Webmaster Blog

If you are looking for contact component for Joomla, you might meet difficulties to discover one that is free. There are many great commercial contact components, though most are a bit pricey, by my opinion. Our team recently discovered B2J Contact, a free Joomla contact form component with features similar to paid one, so we decided to review it. Installation process is straight forward, though you need to register at developer website before you can download it. Currently component support Joomla v2.5 and v3.B2J Contact works almost out of the box and even a newbie can understand how to handle it. Developer support forum also respond very fast on support treads. It is very lightweight, secure, responsive and easy to setup, the best part is that it is free. There are several options in admin back-end: basic option default fields dynamic fields events security Technically everything that you need to make a contact page. In conclusion I can say that there are also regular updates, so our team can definitely recommend B2J Contact, we also use it at WebmaisterPro.

EasyDiscuss – question and answer extension for Joomla from StackIdeas that takes forum communities to the next level of engagement. A while ago, StackIdeas have released another excellent and very stable extension – EasyDiscuss. I think it is difficult to classify it just as Q&A or forum component, it is something much more. A couple of days ago, we’ve started our test at WebmaisterPro Lab with latest version of EasyDiscuss, we’ve used Joomla 2.5, but component will work on Joomla 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 and 2.5, actually I know that StackIdeas are beta testing EasyDiscuss with Joomla 3. Installation and Setup Nothing much to say, everything was straight forward with installation and setup. Component settings are intuitive with tooltips on every single box and more complicated tasks like social integrations and cron jobs have link references to comprehensive help documents. We’ve integrated our installation with JomSocial profile avatars. Integration As I mentioned profiles, one of the first notable features is easy integration with 3rd party components like CommunityBuilder, JomSocial and Kunena, also offer unified login.  There are options to connect Twitter and Facebook apps for automatic sharing option. Going into same direction, it is very easy to migrate and import Kunena or...

BF Auction Plus is component for Joomla suitable for running your own auction website within Joomla. This extension grabbed our attention, first because there are not many auction extensions for Joomla 2.5 and actually extension is even ready to be used on Joomla 3. We contacted Tamlyn Creative (the developers), asking for a review and we receive response from Tim Plummer in less than an hour with component attached. Our first impression from BF Auction Plus was easy installation. In addition interface of BF Auction Plus looks very clear and easy to understand. I guess that everybody, even not professionals will be able to handle management. However I would suggest you check official BF Auction Plus documentation and support forum. Not many things to say, it is just a component that should work out of the box, easy set-up, intuitive interface and good support. This component is taking full advantage of new SQL server, so for speeding up busy Joomla website this can be an excellent option for busy websites. Component also works quite well with Joomla ACL options, we also test integration with JomSocial based portal and it worked like a charm. There are few minor bugs that can appear...

JomSocial is social network component for Joomla, probably the only complete solution that work out of the box (with few minor settings) that can help you to establish your own social network in a matter of hours. First I will start with the basics, Joomla and JomSocial requires good web hosting. So forget about shared hosting solution, you need at least mid-level VPS to run these two monsters, also forget about low-end cheap VPS.  Second you need special template for your Joomla website that is compatible with JomSocial - most are premium, I would personally recommend RocketTheme templates, but you have find high quality templates that are free, for example based on Gantry framework All right, so what do you get for $149? JomSocial package includes the main component, several modules and bunch of plug-ins (applications).  Installation is very easy and if you have some experience with Joomla probably you will not have any problems. I personally would start with installation of suitable template and upload the component through FTP in the root folder and after that use installation from URL (this may save some headaches if upload_max_size value is low). Set-up is a different ball game, setting up; component, modules...