I don't think we're being hasty Paul... A 'beta' version is no good for a production site so our hands are tied and we are now at Joomla 1.7 (admittedly 1.6 had a short shelf life) but still no movement or INFORMATION (other than we were initialy told K2 would never be avaialable for J1.6).

 

I (for one) can't say to clients (potential clients):

"There is a really great system that makes your site very powerful and it can work like a magazine/blog/store but sadly the developers are way behind the core development so you can't have it, even though i initially recommended it, so now we'll either have to wait an UNSPECIFIED time, use an old and soon to be unsupported version (J1.5) or use something else."

 

I think the general frustration here is that while we (the users) appreciate that this very powerful system that is given freely; Nobody appears to be keeping us up to date with lead-times etc. Which leads to wondering if we should commit to using the product in future or skip off and try another system.

 

i would love to continue with K2 but now i have my doubts that it is worth waiting and i have several sites in production that require that great K2 function...

Joomla 1.7 (STS) - EOL - Feb 2012 and Joomla 1.5 (LTS) - EOL - Apr 2012 and come Feb 2012, the current versions will still be Joomla 1.5 and the new Joomla 1.8 (LTS - Should release in Jan 2012) More info here . So we can still use Joomla 1.5 with K2 till Apr 2012 :D

 

Simon at getk2.org said this - "Delays have been due to making sure K2 and Joomla ACL work nicely together." Read Here

 

So chill guys, they're working extra hard here so that people like you and me can still use this excellent component.

 

As i said before.. "All we need is just a little patience..." GNR

Hi Kannan

Personally I have much faith and paitence... But as you're probably aware - the business world does not.i just can't tell client(s)

"It wil be fine but you must wait 6 months or have an out of date system in place until then and then i will update (rebuild) if for you using the new version assuming there are no compatability issues"

 

I would really love to continue with K2 as it is great... And i really appreciate the work/time etc that has gone into building it. Sadly though market forces dictate in any (technology driven) business: if you fail behind you will never be able to catch-up.

Hi Chris James,

 

We've had great plugins and components from these folks since 2006 and i believe we will still have it in future. It's just been few months and we're already reading comments like as though Morpheus is in front of us and forcing us to choose the pills :D

 

Personally and without being disrespectful, i don't think i will loose client(s) just because i can't upgrade to the latest version of Joomla and K2. I normally give options to the client and decide what to use according to their needs.

 

We're all K2 users and we're here as a community and ataaw :) If you've decided to move on then great but i will stick around a bit longer.

 

 

I agree with the general point of your response... And YES the modules etc have been fantastic. However, although i also offer clients choice based on the best information available (to me) at the time, I also feel it's a little redundant to give them a system that is out of date before it's even installed AND potentially has to be rebuilt in just a few months (alhtough it may be better for my bank balance).

 

Let's face it... I doubt even I directly would lose a client based on the fact they can't use K2 because in most cases we (as professionals) are hired to do a job that the client is most probably naive of (or they would probably would not require our services). BUT i think the main issue for most here is the not knowing... when (if ever) the non-beta K2 for Joomla 1.6+ will be released.

 

More than one of my current clients needs dictate use of a good Joomla CCK... And i can't hold them off endlessly waiting for the holy grail (which K2 once was). As a result i personally DO have to choose the pill... Do i find/learn a new CCK system

or

Do i install an old system only to have to do it again in the future (for which i just don't have the time)

 

If i didn't subscribe to the ataaw ethic i wouldn't even have commented in the first place... But my business (currently) doesn't run on hope ;-)

 

Kannan Naidu said:

i don't think i will loose client(s) just because i can't upgrade to the latest version of Joomla and K2. I normally give options to the client and decide what to use according to their needs. 

Yes, i agree with the not knowing when it will be released too. There should be some announcement but it's all in the hand of The Oracle himself :D

 

As for your pill option :) We all should find and learn more than one CCK to be versatile. :D

 BUT i think the main issue for most here is the not knowing... when (if ever) the non-beta K2 for Joomla 1.6+ will be released. 

Hi Warrick van den Heever,

 

Since you've swallowed it, just sit tight and see how deep the rabbit hole goes :D. Just kidding. Yup, i believe people would definitely pay a sum to use K2.

Warrick van den Heever said:

I already had to swallow the pill and it was a hard pill to swallow. I keep coming back with the hope that K2 has been resurrected from the grave it dug itself. If they would just charge a small fee to use this cck they would be able to pay themselves and stop with the excuses. I believe K2 was that good that people would probably pay $20 to use and support this project.
Kannan Naidu said:
Hi Chris James,

 

We've had great plugins and components from these folks since 2006 and i believe we will still have it in future. It's just been few months and we're already reading comments like as though Morpheus is in front of us and forcing us to choose the pills :D

 

Personally and without being disrespectful, i don't think i will loose client(s) just because i can't upgrade to the latest version of Joomla and K2. I normally give options to the client and decide what to use according to their needs.

 

We're all K2 users and we're here as a community and ataaw :) If you've decided to move on then great but i will stick around a bit longer.

 

 

Zoo 2.4 is ready for Joomla 1.7 but not sure not sure about Seblod.

Warrick van den Heever said:
I wish there where other cck's Seblod,zoo is also not ready. I hope Joomla eventually come standard with a cck. It will make Joomla so powerful.
Kannan Naidu said:
Yes, i agree with the not knowing when it will be released too. There should be some announcement but it's all in the hand of The Oracle himself :D

 

As for your pill option :) We all should find and learn more than one CCK to be versatile. :D

 BUT i think the main issue for most here is the not knowing... when (if ever) the non-beta K2 for Joomla 1.6+ will be released. 

I looked at Zoo this morning... Not sure yet but i may give it a go.

And yes more than 1 CCK may be useful but as i already work with joomla, Wordpress, Modx and Magento, raise a family and there is only so much time in a day to work, repond to threads ;-) and learn new stuff

 

 if only we could just plug-in and upload to learn...

 

Kannan Naidu said:

As for your pill option :) We all should find and learn more than one CCK to be versatile. :D

 

Here's the problem - K2 is such a great tool that it's being used by many professional developers and designers. Some of us have invested quite a bit in to K2 by committing to using K2 on client sites and developing extensions and plugins to work with K2. I've personally contributed 4 free GPL extensions for K2. I am heavily invested and would like to see K2 succeed.

However, I cannot tell a client that I am going to have to charge them to upgrade their site in April because I can't use the latest version of Joomla and K2 today. That is simply not an acceptable answer to someone paying thousands of dollars for a website. I also have to have an upgrade path for all of my other clients already on 1.5+K2. I can't wait until April to start upgrading them, I have to start now in order to have time to upgrade all of the sites before 1.5 EOL.

Six months ago it was an easy decision, wait until K2 v2.5 comes out then start upgrading. Today, it's not that easy. With no sign of a v2.5 stable release we have to have a solution. For a company that supports dozens of clients it's not as simple as just use another CCK until K2 is ready. There is a reason companies buy all the same brand and model computers for every employee, it's easier to support when everything is the same. Once we make the switch to another CCK, it will be a pain but we'll do it for every site that needs a CCK. It cost more money to support multiple CCKs.

That is going to start happening more and more, which is costing the K2 project not just users but also developers that contribute to this project. I'm in a really tough position right now because I can't afford to wait any longer. Clients to want to hear excuses they want to see their website live. We're building out our first Zoo site now and while it works differently, it seems to be able to do many of the things K2 does as well as some that K2 does not. I would prefer to continue using K2 but as Chris James already mentioned, if you fall behind you will never catch up.

Brent Friar has put it 100% where i'm coming from too.

If I only had a few small local business owners to keep happy maybe I could wing-it but i'm 'lucky' enough to work for some larger clients and I just don't have the luxury of waiting either...

 

Off to Zoo it is then (for now at least).

and I'm off to Wordpress :D

Been playing with it this morning too... Seems to work nicely ;-)

Warrick van den Heever said:
Hey guys need to share this with the whole K2 community. ZOO in j1.7 Rocks. Might not be for everyone but it is stable and works out the box and has great documentation!!!!! I recon if more people support Zoo their product will become better and better. Yay a cck that works!!!

Hi Guys,

In the same boat as many of you. I am a Joomla template and extensions developer who has invested a lot of time an effort into K2. Our website is using K2 and we have 5 commercial extensions and 1 free extension for K2. We also designed a few templates around K2. As someone in this thread said, it once was the holy grail and we thought we were staying ahead of the game by supporting it. We recently updated all of our extensions and templates to be 1.7 compatible. Only K2 and Virtuemart extensions are left and I am getting nervous. We recently developed an awesome K2 extension called K2 expander which uses AJAX to present K2 items in a cool way. (This shows that I was confident in K2 moving forward) I was hoping, by the time I was ready to use it (now) on our newest template, K2 would be ready. It is not. I am stuck here, hoping K2 will finally get going. Maybe it is time to scrap K2 and convert our extensions to work with ZOO? I wish I didn't have to write that.....

Is Zoo really a CCK?  Seems like you need to download an APP in order to get anywhere.  You can't really create your own fields unless they are already defined by the APP.  It's like a flexible bubble, but you can't burst out.  Of course if they had more APPs for any occasion then my whole argument would mean nothing.

Actually Joomla 1.7 stable is out. What he means is to install J 1.7 and then install the K2 v2.5 (beta)

Hi Warrick

Thanks for the info. Following this thread I installed Zoo the other day. So far I have only had time for a quick look... I intend to did deeper in the next few days, but you have already helped me think I have made the right choice (or PILL as someone suggested in reference to the choice made in the matrix).

Despite some valid opinions here, I personally just don't have time to wait or mess about 'hoping'.

I just wish K2 was not falling behind and now I can see that (like you?) I will probably end up using Zoo in future and bin this once great system. Shame

My advice (for what it's worth) to the developers is sadly simplistic: Life isn't fair: Evolve or die.

 

Warrick van den Heever said:

Well you roll it up into a ball and throw it at the screen really hard! To soft and it won't work. :) the harder the better!

I have used zoo for 2 days now. It comes with a pic gallery, video, google maps etc. etc. Its stable! And you don't have to throw it that hard. I have completed a whole site using it and it works really well. K2 is not the only cck out there.

Seblod is quite good too but requires the largest learning curve. They inform their community of developments, though not always meeting deadlines they do show that they care and have a great forum for questions etc. It does everything K2 does and much more! Its free and you don't need to subscribe (even though the site makes you think you do). They are free too!

Both Seblod and Zoo are good alternatives to K2 and seem to be going forward in the right direction. Learning curve is a bit larger than K2 but well worth it in the end.

Geoffrey said:

How do I throw svn at 1.7 beta? William White said:
Try throwing the svn at 1.7 beta and see what happens. i think i saw a post somewhere where it was working...but all beta beta beta....

I think you're so right...

It's such a shame though because K2 was once the holy grail of joomla functionality (to me). It firmly put Joomla above Wordpress as the choice for me when working on many client sites that had the 'newspaper' feel etc. Wordpress is great (before anyone thinks I'm taking a shot - I use it all the time). Now however, as far a Joomla is concerned, it seems I must reluctantly move on in my choices... rather than instal an OUT OF DATE Joomla just to make this work.
Warrick van den Heever said:

I'm not sure if they read these posts. I know if I had a product I would be defending my decisions. They do make money on K2. Joomlaworks sell the accessories(Gallery pro, K2mart, SuperBlogger).

The silence is defeaning..

 

I got flamed in another thread for asking for info on the 1.7 realease but as others have said, if you use K2 for client sites, it really is time to get worried because decisons have to be made about which path to go down.

 

I love K2, it's fantastic and I desperately want to stay with it and would pay money for a stable realase for 1.7

 

Just need to know some info.. if it's not working out or the changes are too great in the 1.7 codebase, then fair enough but at least let us know!

It's in release candidate status. Start using it now and update to the final when it arrives, ok?