The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

As mentioned by previous reviewers, this module does wonders for the look of your site. There are many customization options such as the ability to toggle images on and off.

My only gripe is that there still needs to be a bit more control over the "fully story +" text. Right now the placement of that link seems somewhat random. At times it shows up at the bottom left of the module and sometimes to the right. I'd like to be able to force the "full story" text to go to one spot and one spot only to increase uniformity and cleanliness in the layout.

That's really my only gripe for an otherwise excellent and did I mention *free* module. All in all, not enough to ding it a star. Five stars and recommended. TP, I sure hope you keep developing this for a long time, as its a real life saver. You have a happy user here!

This module works as advertised. I've set it up to be a "special" useraccess level so only site webmasters can view it, however it works just fine in public mode as well. Thanks Patrick for your wonderful extensions. Keep up the good work!

This is a great product, lots of options and is fairly straightfoward to hack without having to learn a lot of coding or messing around. The interface on the admin panel is a snap. Five stars.

As nathandiehl mentioned above, this is very clean editor in terms of code output. No WYSIWG editor is going to be as good as a master programmer typing it all out by hand, but this is about as close as you're going to get. That alone is worth five stars after seeing some of the horrific code spewed out by some of the other editor mambots.

While the code is clean, JoomlaFCK is still lacking in a few areas. First, the only options to customize the toolbar buttons are a 'basic', 'compact' and 'advanced'. These provide more or less buttons as stated, but the lack of individual control is frustrating. Thankfully, the editor loads quickly even with the 'advanced' setting.

JoomlaFCK is a quality editor that has some appealing features. Above all else, it has the cleanest code output I've seen in Joomla editor. Secondly, it supports skining to match your site template. Last but not least, it is fast and stable. There is an occasional resizing issue or two, but for the most part it works as intended.

It is worth noting that JoomlaFCK doesn't really have much in the way of administrative customization. It is not overly easy to define sytles, headings or the like. MOSce editor beats JoomlaFCK in this respect. None the less, FCK is an editor you should try and keep and eye out for. Hopefully with time a little extra polish will make this mambot an all-star.

4 out of 5 stars.

Paul

Community Builder is a mature extension for expanding and customizing user profiles in Joomla. CB gives the administrator numerous options to include custom-defined fields for registered users. During registration you are given the option to volunteer/force completion of any field you define. Would you like to collect a secondary email? How about requesting what city or country a user resides in? Would you like it if your members had a custom text box to explain a bit more about themselves? All of these features can be implemented in the powerful, but easy-to-use, back end.

In addition to the custom fields you can define for registration you can opt to leave additional information that can be filled out at a later time. Perhaps you don't want to make your members wait five minutes to enter in data. Have them come back and enter non-vital information like a personal website URL via their profile page when they feel like it. Also supported is an option to upload a personal image or select an avatar from an admin-defined gallery. Standard features also include a private messaging system, custom registration email messages, a buddy system called 'connections', integration with some forum packages, skin support, gallery functionality, blogging and abuse reporting.

Last but not least Community Builder has a very active 3rd party developer scene. The 'Joomlapolitan citizens' have contributed almost twenty language packs available for download. Additionally, there are another twenty-plus plugins altering different types of CB functionality. They range from plotting points on Google Maps to event planners to conditional field selection to--well--you get the point. One plugin alone gives you the option to ping popular instant messaging programs to see if a user is online. Supported platforms include Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, AIM and ICQ. Development for Skype is also in the works. Here's a short list of my favorite plugins for Community Builder.

Must-Have Plugins Include:

CB Author bot --- This handy fellow permits you to link author names to CB Profiles. This is great if you run a news website where you'd like your visitors to be able to view biographies of your staff.

Sample Article: http://myjoomlahost.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2&Itemid=1

Click on the name in bold, it will take you to this page:

http://myjoomlahost.com/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=62

Notice the articles published by this user feature? This is extremely helpful if you have a staff writer that publishes only specific content, or you wish to pull up a recent editorial by a specific user.

jAwards CB-Plugin

jAwards allows you to distribute special accomplishments to your community members for their contributions to your site. These medals are displayed in CB profiles and in Simple Board forum posts as well. A good way to build friendly community spirit.

Sample Profile: http://www.roundtable-bretonnia.org/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=64

In Summary:

Community Builder has been constantly one of the most active and downloaded projects for the Joomla Open Source project. This is no coincidence. CB is a power, easy-to-use profile editor that really adds distinctive flavor to your site that is otherwise lacking in the Joomla core distribution. Joomla has limited user-defined account settings and parameters, however this extension takes all of the base components and injects them with steroids. Make no mistake, this is one of the most consistently great 3rd party add-ons for the CMS. Fantastic interface, deep customization and a friendly support community make Community Builder an essential addition to any Joomla site. 5 out of 5 stars.

Paul

joomlaXplorer is an extremely handy tool if you don't have access to ftp or a file manager like cpanel. Once I accidentally deleted a template file but couldn't remove the directory because it was assigned to "nobody".

I couldn't remove the folder via ftp or cpanel file manager, but joomlaxplorer came to the rescue and was able to delete it anyways.

My only criticism is regarding the interface. The icons for managing files and directories are without any text unless you roll your mouse over the actual link. You have to guess a bit until you learn which icons do what.

An option to show or hide text/icons would be very handy. None the less, this small complaint does not outweigh the handiness of this extension's great built-in browser. 4 out of 5 stars.