Lifestream
- This extension requires registration to download.
Lifestream keeps your friends & customers updated on your activities by streaming your Facebook status, Twitter tweets, Youtube & Vimeo videos, Flickr pictures, Tumblr blog posts, RSS feeds and more..all on one website. It dynamically updates your website with your favorite social network feeds 24/7!
Lifestream for Joomla component & module lets you...
- display multiple social network feeds separately or together as an integrated stream
- display in 3 different views: tab, grid (side-by-side) or integrated
- set up your streams as a component (front page, for example) or a module (throughout your site, etc)
- add multiple accounts/users for each social network feed to create even more interesting streams
- choose between the included Light/Silver or Charcoal/Grey themes..or create your own themes!
- and so much more!
Imagine the power and convenience of sharing your Flickr pics, YouTube videos, Facebook updates, Tumblr blog posts, RSS feeds, Twitter tweets and more from one website. Your friends won't need to track down all of your social network updates & activities across multiple social networking sites when they can now just come to your website and get those updates. Lifestream for Joomla makes it possible!
There are 22 supported social networks, with more regularly added. They are:
* Google+
* Delicious
* Digg
* Flickr
* Foursquare
* Google Buzz
* Joomla Content
* K2 Content
* Lastfm
* Pandora
* Picasa
* Posterous
* RSS/Blogs
* StumbleUpon
* Tumblr
* Vimeo
* YouTube
So I pulled out the wallet and gave some of my money, in return for 3 months support and an extension that offered a great deal. I was so happy, until I installed it and found that some of the backend refused to work and the Tumblr feed crashed my site.
I submitted a ticket for support, and after a very long wait (weeks) and update was given. Tumblr had been fixed (Hooorah!) but now YouTube had been broken (boooo!). So once again I returned to the support.
My 3 months of support is now closing tomorrow, and I have yet to have a working example of Lifestream on my Joomla site.
The last comment made by any Joomlashack representative was 9 weeks ago. Nothing short of despicable customer support that I would be embarrassed to associate my company with.
The current version of Lifestream DOES NOT work properly and there's no sign of this company doing anything about it. BUYERS BEWARE.
Tried to get a fix using Joomlashack's "forum" (before my 6th month subscription ran out...stupid) and all I got, in so many words, was "it's a problem with facebook's api, nothing we can do about it"
Well guess what, don't release a component, ESPECIALLY a PAID one if you can't support it. Don't advertise it to do something if it can't.
I really expected more out of Joomlashack. This was my first purchase from them and I am let down. The 6th month "support" subscription shows poor service and just makes them sound greedy, and on top of it even when my subscription was up to date, the site was clunky and cumbersome.
I'll be moving on, unfortunately.
It's a fact that Facebook update's their API on occasion, however, it's also a fact that whenever they do we are sure to update Lifestream to work with it. If you were given information that Lifestream was not working with Facebook because of API issues, it was simply to let you know that there was a temporary issue until the extension could be updated.
As for 'poor service' - a support 'subscription' is not at all uncommon in the Open Source world. Please have a look around at other extension providers and you will see that many do the same. There is nothing at all 'greedy' about needing to pay for development time to update extensions, especially in light of the need to make updates to ensure an extension that works with 3rd party services works when those services make changes.
We're very sorry that the extension did not work out for you. We would, however, like to be sure that reviews are accurate and fair, and you've written one that is neither.
3 hours for a reply in a support system is nothing to complain about.
You don't have to touch your database to increase max upload file size, and if you don't want to adjust php.ini or ask your hosting company to do it for you, then you can use the provided details on how to 'manually' install the extension.
The complexity of this extension does require some assurance that a server environment will allow it to work, however, it's not so complex as to keep 99% of the people who download and use it successfully from doing so.
Really a great tool - enables you to incorporate all your social streams on one site. Highly configurable. If a filter is added per stream to show only certain messages, then its the ultimate social stream tool.
Support is very friendly and helpful.
Highly recommendable and definitely worth it´s money!
Thank you for the review, and we do have your feature request for stream filters on our list. That is a great idea and we plan to implement it in the next major release.
It is too bad the Facebook users have to make their profiles open to the public in order to work, but that is a Facebook privacy issue, I suppose. I don't have many users on my site because of this. There are many Facebook Connect type components that pull the status without having to make the profile open.
Anyway, the support is great with any questions I have had. I am surprised more people aren't using it. It pulls all your social media together and displays them in one place. I really love this product!
This extension promises to be the all in one news feed, and looking at the demos it does this quite well.
Cons:
This extension has major compatibility issues with any average server.
Old versions of MySQL and PHP will not run this extension, so don't waste your time and money.
I presume you need the very latest versions of these as I have MySQL 5.0.92
I signed up here to warn others as the level of support was very poor from the developers.
I have used/built many extensions in my time and never have I had such difficulty getting an extension to install.
Hi there. I am sorry to hear that you experienced issues getting Lifestream installed on your website.
The vast majority of our customers have never experienced any issues getting Lifestream installed & configured. But in case any of our customers ever experience issues, we have a very helpful, prompt and efficient support system in place to help them.
Have you upgraded your version of MySQL and PHP? The minimum requirements to run Lifestream are: PHP 5.2.6+ with MySQLi support; MySQL 5+; Support for CURL, OpenSSL; Joomla 1.5+
If you are still experiencing issues with lifestream after you have upgraded PHP and MySQL, please submit a ticket at our site and we will be more than happy to promptly assist you.
Once past that hurdle every thing works as far as I have used it so far (with Facebook, Flickr and Twitter combined into a single feed).
A big plus is not having to mess around with getting app ids from the sites as some extensions require.
It's not expensive and it would have cost me considerable time and hassle to think out a similar way to use free extensions so therefore I don't grudge the contribution towards costs!
So persevere to get it installed and you'll appreciate the effort! Of course it would be even better if it could be packaged in a more friendly manner.
We're sorry that you had trouble installing our product, and you are correct that in some certain server environments Lifestream may not install without updating a setting or two. Since you didn't take advantage of our support, we cannot say why this might be, but so far we have been able to help anyone set it up that has contacted us. I encourage you to do so, and if we are unable to get it running we will provide a refund (as we have done for cases where a product was purchased but cannot be used). Lifestream uses some features of PHP that are standard, but we have come to find some hosting providers disable a lot of PHP functionality in the name of security. In reality they are disabling a lot more than necessary, and making it hard to use more advanced functionality of PHP.
