I've tried both the basic and "pro" versions of this extension. It has some promising features and does successfully pull content from Amazon. However, I encountered critical problems with both display and general functionality that made the extension unusable without substantial code hacking.

As other reviewers have noted, support is also a hurdle. During our evaluation period, forums on Ordasoft's site were inaccessible. Unlike most user support forums, Ordasoft's cannot be read by unregistered readers, and the registration process was broken. We also sent multiple support queries directly to the support email (which is synonymous with the sales email). Ordasoft did not respond.

I look forward to seeing this extension evolve. it has good potential. For now, however, I regret the money we spent on it.

The Joomla community has developed only a couple of download extensions that will track who downloads what to even a minimal degree. DOCman is one of those extensions. If you need to log user info in relation to downloads, it's worth checking out.

That said, I recently decided to try DOCman again, after running into an inexplicable bug for Remository---and I was still disappointed.

The default layout is very visually clunky and often run against hierarchical formatting concepts and the notion that important things (like document titles) should be more visible than descriptions and other subordinate elements.
DOCman does not allow you to post abstracts, in addition to full descriptions. Full descriptions appear everywhere.
The way DOCman handles downloads that you want everyone to be able to view, but only registered users to be able to get, is awkward at best (a big flaw IMHO).
The one-description-to-rule-them-all limitation makes the implicit process flow and navigation both complex and odd. There's no purpose to a details page, for example, that shows no more details than the doc-list page. Meanwhile, a preview button only available on the full-details page launches an empty preview lightbox unless your download is an image, then the download dialog just pops up on top of it. On the description page, the doc title doesn't launch the download; only the little download button way at the bottom of the page does. These are just a few of DOCman's quirks.


Ultimately, we found Docman to be unsuitable for purpose. To end up with a reasonably scannable list of downloads and intuitive information flow would have required not only significant css edits, but core code hacks, as well.

While DOCman might be the best available extension for download management, its limitations highlight the generally not-yet-ready-for-prime-time nature of this category of extensions.

This is the sort of extension that you think would be really cool, but doubt anyone will ever develop. And yet, here it is. AlphaUserPoints has sprung as a reasonably mature, richly functional, and very flexible add-on from the heads of its development team. AND it can be integrated with Community Builder. Great little motivational extension for community-based sites.

Anyone who wants to build a complex component should begin by studying EventList. From its attractive admin interface to its rich functionality, flexibility, and built-in documentation, EventList is a model extension. The developer and support forums are fairly response, although the extension works as described. Nice work, guys!

Even for relatively small imports, this saves a mess o' time. The import was flawless and the auto-notification e-mailer was a pleasantly surprising plus. Highly recommended.

...AlphaUserPoints' lack of integration with CB, I accidentally stumbled on this little marvel of a plugin. Installed flawlessly (via CB) and seems to be recording points just fine. Recommended.

The lack of simple forms management--or even workarounds--is IMHO one of the most glaringly obvious omissions in Joomla. RSform plugs this gap with a simple-enough, yet highly customizable, approach to forms development.

When I bought RSform pro, I had already purchased Chronoforms. Still the additional functionality that RSforms offers justified that somewhat redundant investment. Moreover, when I wanted to add a simple feature (adding a tag that removed default values on field focus), their support staff responded quickly with exactly the answer I needed.

Great extension. Highly recommended.

I love Chronoforms---don't even mind paying that $25 to get rid of the promo link. The extension is flexible, functional, powerful, and capable of simplifying so many aspects of managing a truly interactive, community-oriented site.

Our only (wee) complaint is that CF is designed to work only in the main content position, so CF forms can't directly be published to module positions. While CF offers a workaround to this limitation, it involves a third-party extension (Place Here) that a) isn't well supported and b) has issues of its own.*

So, ultimately, we're a bit limited in how we can use CF. But within those boundaries, it's great.

* Specifically, multiple instances of the Place Here module appear to conflict with each other. So if, for example, you want to publish different forms via PH on different areas of your site, and those areas are associated with different collapsible menu trees, ALL menu structures for ALL areas in which PH is published will open whenever you access any given page with a CF/PH instance.

OK, maybe it's a narrow problem. But it's limiting if you want to use CF to publish forms that let users interact directly from various content pages (without leaving the page). The PH limitation makes that scenario a navigational nightmare for the site user.