Hi,

I'm new to K2 and like what it has to offer, but am wondering what kind of disadvantages I will face by using it. I'm sure there must be any and I depending what they are, I can deal with it, but need to know before hand.

I currently run a site with Jooms 2.5, publishing articles and stories, where users currently cannot log in or participate. With K2 I would like to change this and make it possible for users to comment on posts.

I have heard that K2 makes some extensions incompatible, so that might be a concern, as I plan to implement a for pay / membership section in the future.
Also, I wonder if the change is reversible, can I go back to standard Joomla if I experience problems that I cannot solve with K2?

I know that any software has good and bad points, so you don't have to sugar coat anything, I'm very realistic and won't disqualify it due to bad points, but understandably I want to hear of them BEFORE I convert over to K2, not afterwards and I will likely find out later anyway, as I want to grow the site quite a bit still. Is there a competing framework system, what is your opinion about that one?

So far I have to say that I love the feature list that K2 has, offering lots of functions that Joomla should have, but does not. I would prefer to extend Joomla with a whole framework like K2, instead of have to cobble it together with tons of different extensions.

I'm grateful for any pointers.

Thanks,

Nigra

*BUMP*
Nobody?

Not one reply in a newbie forum about a very simple question in 6 days?

I currently run a site with Jooms 2.5, publishing articles and stories

K2 will import your exisitng content. Sometimes if you have a large number of articles you may run into problems with the import. There are other commercial solutions for importing items into k2 (search here for csv import)

With K2 I would like to change this and make it possible for users to comment on posts.

With k2 the build in commenting system will either work for all users or registared only. Recaptua is a good idea if setting comments to all users to prevent spam

I have heard that K2 makes some extensions incompatible, so that might be a concern, as I plan to implement a for pay / membership section in the future.

K2 does not "make" any extension incompatiable, although the extension "may itslelf be incompatiable"

Also, I wonder if the change is reversible, can I go back to standard Joomla if I experience problems that I cannot solve with K2?

The joomla articles you import into k2 will still be there along with their categories and will not be deleted. i do not know of a system to put your new k2 items back into articles unless you do it manually

instead of have to cobble it together with tons of different extensions

That is really what k2 is for. At minimum you will need k2, sigpro, and all videos, which are all from joomlaworks.

I would suggest you put up a test site and test all your extnesions, plugins, and the import process to make the choice from actual tests !

Hi William,

Thanks for the kind reply. I took the plunge and am reforming my webpage.
Thankfully, I don't have that many articles, so importing is not a problem.

So far I have found some incompatible plugins:

AutoTOC ( to create automatic table of contents, clickable, that takes you directly to the section with the title)
Is there a replacement that plays nice with K2 and allows auto generation of a TOC that is clickable? I have really large articles.
AutoTweet , an extension to automatically create tweets and facebook entries from newly published articles on Joomla.
The facebook part never worked for that, but I miss the autotweet. Is there a plugin that does the same on K2?
I have seen some twitter or Facebook functionality, but I think that is not what I need.

There is absolutely zip documentation, to the degree where a newbie does not know where up and down is. Explaining the structure of K2 would be very very important, at least pointing out that K2 will coexist wiht the rest of Joomla and that you have to create own menu entries, before K2 is even visible on the website.
Maybe I can help with this, as I think as a newbie I will be able to relate to what a beginner needs to know.

To not go overboard and do something that is too big and will not get finished, I think a simple FAQ would do the trick. Is there one already? A quick start guide?

What is especially important to point out what a person has to do just after they have installed K2 to make it work.
I have not seen the videos yet, so I have to admit that there might be stuff in there that I didn't consider.

I have seen that K2 is really excellent, one can see that also from the many excellent testimonials. Of course there are some people that do complain, but I liked very much that you refuted almost every post and explained that what they said is just not true. So the way it stands right now is that if somebody is very knowledgable about Joomla and web tech in general, they get around and figure things out themselves But other people might struggle, as pretty much nothing is explained.
How for example can I use multi language? half of my site is in German, the other half in Englisch. I have seen that the log in dialog is still in English, how to change it to German?

This probably has a simple and easy answer, but as a newbie I could not find it so far.

So a FAQ in the way of:

Q: I'm a newbie. How to get my site up and running with K2 ASAP?
A: Install K2 like any other plugin. Import the articles, which converts them to the K2 format. Make sure you are using the K2 item "editor" in the components | K2 section, instead of the joomla way of creating articles.
Then make sure that you replace all your menu entries with K2 entries.
Pay attention to the settings in the K2 panel, as they will define how everything works and looks.

Q: I am having trouble with stuff not working, errors are getting displayed.
A: There are plugins that you might be using that are not compatible with K2. Make sure you disable or uninstall them.Sometimes, the error message will give you a hint on what is breaking:
error blablablabla /AutoTOC for example showed me that AutoTOC was not playing nice with K2. See list here of known problem plugins. Often, they are doing something dynamically to an article and are not aware of K2 being there and that is where stuff starts breaking. There is nothing we can do to make K2 "compatible" to these extensions.
Please point it out to the authors to make their plugins K2 aware.

Q: You have an import function to import articles into K2 items. Once I am on K2, can I revert back to the standard Joomla article?
A: Currently, there is no automated way to do this. You would have to copy each article manually. K2 is mature and has a big community, but if you are concerned or want to only try it out, setup a test site, before touching your productive data.

Q: I cannot comment with my user. When I click on comment, it does nothing. What is going wrong?
A: Make sure you have at least one K2 user group, give that group permission to comment and make sure users are part of that group.

(I had that problem, by standard K2 does not create any user groups and neither did any ReadMe file or document tell me that I was supposed to do this)

Here just a few pointers, I know this FAQ would not be perfect like this, but it would be a start and would help newbies get up to speed.

It would also be good to have a feature list, that shows what K2 currently does and what not (or what is planed for the future)

I have to say I like K2 really a lot and think that some kind of quick start FAQ or documentation would make it even better and accessible to so many more users.

And as far as the complaints that I have heard about the forum support being slow. Well, it is open source, it is based on participation of everybody, it is not like you are being payed for it or anything and so as a person that loves open source and is reasonable, I thank you for your help and spending time helping users out.

It is easy to complain, but somebody that does not contribute (or pay anything for it) really does not have the right to nag.

Hmm, I'm curious, there quite a lot of views but no feedback at all. Is the FAQ that I state irrelevant? Is there such a FAQ already and/or documentation that I am not aware of?