Comunity Building with Joomla CMS
Since the boom with Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace , Twitter and a host of others portals it has been a natural trend for organizations to want harness the fact that users are gaining both comfort and skills with social networking tools. This has opened the door for what some are calling "niche social networks". For example; organizations like Chambers of Commerce or Associations and organizations that have traditional social networks can find opportunity leveraging online communities.
When Joomla launched 5 years ago the early contender for delivering social communities was the Community Builder Components developed by the folks a http://www.joomopolis.com. While they still are among the top 2 and offer a fantastic solution for "Community Building" with a Joomla CMS platform, the JomSocial extensions by http://www.azrul.com has filled in a few gaps that the user public has been screaming for.
Quick Comparison
When you compare face to face these two component suites for Joomla CMS you will find they have many of the same basic features for extending the user profiles. Note: This is capability is also useful for many non community sites that want to build additional fields and data around a users profile. They each have abilities for connecting "friends" relationships and many other common features. However, what I have found particularly useful is the fact that JomSocial has opened up their code in a more useful way by offering an API. What this has done is inspire momentum with the global development community to build on the framework and add several useful features and capabilities that are just not possible with any of the other Community Building extensions for Joomla.
The latest release if 1.8.x features enhanced video sharing, event registration management features and much more. You can visit their web site for more info at http://www.jomsocial.com. Combined with the new add-ons available http://jomsocial.com/download/addons.html there are very few limitations with this environment for building custom communities in just about any industry or niche market.
A couple key new add-ons I like are:
Multiple profiles: This is ideal for educational communities where they need to segment profiles by teacher, student, instructor and Administrator. There are plenty of other practical uses
Group File Sharing: While there are many ways to share files and documents in Joomla there are now add-ons for file sharing and emailing for public and private groups. This offers more opportunities and tools available for group collaboration
Here are some links to 3rd party vendors that offer add-ons for JomSocial :
o http://www.videowhisper.com/?p=Video+Conference
o http://www.joomplace.com/e-learning/surveyforce-deluxe.html
o http://www.corejoomla.com/products/leader-board.html
o http://www.joomlaced.com/jomsocial-applications/flickr-gallery-for-jomsocial
o http://www.socialcode.co.uk/products/products.html
o http://www.joomlamafia.com/downloads/components/folder/16-targeted-mailer.html
All-in-all JomSocial with it's new thrust in the development community to build add-on's makes it our preferred choice for developing social communities.
CNP Integrations has chosen to become an official JomSocial Developer. This allows us to have VIP technical support and access to JomSocial core developers through development life cycles on any project. Our expertise in developing JomSocial Communities sets and integrating other business systems sets us apart from other development companies and it allows us to deliver better value for our customer's technology investments.
More information can be found at http://www.joomladesignservices.com
