Hello, I am making a Joomla portal that enables users to blog and do some other things. I was wondering if anyone can suggest any plugins that are essential for a social networking type portal. This is my first time using Joomla so any help is appreciated. Also, I was wondering if anyone has used the "My Blog" component by Azrul? Is this better than Mamblog? Thanks in advance, Billy
definatly is myblog better than mamblog, get fireboard, community builder and uhp2, otherwise if you have some cash to spend get vbulletin and bridge the two
I used MyBlog by Azrul and I got my money back for it because it didn't work properly right out of the box and I am very fickle and don't like having to debug things and work with code so I just uninstalled it and got my money back...
Does this bridge work? I have read conflicting things that it works excellent and others that say it is terrible. Billy
the vbulletin bridge was very buggy and i havnt looked at it in a while. i used SMF with the SMF bridge in my joomla site but they recently announced that the new joomla licence does not allow SMF bridge anymore as they conflict on the licences. so your kinda stuck with either a seperate install of SMF or a slightly buggy vbulletin install less of two evils i guess.
I'm not sure what the problem was. It was a while back when I attempted to use it. Maybe it didn't play nice with my template or settings. I'm not sure. Just sharing my experience. Usually if something doesn't work right away I forget about it.
vbulletin works good, the people that says its buggy just cant figure out how to set up the cookies. There are 2 types of bridges get the one from bbpixel.com Yeah SMF and Joomla bridge was stopped due to GNU GPL licenses or something Fireboard is ok, not really something great, i wouldnt want to build a community on that
I think Fireboard will be great when finished. It shows a lot of potential in terms of features, and most importantly: it's the only searious native forum alternative. That means a more or less hazzle free install (not having to deal with bridges and/or hacks) as well as seamless integration with other Joomla components.
I am not really capabl of coding to create hacks or modify bridges. Is the vbpixel bridge pretty much ready to go out of the box? If not is there a foolproof guide to follow that will allow me to walk through the installation process? Billy
how does the bbpixel bridge work with cummounity builder? Is that easy to integrate? Also, I have done some research and I am seeing lots of concerns regarding the new Joomla license. How will this effect the vB bridge in the future? Billy
Why would you want to intergrate community builder with vbulletin, vb has everything Lets compare Community builder has +- 300 extra plugins vb has +- 2000 extra mods Community builder is used by every cheapskate and weak site owners calls a community site.i hav not seen any community site except the joomla and community builder site with over 5000 members, and even they dont use FB (take a look at joomlart.com forum thats vb+joomla) Vb has proven time and time again with alot of sites(DP included) that it can handle hundreds of thousends. Forum Management:Is a disaster in FB VB:is very easy with 100x more capability to do more Styles:FB has about +-10 VB Styles: there are thousends of styles to date And you can intergrate any system with VB be it a gallery, mp3 audio, marketplace, etc etc Support in FB and CB is limited, but with Vb tickets are answered 30 min or less VB will be your Community foundation only content will be managed with Joomla. Have you seen how a website looks with joomla+cb+Gallery+20 other plugins, its really bad But not with VB, actually it looks even better HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM VB yes even just give the leased license a try for $85
Jacques, I'd like to say thanks for all your input and sorry if any of these questions seem basic. I have a few more: Would a Joomla+vBulletin combo be able to do this: User Blogs - these blogs must all follow a specified template and have certain widgets/nodes that the user cannot delete and the content of these comes from a custom phpmodule? - can these user blog posts be displayed on the front page of joomla as content? ex. recent blog posts table or recommended blog post - can I promote blog posts to joomla pages? Thanks
Useful/essential Joomla extensions: - JoomSEF - Social Bookmarking Buttons Plugin - Ircmaxell's Page Cache
Can anyone suggest what to use to improve SEO? I have one guy who suggests JoomSEF is there anything else?
I only use SEF Advance, but it costs 40 EUR to buy a license to use it. I've tried ARTIO SEF and I hated it. It did more bad than good. I can't comment on any of the other SEF components... EDIT: I just realized you were asking for something to improve SEO. Grab JoomSEO. It's great. I just did a little write up about how I use JoomSEO on my sites. You may want to check it out.
Artio sef is Joomsef There is Opensef too - but not really under development For metatags you can use Metafly For SEO try the RSS Contextfactory or the RSS Factory modules. If you use good Feeds you can get amazing results