully.
In my opinion, K2 is not for beginners. If you are a seasoned developer maybe the lack of good training documentation won't be a problem for you, however if you are a beginner I suggest staying away from K2 until a complete training series is available.
If I do find usable documentation on how to use K2, I will come back and share my findings if they make the extension usable.
Owner's reply
Indeed, written documentation is lacking. But there is a wealth of videos in the K2 Community at getk2.org/community that cover almost any aspect of K2 administration.
Furthermore, I challenge you to devote some extra time to get to know K2. It's been built using very few "conventions" (aka stuff you need to figure out). It's mostly built out of plain logic. E.g. why should core Joomla article category options exist in the menus (???) and not the category itself? In K2, category options exist in the category edit page itself. Not somewhere else.
Like I said, devote some extra time and you'll see why so many people have given 5 stars to K2 and most importantly, you'll see why K2 powers today's biggest Joomla! deployments worldwide.
As Joomla! community legend, Amy Stephen, recently said on Twitter: "Thanks for K2. You picked up the ball for Joomla for a long time." https://twitter.com/#!/AmyStephen/statuses/156475956096286720
I chose Joomla as CMS for my very first website due to its good reputation and user-friendly admin control panel. However I quickly learned that the default joomla article structure is not usable for serious websites. So I searched in the extensions directory for content components and after testing several of them it was clear that K2 wins the competition of the most user-friendly content extension.
In short: K2 just works. It should be integrated in the Joomla core as far as I'm concerned. But don't make a mistake about it, K2 is NOT a content construction kit (cck), it's just an extension that extends (or actually replaces) Joomlas content structure.
Of course K2 is not perfect and has his limitations and negative things, for instance it's not possible without core modifications to remove user pages and its html structure could be improved for SEO and other things. It doesn't use h1 tags for article topics and uses h3 tags for article topics in category blog view instead of better suited h2 tags (which are used in article view).
K2 is easy to learn and probably suited for most Joomla beginners, but sometimes you want to go beyond K2's default capabilities, for which you HAVE TO make code modifications. If you aren't a coder, your first place to ask is of course the k2 support forum, but here's the thing, there is a high chance that you won't get support at all there. Most topics are left unanswered, there are only 2 moderators for the beginners section and currently the forum is spamed a lot by I believe bots (could as well be some morons, though).
To make it short:
* If you want a content extension that just works how it should for most cases and can live WITHOUT support (you have to trial and error a lot), then K2 is the right extension for you.
* If you want a content extension but can't afford no support, then something else is better suited for you.
* If you are a pro and want a flexible content extension, don't mind K2 then, use SEBLOD instead. SEBLOD is a real content contruction kit and is by far superior than K2 and any of its competitors, but it's very hard to learn and the documentation is somewhat lacking.
In short: K2 just works. It should be integrated in the Joomla core as far as I'm concerned. But don't make a mistake about it, K2 is NOT a content construction kit (cck), it's just an extension that extends (or actually replaces) Joomlas content structure.
Of course K2 is not perfect and has his limitations and negative things, for instance it's not possible without core modifications to remove user pages and its html structure could be improved for SEO and other things. It doesn't use h1 tags for article topics and uses h3 tags for article topics in category blog view instead of better suited h2 tags (which are used in article view).
K2 is easy to learn and probably suited for most Joomla beginners, but sometimes you want to go beyond K2's default capabilities, for which you HAVE TO make code modifications. If you aren't a coder, your first place to ask is of course the k2 support forum, but here's the thing, there is a high chance that you won't get support at all there. Most topics are left unanswered, there are only 2 moderators for the beginners section and currently the forum is spamed a lot by I believe bots (could as well be some morons, though).
To make it short:
* If you want a content extension that just works how it should for most cases and can live WITHOUT support (you have to trial and error a lot), then K2 is the right extension for you.
* If you want a content extension but can't afford no support, then something else is better suited for you.
* If you are a pro and want a flexible content extension, don't mind K2 then, use SEBLOD instead. SEBLOD is a real content contruction kit and is by far superior than K2 and any of its competitors, but it's very hard to learn and the documentation is somewhat lacking.
Owner's reply
SEBLOD also depends on com_content, the Joomla! core article system. And this creates performance issues the least. K2 on the other hand is completely standalone as a component within Joomla! and has no other dependencies. This allow for more flexibility and better performance compared to any other "content" extension.
On a sidenote, we never say K2 is a "CCK" component. We always say it's a powerful "content" extension with CCK capabilities. Basically what 99,9% of users will ever need ;)
This extension harnesses the power of Joomla! and provides easy access to some missing core features.
I have used this on many of my clients websites.
The only negative I could put forward is that large amounts of customization will require a Joomla Developer (No problem for me, as I am one!).
Keep up the good work K2 team!
I have used this on many of my clients websites.
The only negative I could put forward is that large amounts of customization will require a Joomla Developer (No problem for me, as I am one!).
Keep up the good work K2 team!
K2 is really a fantastic component. It can do things that are impossible to do with Joomla! The learning curve is hard but when you understand the philosophy you will understand how powerful this component can be.
The only problem is the support. You must be prepared to find and solve anything by yourself. The forum is problematic (spam bots are doing a great job over there) and you must be very lucky to get any answer from the community. A payed version with support would be great...until then if you want to use it professionally make sure that you have a decent knowledge of PHP/CSS e.t.c and many weeks of testing the component before going live with things.
The only problem is the support. You must be prepared to find and solve anything by yourself. The forum is problematic (spam bots are doing a great job over there) and you must be very lucky to get any answer from the community. A payed version with support would be great...until then if you want to use it professionally make sure that you have a decent knowledge of PHP/CSS e.t.c and many weeks of testing the component before going live with things.
After installing K2 on multiple sites, the comment feature of K2 was quickly hit by spammers. We shortly had over 12000 PAGES of comments from spammers. Turning on CAPTCHA would help against the spam, but not against the server load. Somehow K2 triggers an entire botnet to attack and try to spam it. I've never seen it this bad on any component I've ever used for Mambo or Joomla. And these aren't even high traffic sites.
Owner's reply
What you say is utter nonsense. K2 simply uses Google's reCaptcha service. It's a third-party service, you know, one that is not installed on your server. How has this affected your site's "performance" is another story. Probably a Christmas one...
I would agree with negative reviews here. Very promising component, but so far in it's embryo stage. Many nice "all-in-one" features that would attract beginners who are already happily fapping on K2 (building simple homepages on it probably), but also many bugs, absolutely useless official website, unhelpful forum, no support. I've tried K2 and it worked more or less fine for me, but overall performance and impression left me unsatisfied (I work with Joomla since 2005), so I had to switch back to standard Joomla content building. "Joomla! component of 2010"? What a joke..
Nevertheless, I wish K2 team best of luck, inspiration and a lot of improvement over the years to come!
Nevertheless, I wish K2 team best of luck, inspiration and a lot of improvement over the years to come!
Owner's reply
You're "working" with Joomla! since 2005 and you don't see the benefits of K2 compared to the default Joomla! article system? Now that's the joke...
5 out of 5, very capable component!
Recommendation of the K2 Component, Modules and Plugins is amazing and it is FREE.
Unbelievable!! It is the most comprehensive bundle out there and you should be clicking the Download button without even thinking too much about it.
You will NOT regret it… I’m lost for words which is hard for me!
You install it to J1.7 and off you go, you make an article form and once you have the basics, you go to tagging which normally you have to remember all the keywords in your website yourself, but no it does it for you. It is a no brainer.
The ratings and review process is also a godsend and thanks to you it is perfect.
One small bug to me though, is the process of not being able to copy and paste from articles in word or wherever to inside the K2 article process which is really annoying, but other than that it is perfection.
Thank You guys.
Unbelievable!! It is the most comprehensive bundle out there and you should be clicking the Download button without even thinking too much about it.
You will NOT regret it… I’m lost for words which is hard for me!
You install it to J1.7 and off you go, you make an article form and once you have the basics, you go to tagging which normally you have to remember all the keywords in your website yourself, but no it does it for you. It is a no brainer.
The ratings and review process is also a godsend and thanks to you it is perfect.
One small bug to me though, is the process of not being able to copy and paste from articles in word or wherever to inside the K2 article process which is really annoying, but other than that it is perfection.
Thank You guys.
If possible, I would rate K2 6 stars.
I've been using K2 in all my customer's sites and portals and have no plans of changing: it just works, like they would expect.
For now, it's an essencial enhancement to the way one can build and display content. And if you want customers to upload content themselves, there is no easier way of doing it: not only frontend editing works like a charm, even in multilingual sites, but also K2 ACL is powerful enough to manage publishing workflow.
And the inbuilt K2 presentation capabilities (the category "blog" layouts) will blow your customers mind, without making waste a ton of development hours to get the right view.
To get the most of it, some of the K2 plugins are truly mandatory, like the extended image and the extended fields. Play around with them and you will find out why.
Of course K2 has it's limitations (field search, image cache, user profile extensibility,...): it's a trade-off between ease of use and flexibility. But for 80% of the sites (not web-aplications), K2 will do the job with an ease of use and presentation flexibility no yet available in Joomla core. And the great news it that even a newbie will be able to get it up and running in no time. A great advantage over other CCK. Not to mention the no-thrills frontend editing that customers love.
The community sometimes takes a while to reply, but they eventually do, and there is lots of information in the forum, one just has to dig-in.
Overall one of the best components available for content publishing.
Thank you Fotis, you are great
I've been using K2 in all my customer's sites and portals and have no plans of changing: it just works, like they would expect.
For now, it's an essencial enhancement to the way one can build and display content. And if you want customers to upload content themselves, there is no easier way of doing it: not only frontend editing works like a charm, even in multilingual sites, but also K2 ACL is powerful enough to manage publishing workflow.
And the inbuilt K2 presentation capabilities (the category "blog" layouts) will blow your customers mind, without making waste a ton of development hours to get the right view.
To get the most of it, some of the K2 plugins are truly mandatory, like the extended image and the extended fields. Play around with them and you will find out why.
Of course K2 has it's limitations (field search, image cache, user profile extensibility,...): it's a trade-off between ease of use and flexibility. But for 80% of the sites (not web-aplications), K2 will do the job with an ease of use and presentation flexibility no yet available in Joomla core. And the great news it that even a newbie will be able to get it up and running in no time. A great advantage over other CCK. Not to mention the no-thrills frontend editing that customers love.
The community sometimes takes a while to reply, but they eventually do, and there is lots of information in the forum, one just has to dig-in.
Overall one of the best components available for content publishing.
Thank you Fotis, you are great
I have been trying to migrate one of my sites into a joomla blog site and k2 offers everything I need. However they almost never respond to the forums posts and offer no email info to report bugs. I installed over a month ago and have been several bugs still present that were there from a fresh joomla and k2 install. I am still awaiting a response.
Owner's reply
First of all, we have a distinct bug tracker for posting any bugs. It's here: http://code.google.com/p/joomlaworks/issues/list
Secondly, I doubt the "several bugs" you mention have anything to do with K2. K2 is a solid content platform for Joomla!. If you are a newbie with Joomla! in general, I'd suggest more trial/error attempts if you don't want to wait for someone to answer to you in the forum.
K2 is quite popular, so some posts may skip answers. But that usually happens to posts that are already answered and the posters are really bored to run a search before posting...
I use this component for many, many different kinds of Websites. It's a realy cool replacement for the joomla core content system. It's well styled und formatted. You can control every aspect of your content with K2.
K2 best feature is the templating system. It's easy to understand and very mighty. You can use K2 as a blog, answering system, magazin style portal, for static content, as download system, even as a forum. As a middle class developer, you can understand the code of K2 really fast. It's no magic.
The support is very good. I have wrote Fotis much times over twitter, joomlaworks forum and the google code issue tracker and he responses very fast. And most of the problems was Beta related. The stable versions until K2 2.4.x have almost no bugs. I can't find them...
As you can see the flexiblity of K2, you can use it for 98% of the entire Websites of the world.
Where are the cons? I have'nt found any cons!
K2 is really a rock solid component. And when i have in the future three wishes from a genie. One of my wishes are, that K2 replaces the Joomla Article System!
Give K2 a try - it's a big step forward!
K2 best feature is the templating system. It's easy to understand and very mighty. You can use K2 as a blog, answering system, magazin style portal, for static content, as download system, even as a forum. As a middle class developer, you can understand the code of K2 really fast. It's no magic.
The support is very good. I have wrote Fotis much times over twitter, joomlaworks forum and the google code issue tracker and he responses very fast. And most of the problems was Beta related. The stable versions until K2 2.4.x have almost no bugs. I can't find them...
As you can see the flexiblity of K2, you can use it for 98% of the entire Websites of the world.
Where are the cons? I have'nt found any cons!
K2 is really a rock solid component. And when i have in the future three wishes from a genie. One of my wishes are, that K2 replaces the Joomla Article System!
Give K2 a try - it's a big step forward!
I think this exptention is important and necessary as it enables Joomla! the flexibility to work with content, which it lacks. Of course there is more to aspire to, but is developing K2 right way. And the excitement in anticipation of the release under 1.7 is proved.
Thanks K2!
Thanks K2!
K2 is an old one but it is still the content construction component which has the most professional features.
It may take a while to understand K2 but once understood it is king.
Just try it.
It may take a while to understand K2 but once understood it is king.
Just try it.
K2 is powerful and greatly extends capabilities of a site. For some matters that need further customization there are suited add-ons.
I missed in old versions, however, such as I do in 1.7, small things which for a few people are really important.
1) Tagging is painful; these guys in our websites do work intensely in writing news, so they do in an internal system and then copy and paste contents for different fields in each item. As tagging (or in the old way keywording) has to be congruent to provide a good related-grouping, they select keys in their own system, and then copy all the block with comma values and paste. They hate K2 tagging, one-by-one, being such a slow method. So they go to keywords pasting in the old good joomla basic system. It's faster, it's reliable.
2) As we're running different websites, we've hosted all pictures and media files in a big 'materials site', where they are FTP uploaded: I'll not describe the full internal system, but in joomla we paste the url for pictures and so. In K2 you've to upload each picture, one by one, to same website hosting server (or you could FTP them and then selecting manually one by one). Only in case you have internal pictures within the news (not the main one), they can be pointed to an external url address.
So, if you don't need these kind of small things (which in our case do increase a lot productivity, but probably you'll not work in this way), K2 is really big.
I missed in old versions, however, such as I do in 1.7, small things which for a few people are really important.
1) Tagging is painful; these guys in our websites do work intensely in writing news, so they do in an internal system and then copy and paste contents for different fields in each item. As tagging (or in the old way keywording) has to be congruent to provide a good related-grouping, they select keys in their own system, and then copy all the block with comma values and paste. They hate K2 tagging, one-by-one, being such a slow method. So they go to keywords pasting in the old good joomla basic system. It's faster, it's reliable.
2) As we're running different websites, we've hosted all pictures and media files in a big 'materials site', where they are FTP uploaded: I'll not describe the full internal system, but in joomla we paste the url for pictures and so. In K2 you've to upload each picture, one by one, to same website hosting server (or you could FTP them and then selecting manually one by one). Only in case you have internal pictures within the news (not the main one), they can be pointed to an external url address.
So, if you don't need these kind of small things (which in our case do increase a lot productivity, but probably you'll not work in this way), K2 is really big.
I have installed K2 2.5.1 in Joomla 1.7.2 in my local system and also in my online server, but it is not displaying the dashboard. I am using the Joomlart T3 framework for their template JA Teline IV. I purchased the Joomlart membership after watching the recommendation video by Fotis Evangelou. But after installation of K2, the megamenu, headlines module etc. of the template are not working.
I replied my problem to a post in their forum dealing almost the same issue : "K2 items disappear in administrator Joomla! 1.7". But nobody is responding for the past one week.
I want the extension badly if it works as it promises.
My suggestion is that it would be better to have a scheme for paid support so that I can demand it, since these kinds of extensions are used for massive content based portals.
I replied my problem to a post in their forum dealing almost the same issue : "K2 items disappear in administrator Joomla! 1.7". But nobody is responding for the past one week.
I want the extension badly if it works as it promises.
My suggestion is that it would be better to have a scheme for paid support so that I can demand it, since these kinds of extensions are used for massive content based portals.
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