**Can anyone tell me in, human understandable language, what extension Joomla K2 does?**
I see this popup as a "popular" extension, but don't have a clue on what it does.
The discription states: "The powerful awarded content extension for Joomla! with more than 1.2 million downloads so far (and counting!)". And below is a list of features below.
I feel like missing out something. Why should I use this, explained in a few simple words.
Best Regards,
K2 is basically an extended and feature rich version of your default Joomla article manager. It comes with many more features, making life easier for administrators to manage their content on their website. It also integrates with a lot of other 3rd party extensions. Some of the key features that K2 includes are:
Commenting system
Tags (handy for a blog)
Drag n Drop
Extended user profiles
Powerful API
So to answer your question simply, it's better to use K2 as it prevents having to install multiple 3rd party extensions such as Community Builder (just an example) for extended profiles and JComments (just an example) for the commenting system.
Have a look at the K2 Site and even give it a test to what what you can achieve with it.
Related
I'm starting a journey with CMS. I would like to create a few simple web sites: my pastime blog, programmres blog (but I would be something more than just a plain blog) & three web sites: for my father's & uncle's shops + simple web sites that helps to learn English :)
When it comes to by programming background, I was PHP developer for 2 years so I thought I could use that experience. I found WordPress & Joomla as probably the two most popular platforms. However WordPress is usually recommended as best bloogging platform. What about being a CMS? So perhaps one of them is better as CMS? Or there's something else ever more suitable for my needs (Drupal)?
On every day basis I'm ASP .NET MVC 3 developer, so perhaps you could recommend a good MVC3, active CMS project?
EDIT: How about ASP Project: Orchard?
I would always advocate Drupal over Joomla for CMSs. They are similar in what they offer. WordPress in more beginner friendly but is (currently) less "customisable" and has a different, more blog-oriented, focus. Drupal is very full featured and is easy to manage and install. I believe Joomla is getting better with the release of 1.7 and/or 2.5LTS.
Drupal's community is more comprehensive and as such you get plenty of support. You can choose a very wide range of functional complexity with Drupal that you can't with WordPress. Joomla is similar in this regard but there are a few key things that I prefer from a development perspective with Drupal over Joomla:
Modules and plugins are more plug and play with Drupal and easier to manage.
When you develop a module in drupal you there are code "hooks" to bind to the core where as Joomla you extend the core
The drupal website admin is more intuitively designed and easier to manage modules etc.
Installation and update/upgrading of Drupal is more universally developer friendly (i.e. you don't need to be an expert and if you aren't you are not too likely to destroy your sites!). That said Joomla seems to be starting to follow Drupal more closely now so it will probably start getting better.
The main reason I would advocate Drupal for your needs it your requirement for a variation of functionality. You can enable and disable functionality very easily in Drupal and you can drag and drop themes etc. with ease. I use Joomla every day in work and my experience Drupal is king!
It's not very difficult to use WordPress as a CMS. A good resource is http://digwp.com/. The blog itself should help, but the Digging into WordPress book has a chapter about how to turn WordPress into a CMS. The great thing is you'll get a lifetime subscription of the book, so when new versions of the book come out, you will get the updated PDF for free.
My personal preference is with WordPress. It seems to have the largest user community, which means more answered questions, more plugins, more places to find cool themes, etc.
If you have PHP experience, it's probably your best bet.
As far as WP being a CMS, it has definitely goot the tools you need for a fully functioning website. A lot of the times I use WP as a CMS for clients, because it's so easy for them to catch on, and there is always a way for them to google any question they might have and find an answer without having to contact me for support.
Additionally, WP is great if you know some PHP code and can write your own custom plugins.
There are TONS you can do with it. Take a look at the most recent change log. It's got some great stuff.
http://wordpress.org/ for more info and download.
As far as ASP CMS, I've used Sitefinity in the past (only because I HAD to for work). I didn't find it to be nearly as intuitive as wordpress, and frankly I just don't like ASP. I find it to be clunky and not nearly as easy to modify and theme as PHP. Just my personal opinion of course.
Also, I'm not sure Sitefinity is free, so there is always that to consider. I'm not sure there are many free ASP CMS options as there are for PHP.
Although for simply blogging WordPress is the leading choice, for a CMS I would go with Joomla. There are many extensions that you can use with Joomla, the templates are very easy to edit if you have past experience with PHP, and the native CMS that it comes with is very verbose. Joomla has a strong community behind it, and they support many different aspects of a CMS and are constantly adding new features. Implementing a Blog in Joomla is very easy.
WordPress is certainly the leading choice... if you weren't wanting to use your developer skills. Writing a plugin for WordPress is rather agnostic to programming style (or ability), and is great for entry-level designers, but if you're looking to apply your MVC skills, of the two Joomla would be the choice.
The reason I say this is that Joomla more or less forces extensions to be MVC compliant. They also have a very strong and healthy community (the WP community in comparison is cut-throat, dog-eat-dog, the loudest-jackass-wins kind of a thing) and recently have abstracted the PHP framework layer away from the CMS, so if you're into really hardcore architectural web application coding, you can play with just its framework independently.
WordPress == get it done fast, elegantly (novice & designer focus)
Joomla == get it done right, with some work (business, programmer, and hobbyist focus)
Drupal == build every function of your site from the ground up, then rebuild it again when the next version comes out (engineer focused)
Bottom line is that you won't find good MVC driven CMS at this point in time. I have done very similar research and went through a range of vendors (both commercial and open source).
Yes, Orchard is available and based on your requirements it might be up to the job, however, I'd say that it's mainly for small size businesses that want some basic content management functionality.
Can anyone point out an extension where we can add articles in another language, the point is to allow the user to create an article similar to the ones already existent and write them in another language, so that, when the users clicks the flag of that language, the articles (and menu) will switch to those is English.
According to joomla documentation I can answer this questions like so:
Is the site structure of all languages the same or do I have different "views"?
- The same;
Do I need language related content such as different products in a shop?
- No.
Are regions/countries related to languages or is the new language primarily a translation?
- related;
Do I have different authors, publishers and so on for my various languages?
- No.
Do I need a professional translation for my site or is an automated translation (e.g. by Google) acceptable?
- No.
I have found only extensions that deal with automatic translations or with locale files and stuff like that, and the intended is something really simple, without any of those stuff.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
You can use Joomfish to create fully manageable multilingual website using Joomla
The problem with Joomfish is it's not compatible with Joomla 1.7
If you wanted to create multilingual website using Joomla 1.7 you should check this article
I'm developing a WinForm app in c# 4.0 and would like other (non-developer) colleagues to contribute writing a context sensitive end-user helpfile. First I thought I could use "HTML Help Workshop" from Microsoft, but it seems outdated (Vista and Windows 7 not supported).
Then I've looked at Sandcastle, but the documentation is lacking and I wonder if it is suitable for non-technical users to write end-user documentation.
So I read about RoboHelp, but it's way to expensive for me.
I'm getting lost in all the information that is available about helpfiles. Can someone help give some best practices or information on what tools to use and what output format I should target (still chm or other).
Great question. I like your idea of non-developers contributing to the end-user documentation.
This idea might motivate users and testers of your application to easily contribute to the documentation.
The first thing that comes to my mind, is using a some sort of wiki engine. You could build a simple function in your WinForm application, that fires up a browser and directs in to the wiki. You could use the context from which it is called to build up an url; e.g. http://dev-wiki.mycompany.com/LoginForm?action=edit. Here the name of the form ("LoginForm") is used in the url of a wiki page.
Alternatively, you could simply use the embedded web browser control for WinForms to access the wiki. That would look something like:
var url = GetWikiUrl(myForm);
browserControl.Navigate(url);
This would be very easy to embed in your application.
In a controlled (office) environment, this would be very easy to set up. In you production environment it might be a bit more difficult, but still doable. It might leverage some end-user contributions too.
For writing documentation, I use sphinx.
It lets you document in plain text and has various output formats (chm, html, pdf etc.).
Some of these (chm, html) can be used as context-sensitive help sources.
However simple, the sphinx user-interface (text editor and make file) might not be suitable for non-technical users.
I would recommend to use Help+Manual for creating CHM documentation. It's similar to MS Word and any PC user can start to contribute doc development after short education.
But this tool isn't free :(
Magento has upgraded its version to 1.4 and in introducing the version 1.4 the new handy features of widgets are introduced. Extensions are also supported by version 1.4+. I want to know if widgets are more handy (I think they are) than extensions or not and how many users have switched to widgets. Which one is more better widgets or extensions.
Widgets and extensions are not mutually exclusive. A widget is a nice way to let users who are not so technical add blocks of functionality to their pages, providing a boost over the blocks that users had to interact with before.
That said, a widget is created as part of an extension, and is generally limited to visual changes to the page. A Widget cannot be used, for example, to trigger a cron script or change core functionality in Magento. For that reason, widgets are not the end-all solution.
In the future, expect to see widgets used in all sorts of places to build extra functionality into the frontend of a site. Also expect to see other extensions running strong without them, editing functionality on the site.
Hope that helps!
Thanks,
Joe
I need to use MediaWiki at work. It used to be okay, but with sites s.a. StackOverflow, there's some user interface issues that simply don't do any more.
Most importantly, I'd want to see the live preview when typing. There shouldn't be need for a preview mode.
What Wikis are you using? Which would be the best for a recent (easy) Web experience?
Can MediaWiki be updated to have more recent UI behaviour?
Addendum:
Two products seem to be above others, both "open source commercial" (= you get a skinny version free, standard and enterprise levels with more goodies cost).
MindTouch DekiWiki
Confluence
Judge for yourself. I sure found my liking in one of these. :)
There is a WYSIWYG extension for mediawiki. See Fckeditor:
Well there is StackExchange (which is the StackOverflow engine), but you have to pay for it.
A discussion on Confluence vs Mediawiki: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DISC/Confluence+Vs+Mediawiki
It doesn't have the preview feature you talk about, but you asked for "favorite wikis", so here's mine (at least favorite for ease of use/setup):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScrewTurn_Wiki
http://www.screwturn.eu/