This was probably one of a dozen or so apps that I was excited about and was very interested in paying for it. I had seen it demo'ed on another site and thought it looked AMAZING, even on their demo site. So I break out my CC and proceed to pay, again very excited to order this product.



I get my registration email and get into the support area and download the most up-to-date version only to find that what they are running on the demo is not their most recent version. After doing a little digging, their Event List has a huge change between v1 and v2. Where you get the fancy icons with the dates, is no longer in v2, and reading though the support forums the answer is a basic, we did it this way, we might switch it back, but deal with it.



Okay I thought, so I just paid for a version that is not even the most current, I can deal with that because 1.0.19 still had all the great stuff that I wanted and I will be fine.



So where is where my customer experience with this company took a turn into the dumps.



First let me start off by saying yes, ultimately it is my fault for not keeping redundant back ups of my downloaded components, but still...



So I had a catastrophic failure on my server and lost everything. After rebuilding and contacting all the other software vendors I had purchased a comp/mod from I go back to my email with the download link from Ohanah. "com_ohanah-2.0.2.zip (Not Available)" Interesting, okay, must be because my 3 month subscription expired, well the site says I can still use it, even after it expires, so I will just email support and get another link.



No dice.



The jist of the email was:

"This means that if you want to have access to support and updates again you need to rebuy a subscription plan."



So in other words, since I lost my copies of the software, the only way I can get another copy is to buy it again.



I have never had a software company tell me if I want another copy of the software that I paid for that I would have to pay for it again.



I think this business is broken, and their support refuses to help, so either I have to find another comp/mod or fork over another check for the subscription.



My advise, as long as you don't need support this has to be one of the best Events extensions there is, but don't expect them to treat paying customers any different than non...

I gave it a fair, as it does a fair job. At the most basic levels it functions ok. It is a tad fiddly with the module injectors to say the least and they really shouldnt be needed.



So... installed the beast, interface looks pretty as well, the owners have put a lot into the way it looks in admin for sure.



Very fiddly setting up the injection modules and after reading lots of posts got something I was half happy with, moved on. Next I have 20 seats, 20 people have booked ok thats cool, but what about if people want to go on a waiting list ? sorry, tough, it isnt going to happen here. For an events module I was quite shocked that it couldnt handle this ! I do find it hard to beleive no one has wanted this.



Checked in the forums and it has been requested but ignored so all of a sudden the module is useless for anything but very basics



You also cant list by venues, just by events. You can put up a UL list of venues (really not exciting!). The events on is ok, but the venues is quite missing.



The website for this module is very bling indeed I must admit to being pulled in by the glitz and of course like a lot of components now you have to pay for 'support' but the components are 'free'. Strangly , like most, you cannot download the compoent only with no support but have to pay for the support. Im all for somebody earing some money, and have paid for many good components, but what I dont like is hiding behind the truth this way, come on guys, if the compoent is really free then it should be downloadable free, but you have to pay before you get access to it lol.



All in all, there are quite a few event managers out there that can do a simple waiting /reserve list, so money down the drain for me but be warned and move on if you want this functionality!

The Ohanah app has a lot of features and the team keeps developing it with regular updates.

Great support and great layout!

Thanx Ohanah

I highly recommend this component to anyone looking for an event component. As far as it being commercial, you get what you pay for. It is worth every penny.



I tried a couple of components but nothing else worked the way I need or did not look good.



To me functionality is important but also is aesthetics.

I will list some of the pros and cons of my experience



Pros:

1. Blends in with my template of choice very well. I use a YooTheme template and ohanah looks perfect in it.



2. Has lists, list summery pages, detail pages, an actual calendar, and others, all integrated into each other. So no matter how you want you events to be displayed on one part of the site you can list it in another way graphically in another part of the site and it is all seamless.



3. It also allows people to be able to buy tickets for events online. Setup was very easy, just put in PayPal email address in the backend settings and that’s it. So easy!!!



4. Support has been responsive and good. Must admit I have not needed it much because for the most part it is a very easy to use component.

5. As mentioned above this is easy to use and very clean design. No clutter which I like a lot, minimalist, to me less goes farther. Yet has enormous flexibility and features.



Cons

1. In the event list menu item type, it would be nice to be able to filter out event categories, would make the designing of pages and sections of the site. As far as I can tell in the list events page. It is either all events or a single category. But not different categories. Say category 1, 3, 5 but not category 2, and 4. That being said this is perhaps unique to me and would not be an issue to most people.

I highly recommend this component to anyone looking for an event component.

The is one of the best event extension available for joomla.

Very clean looking extension that handles all basic event management from the back end flawlessly. I had some issue with Java Script and template conflicts and the support was great in suggesting solutions.

I had some good reasons for trying to use this Component:



* neat and nicely working way of dealing with venues

* good looking design

* nice feature called module injection



BUT ...

... I regretably have some other reasons why I will NOT(!) use this component:



* Auto-publishing of newly added events does NOT work

* you can't publish reoccuring events from frontend.

* There is not the least ACL control or effect.



The only way is to set the access level for adding an event to something like "registered" or higher. But latest when wanting to publish it, you need an account with at least backend login. And for Ohanah doesn't have the least possibility of setting access levels, the account you ned for publishing must has rights on all other components by default. Regretably not acceptable for my project.



I really would have like to use it, but for me, it's insufficient and - compared to other Joomla!- components - inomplete.

What a pity.



Regards, Me

I have to add my 5 stars to the others - this extension is well worth the money. I did have a few problems also, but Bojan's support was phenomenal! He was courteous, quick, and helped me until all was resolved. Thank you.I did try several other event managers before purchasing this one - I'm glad I did.

My experience with the ohanah app 2 has been just disappointing.



In my opinion the base functionality is just not enough for a mid to large scale production website.



THE VENUES:

Especially the venue management and display. The component doesn't offer any sort of venue list view. Your only option is to display a module with the venues in a simple and plain list without any additional details.



If you wanted anything even close to displaying your venues you need to do quite a bit of heavy modifications and create custom views. In addition the SQL database has a what I would call "odd" structure thus making it quite difficult to pull information regarding a venue, since you need to connect to pretty much ALL the ohanah sql tables. (why is there an empty "images" column in the ohanah venue table??"



It has taken me quite a bit of development time to create a basic table that displays venue name | abbreviated description | venue image | and the number of events currently associated with this venue. It's worth mentioning you need to mod the source code if you want to add any custom fields to the venue such as listing the venue website, or phone number. Very important details that SHOULD NOT be clumped together in the description.



THE EVENTS:

The events side of the component seems to work well enough. I didn't run into any major technical issues but again the presentation is just not what you would expect from an event component. Event fields are very limited so you are forced to clump all the essential information in the description field. While this is OK for a developer or an admin to do, it's just not good enough for a visitor, who may or may not realize that "hey I need to put the promoter's phone number in the description".



I have to pretty much re-design the entire event view. Most appalling aspect was the "event image" which by default is what looks like a 64px by 64px thumbnail and it has the same class as any other image in the component including the additional event images and venue images so it can't be fixed with a simple css addition. You have to go change the source files and add a new css class.

Haven't the developers ever wondered why pretty much all events have a giant graphical flyer and not a page of text in MLA format with cited sources?

It's the most important aspect of an event listing and ohnah just fails miserably at this.



There's a few other major design flaws in the front end display. For example clocking the get directions on the map module. It seems to work fine, it takes you to the google directions page and if you type in your address it will give you accurate direction however when you are taken to google maps it uses the longitude latitude attributes rather than the actual address.



As a developer this didn't make an impression to me because I get the part where the position is calculated to reference to the long/lat attributes but it became an apparent issue when 3 of the 5 UI testers reported that "directions are not working because it gives them some random numbers as the address". It really needs an option to change some of those setting, option of selecting weather to use long/lat or actual address? It's not a new invention is been part of eventlist since what 2003? or just turn off the directions button, again easy fix to add the parameters in the module.



THE BUGS:

I've also run into some bugs that add to my frustration. Support is there but it just takes forever to get anything resolved. The rep seems to check his support tickets once a day, send a rhetorical reply and wait until the same time next day to check support tickets again.

One of the bugs was that the image lightbox would not work on any venue that didn't have events added to it.

It took them 3 days just to acknowledge that there is a problem and another 2 to release a new version (not a batch a FULL new version)

Another minor issue is that the venue description module will not display unless the venue list module is enabled and VISIBLE on the page where the description is. How and more importantly why the 2 modules are related is beyond be!



None of the templates or themes there seem to work. I get one default view and that's it. Maybe related to the template I'm using (yoo quantum) but who know, I haven't had time to look into this problem yet.



It's nice that the component gives you an option to disable jquery, but it's unfortunate that it doesn't work. Disabling jquery makes the front end event submission non-functional, yet you can see jquery loaded in the source code, and all the other jquery functions like error checking or venue/event image lightbox working fine.



Which brings me to the next part. Every time you update you need to re install the entire component and overwrite every single file in the component including all the css and images. Template overwrites can only get you so far.



When you are forced to do so much source code modifications just to get the component in a barely functional state it's just not practical to have to overwrite everything whenever there's a new patch.



Option 1 - Never again take advantage of the updates for which I have paid for

Option 2 - Keep a textbook of every single change made to bring the component to a functional state and redo them after each update.



In conclusion this was a waste of money and time. After about a week of dabbling with this project and this component I'd have to revert to joomla 1.5 and use my heavily modified eventlist component.



This is my 8th event orientated website and I can guarantee you that this component will not make your website successful until they fix the user interface and component views.

Not only is the extension well worth the money as it works and looks great but the support is amazing.

I asked a question about logging into my account and got my reply within the hour, on the weekend!

Great product and great support.