I purchased this component about an hour or so ago. I have installed it, created categories and am in the process of copy and pasting text from our copious numbers of PDF files into documents in this KB component. I also emailed the developer about what I thought could be a bug but it turned out to be me not paying attention to what I was doing. Nonetheless I had a reply within 10 minutes of my email.

Since I am already a subscriber to the Blue Flames Forms component, purchasing the KB was a no-brainer. Blue flames components are robust, intuitive to install, configure and use and most importantly they ALWAYS work! I wish all Joomla components worked as these do.

My last two purchases of phils component were not that fruitful. I will high recommend the forms component. But this one makes no sense for me.
I was using this extension for my club but for users it was hard to navigate and made life worst for them. phil wrote lots of code but I think this is missing the sense of knowledge base. Knowledge base should be easy to browse

The review and the stated functionality impressed me to buy this component. After a long time to have the the author Taylor to install it on my site, I play around it one day and decided switch to another FAQ. The point make me buy this component:
1. The info of each faq., ie rating and clicks is beneth the answer. I think this is least distractive.
2. It has build in reader commenting tool.

Factors make me stopping using it:
1. It runs on its own framework. Potential imcompatible with future upgrades, or future additon of component, themes etc.

2. Not compatible with the breadcrumbs. The KB's netvigation is different with systems' netvigation. Potentially make reader confused.

3. Look and feel not match with rest of the site.

4. Only one front end entry point. There is no chance for a manu item to open an individual category.

5. The backend editor expand to the right options manu.

Overall, it seems unsophisiticated. It better put in an early beta stage.

I tested out the component. I like the whole ajax thing. But it's incompatible with a lot of components i already installed. After uninstalled the Knowledgebase, my site almost broke because it didn't completely uninstall everything. For instance, when i tried to save an article, it kept saying Restricted Access. I had to remove the plugins and manually deleted some of them. Damn. It was a closed one.

a few tweaks required for the install (as I have only been doing joomla for 10 days) but Phil was onto it immediately. I would wager that you don't get this level of support anywhere else.
am really pleased with finding this.
thanks Phil

First, I have to compliment Phil on his approach to support. I've had two issues so far, and in both cases he responded quickly and with relevant information. Since I didn't mind giving him temporary admin credentials he was able to jump in and resolve the first very quickly, and I discovered that the second had nothing to do with the Knowledgebase. While I can understand a reluctance to give someone admin access, my thinking was that Phil is fairly well know in the Joomla community and accusations that he is causing problems with web sites would be very harmful. Besides, I deleted the account he used as soon as he was done.

As for the component, I was a little wary when I saw his forums were removed because of spamming. I was also a little concerned about the lack of a demo that I could download. Both those issues were resolved when I learned that he has set up a secure email system and that there is a demo available on his site. While not fully functional, the demo does provide a feel for what the component can do.

I set up a knowledgebase for a customer who has 20 years of questions and answers they wanted to put on their site. I couldn't find anything else in Joomla that would let me do what I wanted. One of the selling points is that every output is based on a template and I could easily make the knowledgebase look like the rest of the site. It turned out to be harder than I thought, partially because the customer has gotten used to me delivering exactly what they want! Still, a little Smarty experience went a long way and I'm confident that my knowledgebase doesn't look anything like anyone elses. Better yet, the customer was able to organize their articles by placing them in multiple categories. And I took full advantage of the custom fields by creating fields for botanical information.

There are, however, some areas that can be improved (and I've already told Phil about them). First, the Joomla 1.0 version does not support pagination. I've got categories with dozens of articles and the pages can be very long. Also, the articles can only be displayed in the order you manually set in admin. There's no way to automatically display them in alphabetical or date order. Finally, there's no real documentation for the template variables, making it a little harder than it needs to be to modify the templates.

Overall I'm very happy (and so is my customer)with Phil Taylor's Knowledgebase. The support is very personal and the component has meet my needs. There is room for growth, which is why I'm not giving it 5 stars. Still, if you're looking for a solid knowledgebase component this should work for you.

The component itself works good, but in my situation it conflicts with too much.

They state that any application which uses their bfframework will have issues and they have found ways to trick some aps into not thinking your running joomla 1.5.5. when your actually running 1.0.x

Thank you very much for this wonderful product. I like it and it is very easy to configure. You did a great job!
I was mainly looking for a product where I can assign multiple categories to a single article. You solved my issue with this product.

Thank you,
Suren

The programs looks great. Seems to be able to do everything I need it to do. However, I cannot install the program. Phil's only answer is give me your login information and I'll fix it for you. (Check out his forum, it's the answer to everything) That's nice, but what if I don't want to give him my login information. I guess you get no response. He should add stuff to his knowledge base with solutions to common problems. I guess I didn't think about it... I purchased a knowledge base that the author of the program uses very very little. He just wants to fix everything himself without explaining it. Wait a minute, that is exactly what I do not want to do!

We almost lost a star due to incompatibility with FireBoard, but the presentation of this knowledge base is so clean, it more than made up for it.

Installation and configuration were simple, and the product simply works as advertised. End-user feedback has been extremely positive.

A suggestion for future releases would be to add front-end editing and/or submission capabilities.

I did experience an error during registration in which my user account had been "deactivated". A quick note to Phil & the issue was corrected and the product delivered in less than 30 minutes!

Great work, mate!

It's a very well written component - the latest version doens't include the extra modules that the previous version did ie latest KB articles that you can publish to module posistions.

I would say one thing - because it's written in xajax, I had to drop it from my site.

There is no demo available for download - and there are no refunds for 'incompatibility' reasons.

If you're using a new yootheme, rocketheme or template plazza site - or any other site that has 3rd party extensions, BE VERY CAREFUL.

Statement from the website....

'Joomla Knowlegebase is written and tested in Joomla, and with many other components installed - however it is impossible to be certain that the PHP code you had a *insert 3rd world country* programmer write you for $10 will be compatible

Incompatibility with other 3rd Party Components is NOT a reason to grant a refund! Its impossible for us to be miracle workers! - please refer to the official Refund Policy for further details on getting help.'

I'm using a yootheme template and when the JoomlaKB component was selected - it totally messed up the nice mootools/javascript effects on my site.

There really should be a demo available for download as no refunds and the compatibility is really quite poor.

What a promising program! But, without a front-end authoring option, it's all left to backend admins to do the content management. Oh so close. Desperately needs a front end user authoring/editing capability.

This is exactly what I needed! Joomla's default content management should be set up this way! I love it! Even though the falling US dollar made it cost twice what it would have back in the day, it was still worth it!

I couldn't be happier with this extension, it is provides the most professional feeling knowledge base out there. It does exactly what I want it to do and looks amazing.

I had some trouble installing on my Joomla 1.5 site but Phil was right there to walk me through everything. I can't even begin to tell you how refreshing the support is, I have never experienced anything that even approximates his commitment and helpfulness. I would have given it 5 stars even if it wasn't one of the top 5 Joomla extensions just because of the service and support!

This component is simply the best in its field. And most of all, the word support has a true meaning at Phil Taylor's. Quick to respond customer forum and very patient developper. And also, upgrades for free, most of the time.
Keep up the good work.

We use this component on our intranet, The killer feature I think is the fact that the component can be used in Joomla 1.013 and Joomla 1.5 and also the slick admin interface. Also the ability to add articles to multiple categories is good.

The only negative (not really to do with the component) we came across is that we wanted to use the file attachments and commenting on joomla articles as well as KB articles. This is not possible at the moment.

I had a few questions and posted on phils forum and got quick replies.

The killer feature of this extension is speed!

KB is an extremely fast and responsive component add on.

Whilst still in beta, the product has many excellent features and the developer openly embraces recommendations for improvements. The beta version has already provided a relatively stable platform and I have been very impressed with Blue Flame IT and their response to resolving a minor installation problem. (The issue was a result of our internal firewall settings preventing callbacks for version info.)

This product is the foundation of a evolving product, a dedicated developer and will (post beta) meet the needs of both small and medium enterprise Knowledge base requirements.

The overall installation was easy and support forums for the product are active, open and informative.

This is one of the components that I consider everyone should have in a Joomla! site. I saw many organizations that use KnowledgeBase as a FAQ for their activities, giving a professional touch to this section.Other websites use this component as a knowledge data base for technical support, being extremely useful as a consulting base for visitors. I'm using this component for managing content (tutorials and guides), because it has everything I need: integrated comment system, the possibility of attaching files to articles, among other features. All backend uses AJAX, giving us a special sensation while we are browsing it.