Compare community extensions

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Torkil Johnsen on October 2, 2009 at 6:18am

I have tried a demo of Anahita and also been given some peeks under the hood in terms of explenations by Rastin Mehr and code examples on the chat and in their blog, and I must say it is really more of a Social Engine than a Social Application/Extension or whatnot. Have not "touched" the code firsthand though :)

They really excel on the structural level; Where other social apps just copy features found on for instance facebook one by one, Anahita have put together a really versatile node-graph-story social engine basis, which will serve any kind of social app idea you might throw at it :)

I have also tried JomSocial, which in itself is nice with their plugins and all, and the default design is almost good to go from the install, although the backend lacks language files and thus is a pain to translate. It's easy to set up, easy to manage. A person though, is a person, a message is a message, a discussion is a discussion, etc, compared to Anahitas more versatile node-graph-story structure.

I won't get into Community Builder... It's a pain to administrate and the code haunts my dreams at night.

... and those are the three I have tried.

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on October 2, 2009 at 1:41pm

What kind of space do you think, Leo? Would Google Docs work? Or, would it make sense to have a forum area specific to that topic? The one thing to remember about Ning is that it's temporary (for as long as we want it) with a goal of finding a good place at Joomla! org. Maybe we should put all documentation right on the Wiki? I'm open to whatever works for people so if you find something that works with Ning that you recommend, we can do that, too.

@Alex - excellent topic, thanks!

Permalink Reply by Danny Englander (highrockmedia) on October 4, 2009 at 10:21am

The only community component I have ever implemented for a client was Community Builder -- and it was the first and last time I used it.

I saw a tweet about CB yesterday and it sums up my sentiments exactly:

https://twitter.com/skOre_de/status/4558367916

I have been wanting to try Jom Social to see if that is any better and Anahita certainly looks worth checking out.

Permalink Reply by Nathan Gifford (DTH) on October 5, 2009 at 9:35pm

That is funny. We still use Community Builder at this point for our client sites, but we may be making the jump soon too.

Permalink Reply by Alex Kempkens on October 6, 2009 at 6:20am

Hi all,

First of thanks for sharing your opinions and thoughts. I'm honestly not surprised to see these responses as they fit to my own observations. As of Anahita I think we still have to wait until the marketing hype is over and we can see something real. The whole concept and idea is pretty promising.

A friend of mine is using Joomsocial and is happy so far. His community is not that big so he is not expecting lot of issues in using an extension within Joomla and not just only the framework. And CB is really something I'm not touching anymore. I did it once ... and never again.


What will be interesting is if the open standards such as Open Social are changing the available solutions.

Cheers

Alex

Permalink Reply by Retha van Staden on October 6, 2009 at 11:37am

I agree, Dan. I've also only used Community Builder for community sites, but am quite ready to shout the very same tweet! :-) I'm also watching JomSocial for the next client community, and now, thanks to this discussion, Anahita.

Permalink Reply by Rastin Mehr on October 7, 2009 at 12:38pm

Hello,

@torkil Thank you so much for mentioning Anahita.

I wouldn't be appropriate if I hijack this topic

If anybody here would like an account on the Anahita Demo please contact me. You don't have to be part of the partners and developers to have access to it. We do have a chat with people who send a requests to make sure that they actually care or interested in the project. It is important to seed a community with people who are interested and care. Developers and Development companies who are interested can join as partners too. There is a fee involved, and it is really about the training and consulting via peer support and not selling any code. Anahita is fully GPL.

The only PR that we have done has been talking about the project on our blogs and twitter and attending a couple of local technology camps. I'm not sure if that is PR or Marketing, it has been more of an expression. Who wouldn't want to talk about their project which has taken more than 1500 hours and 2000 subversion commits?

There has never been an organized marketing force behind the project to create hypes. We are very careful not to mention something publicly unless it has already been implemented. The news that you hear is community buzz, people are excited about the project and sometimes it takes us up to 6 days to catch up with all the emails and questions.

@Amy this post contains links to Anahitapolis. If it is considered a shameless plug I'd be happy to remove it :) please advice

Permalink Reply by Royce Harding on October 7, 2009 at 1:28pm

I just read the CB Tweet. There wasn't much of substance there (ok, ok I know you can't say much in 140 char)... I've been using CB for years, Its kind of like the 'devil you know'. I can 'administrate' /plugin/configure/transform it in my sleep and none of my clients ever want to see the backend of J! so its fine.

Check out http://www.iland5demo.com/i1 for an example of a tricked out CB profile page - login using demo1a/demo1a or demo1b/demo1b, etc

This is a good thread though. I'll have to bite the bullet and spend time looking at the other products.

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on October 7, 2009 at 2:06pm

Very nice setup! Thanks for sharing that.

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on October 7, 2009 at 2:09pm

Well, it's kind of hard to share what you are doing without a shameless plug. lol - so - no worries!

Please generously point at your work to help others get ideas and learn from you and perhaps even collaborate. If anyone gets obnoxious about it, the others will pile on and put us back in line. Nice of you to say that, but my preference would be to see people error on the side of over-sharing and not hold back.

Let's keep in mind this is a resource for us developers, and not customers or newbies.

Permalink Reply by Mark W. Bender on October 7, 2009 at 2:12pm

I also would prefer an open sharing community. If our fellow community members feel that its more an advertisement vs sharing/collobration, I'm sure their voice will be heard if necessary!

Permalink Reply by Mark W. Bender on October 7, 2009 at 2:16pm

Nice job! I haven't bothered to play with CB yet, but have heard enough horror stories to not want to waste my time getting it setup correctly without taking several weeks to get it right!

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