Joomla! Is one of the popular content management system used widely to develop e-commerce websites, Business websites, and portfolio websites.
A content management system is what that keeps track of content on your Web site, more like your music player keeps track of the songs and stores them. But here, it can be anything photos, music, video, documents, text or anything you can think of.
The advantage of using CMS it doesn’t require any technical skills
Joomla has everything that is necessary to build a perfect website. There are more than 7000 extensions for Joomla that allows you to extend your website’s functionality with a click. Having those extensions is a PLUS!!!!
Using extensions, we can add more functionality to our needs.
- Which one is the best Event Calender Management Extension? Jevents Vs Ohanah
- Check out the best Shopping Cart Extensions for Joomla
Okay, let’s talk about few of them…In this article, we will discuss the three most popular extensions that are being used commonly for building a Social Networking website.
- JomSocial
- Community Builder
- EasySocial
Let’s talk you through with Jomsocial first.
JomSocial Vs Community builder Vs EasySocial
Jomsocial
Jomsocial as the name suggest “social” and we all are familiar with the word here meaning social relations among people who share similar interests, activities and more… Jomsocial is a social networking component for Joomla! It allows you to create your own Network socially with Video and Photo Gallery, Event Management and other features that can work out of the box. This component here is the most powerful community extension for Joomla!
Features:
- JomSocial has the Responsive design.
- Additional functionality of Event Management can ease off the pressure of managing community activities in numbers.
- You can do Media sharing with photos and videos gallery.
- Group and Discussions feature to provide the customized level of sharing.
- To make great user experience, there is a facility to communicate privately with friends via private messages.
- Postbox to post updates, photos, videos, and events.
- The user can ‘Like’ and ‘Comment’ on Activity Stream for both guest and member.
- Option to Cross update to and from Facebook.
- Provides On-site notification. 10. Easy management for Recurring Events.
- Easy to use File Sharing.
Okay, let’s have a seat and talk about the second social networking component that is being widely used.
Community Builder
In Joomla, we use term CB as an abbreviation for Community builder. It is an extremely flexible and resilient networking solution for Joomla.
As we all are well aware of how social networking is taking a toll on the human life the more appealing your website is… more users we have. It’s a common phenomenon where user like images, videos rather than just having a simple text on the Social Networking Websites.
We will move forward with features of it rather talking about how social media is taking control of ordinary user life.
Features
- Communicate with friends using built-in integration with uddeIM messaging.
- Let user/members interact (using email or PMS extension).
- A module from where we can manage registration and profile image approval in the front end.
- An option to extend the registration process gathering more data before accepting memberships.
- Provide field type supports text, text area, single checkbox, multi-checkbox, radio, editor area, image, file, Ajax text, rating field, integer field and delimiter field. Additional field types can be created and installed as CB plugins.
- Provides a CB module that displays member image, link to the profile, private message integration, captcha integration, etc.
- Yes! Of course, it is responsive can easily manage from the mobile device or tablet.
- Ad-hoc mass mailings.
- Sort and filter list as needed. Unlimited user lists to display accurate data for each member. Specify if user list is searchable or not.
- All front end elements are ready to go in all languages and can be modified or manipulated according to the need.
As we are so close to choosing the best among three aren’t we?? Now let’s move to the final and the last component that is being used by the Web sites.
EasySocial
Easy social is fast and easy social network extension for Joomla! Registration flow and memberships are highly customizable for a broad range of community Web sites.
This extension will provide you smooth and seamless blog layout integration with the majority of the Joomla templates that are present in the market. The most eye-catching feature is the ability of this extension to create your application and tools within itself.
An easy way to start building your social network today!
Features:
- An application which allows users to collaborate with one another which enhances your group.
- Allow the user to host their albums and photos on the site.
- Meetups and schedule events can easily be managed and the option to links the user’s calendar as well.
- Customizable registration flows to suit according to your community requirements.
- On the activity stream an additional privacy option for each user profile, posts, and items.
- Facebook user can quickly register on the site by signing up using their Facebook account.
- Though sharing some file? Can be easily be managed here.
- And, of course, the Responsive layout that works well with the mobile and tablets.
- Integration with Amazon S3 to host your photos and files.
- A private messaging system that allows community member to communicate with one another.
- One plus here, Migration of JomSocial or Community Builder into Easysocial with few easy steps.
- Community updates with live notifications and email notifications
Conclusion
However at the end of the day, it is your choice which matters which Social network extension suits your purpose, budget, and skills. There is no perfect solution out there. EasySocial uses most advanced technology but lacks extensibility and compatibility of JomSocial and CB. CommunityBuilder is open source but has not evolved much over time and does not have any complimentary extensions of its own. JomSocial has a lot of extendability and complimentary components for scalability but has more bugs than the other two and is not the perfect choice if you are looking to replicate a favorite social network site.
So you must choose carefully and wisely before making a decision. It is not easy to migrate from one component to other every time, and your users won’t like that much of change in one go. We hope our guide would have helped you
Credits:
- Anikesh Tiwari (PHP Developer)
- Rahul Ahluwalia (Quality Analyst)
