The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

StackIdeas is one of a handful of developers I've found that not only stands behind their products but goes out of the way to make sure that you have a terrific customer experience. Whenever I have encountered a problem, they have made themselves highly accessible (despite a formidable time difference) and always incredibly courteous, getting to the bottom of whatever the problem may be. They are definitely not ones to point fingers at 'the other guys' when it comes to debugging a problem on the site -- to the contrary, they are always friendly about logging into the backend to see what might be amiss.

Of course, under this great support is a great product. If you are trying to allow multiple bloggers to simultaneously coordinate on one blog, the range, flexibility and control over their functionality is superb. I did find that the component lacked some of the functionality I had expected for truly stand-alone multi-blogging (such as the ability to display a calendar of just one particular blogger's work) and would love to see that added to future versions. However, as an integrated blog -- and when it comes to support for sure -- it's excellent. Enough so that I feel it warrants 5 stars anyway.

Okay, I'm one of those people who's stingy with my reviews -- yet must break my silence for this one!! I spent a stupid amount of time reviewing the overwhelming number of accordion menu modules out there before settling on Nextend's system. Wow - one of the best Joomla! choices I've made yet! Aside from the fact that I got a beautiful module that allows a complete non-CSS'er like me ultimate control over the menu's look and feel -- on top of that, I got access to one of the few truly top-flight support teams I've encountered. Roland stand behind his products with 100% bug fixing (with nary a complaint and not even the hint of 'blame the customer' that is unfortunately so common with technical support). But Roland goes above and beyond: I barely even whispered the name of a truly 'wishlist' feature and in 2 days the Nextend elves had installed a functioning new version - wishlist feature included - on my site. If only whispering "I want to win the lottery" were as effective, I'd be a rich lady. So get off the fence and install this baby -- you'll be glad you did!

It is by now cliche to see that Andrey Miasoedev gives amazing support -- but I feel compelled to do it anyway!

First, he created a wonderfully-versatile component. But then he cheerfully, patiently and without question added customizations to that component for me that added much-needed functionality not available anywhere else on the market. Without asking anything for it. What is perhaps even more amazing is that I can tell from the reviews here that I am far from the first person he's done this for - and it looks likely that he did this for several of us at once. As a non-developer, non-designer tromping around trying to make a big website that does complicated things, the value of this level of hands-on support goes well beyond what words can express. If only I could buy this level of support (or even help to make 'out of the box' functionality work) on my other components for $30! (Heck, for this white-glove approach I'd be willing to pay a whole lot more than that!)

Let it just be said that despite the best of intentions I never seem to get around to writing reviews. I guess that trend has to stop here.

Tigra is an astonishingly user-friendly component, putting an amazing amount of power in the hands of a newbie like me. I recently (errantly) upgraded to the new JomSocial ahead of Tigra's companion release and was shocked to see my site's look and feel fall backwards by about a decade. It is astounding how much Tigra lets you do without any CSS or HTML knowledge - it's very easy to create a really slick (or elegant or...) interface. But even better - when I reached out to Tigra's team they were patient, kind - and rolled up their sleeves on a weekend to help put my site back to rites. No "not my component", just "we'd be happy to help you". And I'm embarrassed to say it's not the first time they've rescued me, either.

All in all, I'd say that with a component like this they are truly design democratizers, giving the power of amazing design to the lay(wo)man -- and support to match. Awesome.