Recently in the Joomla! Forums, user dping28 mentioned that there is a beta version of Community Builder 1.2 (current stable version is 1.1):
And just a FYI Community Builder they currently have a beta ver 1.2 that we are testing and its in the process of becomming 1.5 native so legacy mode wont be needed.. Hope this helps..
The Joomla! community has come to rely on certain CB features and plugins, that it will be a welcome relief when CB goes 1.5 native.
In other Social Networking news in Joomla!, the occasionally whispered CB alternative Anahita was mentioned again recently on the J! Forums, this is from Rastin Mehr, of rmd studio inc:
“The GPL version of Anahita is on the way, we are working on it every week, but please be patient we do need some time to coordinate things, for example the fact that Joomla 1.5 is finally stable has helped a lot.
“ (Read Full Thread)
For an idea of the software philosophy behind the folks at rmd, you can see their article on Social Networking technology which they have named a Social Network Management System (SMS).
Fans of Anahita could be in an awkward position. Many Joomla! users (including myself) have benefited from years of using Community Builder, many are frustrated with the difficulty of using CB, as well as the clunky and old fashioned appearance of the component.
But then along comes rmd, with a beautifully designed website, a hyper modern manifesto on what makes a Social Network function, and the implication of a new extension with the ability to “talk to” the following other extensions:
- Discussion Forums and Groups
- Private Messaging (PM)
- Discussion Walls
- User Media Galleries ( Audio, Video, Image )
- Blogs
- Content Feeds for independent Personal blogs, and outside media management services such as YouTube or Flickr
- Payment Processors
- Commenting and Ranking Systems
- Tagging ( or Folksonomy )
- Community Policing Tools
This dazzling list of applications that the Anahita SMS could “talk to”, is also from the rmd website. The features listed, that presumably would be compatible of working with Anahita, or perhaps included within Anahita is enough to have many Joomla! users salivating.
Many of these features are already available in CB, but are often difficult to install, and also to maintain. Perhaps part of the problem is that a substantial section of the CB user-base is so proficient with the quirks of CB, that it often appears impenetrable.
So it is easy to see why many users are anxious for the Anahita project to eventuate. I know I am, and I posted my own comment in the J! Forums. CB is so dominant in the Social Networking Joomla! space, that a plucky young group of Canadian developers could be just what we need.
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Nice piece. Rastin absolutely rocks – and I agree with you completely – he’s “new school” when it comes to web development. Rastin = Style.
The Joomla! community is a bit behind, IMO, with some of the SNing concepts. As an example, look at how difficult it is to get the community to Digg a topic.
I agree with your assessment of some of the older software being clunky and cumbersome, error prone, and even tacky looking, hard to style. J! v 1.5 will turn this around but not from upgrading the old to new coding structures. We will do things differently – and far better.
Kevine Devine created a plugin called UserMeta – it’s on JoomlaCode. When people finally figure out what he’s got there, that extension will see some big DL numbers. It is the new community building software backbone – without any bulk or any intended implementation. It allows you to *easily* extend Joomla!’s user definitions using the parameters column in the user table.
Recently, Kevin expanded this power by adding the capability to very easily link to user tables. This is an example of the strength of the new framework. Kevin basically unearthed intended use and made it easy for the rest of us to cash in on this flexible architecture.
The possibilities are endless.
Joomla! v 1.5 is incredibly extensible. It’s very easy to “write” extensions for that platform and it’s super easy to hack an extension into per user capabilities.
I’m *not* anxious to have all of the old extensions moved forward. Frankly, it’s time to say goodbye to some of the clunky stuff. It served us well, but let’s face it – the Internet is a different place than it was a few years ago.
I’m also having fun getting my own hands dirty. It’s an absolute blast to develop with Joomla! and it just gets to be more and more fun as I learn.
We are going to continue to see better extensions emerge and more and more serious developers, like Kevin and Rastin, will join us as they discover how powerful *and* simple it is to bend Joomla! into what is needed. That is what will move Joomla! into open and empowering social networking and out of the “forum and avatar age.”
We are moving on up!
Amy
Thank you so much for that fascinating post Amy.
I am totally with you in looking forward to a new generation of Joomla extensions.
These new looser technologies that allow information to be connected across spaces is very powerful. Especially the OpenID, which you posted earlier. Everything is connected, and anything we can do to help make Joomla! as open as possible can only be good for our community.
Here is the link to Kevin’s User Meta page on Joomla Code.
http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/usermeta/
I’m looking into it now, and it’s pretty exciting.
Can anyone help me with the installation of Kevin Divine’s usermeta. I’ve already installed it, but when I try to edit my custommade fields for users y get an error from joomla:
* JUser::_load: Unable to load user with id: 67
I don’t know what’s wrong, I couldn’t find enough help, or any documentation about this plugin. The link that Nicholas posted only takes me to the download, and there is a post from kevin divine’s that says a really poor instruction.
Any help?
Hi Jacobo, I have not fully implemented the plugin, have you searched on the Joomla! forums?
I cant get this metauser to work , I have got it to the point where the data is populated in the admin user manager, but the data is not being written to the sql table , people are having serious issues with the extension!
jomsocial is the best