The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

Pros: Looks neat on the backend, has LOTS of features and easy to post an article.

Cons: Frontend is impossible to post an article to. Backend is impossible to understand, find what you're looking for, and basically do what you want to do. There are no clear explanations in the admin, or in the documentation. There's really no easy way to get started, there's a very time consuming learning curve involved. After a year, I'm still not sure what I'm doing!

Level of Support Received: 0
Why? Because you cannot Register on the K2 forums, their system is broken (email confirmation does not work) and you cannot get Help unless you have a Ning site, I guess, because I was unable to use their support form... No way to reach the developer.

Ease of usage and deployment: Extremely Hard. You need to be a programmer, and a Joomla expert. This does not work for new Joomla users, it's not recommended for designers who do not use Joomla constantly. This is way harder than WordPress for instance (my recommendation).

Purpose of using the extension: To allow Admins and Registered Users to Blog. So far, I've only been able to get the Admin going. Frontend users are not able to save entries, the internal link within the Blog Article form is broken, so the system is not fully functional.

Level of Difficulty: Pretty High...

My Experience Level with Joomla and Web Technologies: I have only built 2 Joomla sites in the past because it's too hard for my clients to learn, but I have 13 years of website design experience and a Bachelor's Degree in Website Design and Development.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to use this component, because the Admin buttons (specifically 'Apply' and 'Save') don't work. I was hoping to find answers on their website, but there is nothing there in the KB about it... The other problem I have is that the entire component is not intuitive, the terminology used is not descriptive in a way that allows you to setup the component easily. Terms such as Client User, Customer User, Assigned User - none of these mean anything to me, so you have to consult documentation (which I haven't found yet) to find out what they mean. Too bad, looks like a great component.

Can't live without it! This extension is a must-have and provides so much more functionality and ease for managing your images. You can upload, create new directories, and even view your images and place them into archives.. SO AWESOME.. The only thing I can't figure out is that I am still getting the same image editor popup within Articles so I can't just grab an image from the extplorer files that I have setup, so if you don't know the link to the image, you have to go back and copy/paste.