Main components

Joomlaplazza is using Joomla 1.0.15 not Joomla 1.5.3  

YES THAT’S JOOMLA VERSION 1.0.15 NOT ANY VARIANT OF JOOMLA 1.5!

Most people seem to automatically assume I’m using Joomla 1.5 but when I began work on joomlaplazza Joomla 1.5 was only a beta version and not stable. There was also hardly any components or modules ready to work with it so I opted to use what I knew worked. There is no worthwhile reason for me to upgrade to Joomla 1.5 any time soon either. Many new comers to Joomla automatically assume that Joomla 1.0.15 is obsolete and inferior to 1.5 and in some ways it is but it is still more than powerful enough to be used as the basis of almost any type of website you might want to create. There are literally thousands of modules and components for joomla 1.0 and its variants. It’s also a lot less resource hungry than joomla 1.5, the more advanced framework in 1.5 comes at a price I’m afraid although if you’re running on a dedicated server or you’re not running a high traffic site then you probably won’t notice much difference. But upgrading joomlaplazza to 1.5 would take significant effort on my part and since Joomlaplazza is based around the community builder extension it’s not really worth it.  Community builder is fully compatible with most versions of Joomla and Mambo.

Community builder 

The main component used in Joomlaplazza other than Joomla its self is Community builder, this is what adds user profiling abilities to Joomlaplazza. However I am also using an array of different modules and plug-ins that work with Community builder to enhance the social networking site abilities. Another thing to note is I’m not using a standard version of Community builder I’m using a modified version of CB 1.1 which has had the profile templating abilities enhanced to allow for far greater freedom in designing profile layouts. However this hacked version of Community builder is not really for beginners as you do require some level of PHP knowledge to take full advantage of it. The hacked files are available to download from this site and there is full article explaining extended version of Community builder in more detail.

And yes I know CB 1.2RC has been released! I’m currently In the process of investigating CB1.2RC and will try to get the extended profile working with this new version. It shouldn’t be too long before I have CB 1.2RC running on Joomlaplazza. 

Fireboard

The forum component used on this JoomlaPlazza is Fireboard which is the only well known semi-decent fully integrated forum component for Joomla. It has built in integration features with Community builder and a few PMS components but there are quite a few bugs especially with the Community builder integration in the current version. The Fireboard settings gives you the option to allow Community builder to manage the user registrations and profiles which overwrites the Fireboard profiles altogether and redirects users to the Community builder profiles. But this doesn’t work correctly and when users click the `subscribe to thread` or `add to favorites’ button Fireboard redirects to the Fireboard profile and NOT the Community builder profile. This is incorrect and could cause some serious issues. There is a fix for this and requires you to go in a modify some of the Fireboard core files I have implemented the fix on Joomlaplazza. If you encounter this issue search the forums over on www.bestofjoomla.com.

I’m also using a custom template in Fireboard that I created based on another template from Joomlame.com. I’m not going into detail about it here. 

There is also a nice little hack I implemented that allows you to display the little icons under the avatar in Fireboard when fully integrated with community builder this can also be found at www.bestofjoomla.com forums. 

PMS Enhanced

I am currently using PMS enhanced as the private messaging component of Joomlaplazza mainly because it looks good. It’s an older German PMS component and is no longer being developed or supported. PMS enhanced is still one of the best PMS components in my opinion and both community builder and Fireboard have integration support for it. More information about PMS enhanced can be found at www.stefan-klingner.de but be warned it’s mostly all in German.

GroupJive

I have GroupJive installed on Joomlaplazza but it’s not really been used much use so far. I won’t go into detail myself, Ill simply quote what the authors have to say:

“GroupJive is a social networking component that creates Groups for users in the Joomla CMS! GroupJive can be used to enhance an existing site or as the basis around which to build a social network. GroupJive requires the presence of Community Builder or Community Builder Enhanced user management components. To use GroupJive, Community Builder -OR- Community Builder Enhanced must be installed!”

Community Builder Advanced Search

The search component that allows the searching of user profiles is a modified version of the Community Builder Advanced Search component from http://tech.amikelive.com . It is not the original version from www.Emptorum.com which seems to have been abandoned altogether.  The modified version from http://tech.amikelive.com is an unofficial hack that has added the ability to search by age interval and avatar only. There may also be other adjustments to code as this version just seems to work better. There are still some issues with this component and I would advise you to use this only when you are using Linux based hosting due a serious issue with the dates before 1970 which has only occurred when I have used this in a windows environment. I also had to hack the userlists function in the comprofiler.html.php to remove the itemid from being used in the community builder user lists as it was breaking my template and would not allow search results to be displayed with the right hand modules showing.

JomComment  

JomComment is a well written commercial commenting component for Joomla. This little component hasn’t had much use on Joomlaplazza yet but it is by far the best commenting component for Joomla. For more information see www.azrul.com.

Mamblog

 I decided to use Mamblog as the main blogging component of this site for a couple of reasons. I know it's old, it's clunky and past its best but at the end of the day it works and does exactly what it says on the tin. I'm also not sure how popular blogging will actually be on Joomlaplazza so I just opted for the cheap and free solution. If blogging does prove to be popular I will upgrade to the much more advanced Myblog from www.azrul.com.

Docman

Docman 1.4 is the component currently being used for the download section of Joomlaplazza. I have tried to implement a hack that would integrate JomComment with Docman and allow comments to be posted on downloads but this does not work correctly and I wouldn’t recommend it. For more information go to http://www.joomlatools.org . 

DS-Syndicate

DS-Syndicate is currently being used to output the RSS feeds from Joomlaplazza. I disabled Joomla’s own built in syndicating component and replaced it with this because having attractive looking RSS feeds is really important. There are a couple of bugs with DS-Syndicate, the first of which is feed titles are followed by open and closed parentheses () and the authors email address is included in the RSS feeds. The information required to solve these bugs cab be found here:  http://www.goodwebpractices.com/joomla/rss-ds-synidicate-fix.html . It may also be a good idea to sign up with www.Feedburner.com , a full tutorial on this can be found here:http://myantidrama.com/?p=12

JA Submit

If you want your website to be filled with lots of useful articles then this is the component for you! JA Submit allows users or guests to submit content via the front end, in addition users can add one image to the intro text and one image to the main body. JA Submit is currently in use on Joomlaplazza via the Submit content link in the user menu. For more information about JA Submit visit http://www.joomlart.com.

JoomlaWatch

This is a great AJAX component that allows you to watch your website visitors in real time via the administration menu.  It allows you to track their IP address, the country they come from, the browser they are using, their operating system and which pages they have viewed all in real time. It also creates daily and all time stats and allows you to block specific IP addresses. You can see the front end module published on Joomlaplazza under Stats tracking. This has to be published in order for the component to work. See http://www.codegravity.com for more information.

JoomlaPack

This is a handy little backup component that allows you to create a full back of your site in a single Zip archive. The archive includes your full database and has a built in installer. This makes Joomlapack one of the most convenient ways to move an entire Joomla website from one host to another. For more information about JoomlaPack visit: http://www.joomlapack.net/