For some sites (no users, just publishing) I find myself using core Joomla features less and less (using mostly menu & template assignment), and I was wandering if there's a way to run k2 by itself?

Hi,

I am out of loop like most of the other users on the turmoil surrounding Joomla community. Can you please provide some more details on what is going on? Is there something to be concerned about? Will Joomla die soon? Should I jump ship to Wordpress or Drupal?

Thanks

Fotis wrote: At the moment, K2 requires Joomla to run. Like you mentioned, things like the menus, modules, template et al are required (in terms of UI) to properly control your site.

There are thoughts however for a new Joomla-based distribution or fork with K2. Especially with all this turmoil surrounding the Joomla community lately.

K2 will go forth, with or without Joomla ;)

The only "turmoil" I've seen lately has been between JoomlaWorks and Joomla. Check the JoomlaWorks Twitter feed for examples of the in-fighting that is taking place. I don't think this is news. Back when Joomla was going from 1.5->2.5 or maybe it was 2.5->3.x or whatever, Fotis had some pretty bold opinions about not going with Joomla and there was a bunch of discussion about it back then.

Based on what I've seen with Joomla vs what I've seen with JoomlaWorks, I'd say that JoomlaWorks is on the wrong side of the argument. Sure, the Joomla community, development, regulations, code standards and all of that aren't perfect, but can you imagine if that 3.4.5 patch took as long to come out as K2 v3? What a mess that would be.

As far as I know and as far as I'm concerned, K2 only exists because of Joomla and Joomla can function perfectly well without it, whereas the same is not true in the other direction.

Just a few thoughts...

Let's be honest here.
.
1. Com_Content is 10 years behind k2. Every feature they've introduced in last few years has already been in k2 - such as user profile or tags for example.
2. Yes you can extend it with a ton of plugins and achieve the same result but then you have to maintain those plugins. ( after 7 years I myself am down to 2 providers - Joomlaworks and Nonumber, occasionally Gavick- that's it.)
3. Joomla updates with k2 are a breeze cause anything hardly ever breaks
4. Migrations between 1.5-2.5-3.0 was super easy as nothin was dependent on Joomla structure
5. Since joomlaworks templates I haven't used another club template as other are bloated, slow, difficult to configure, got to compress everything, etc compared to "non-nonsense" framework templates.
.
In last 4 years I've built 1, and I mean only 1, website without k2. And guess what, 4 months later I was rebuilding it with k2 cause it was too complex for client to manage content with a ton of plugins.
.
It is disappointing to see lack of communication and delays with k2, or not seeing a another template release, but ultimately k2 offers 90% of your use case scenarios - as it is!
.
What's hard is,
1) knowing there are solutions in k2v3 to some of the issues I'm having to create a workaround for using v2
2) i am also running out of ways to customize existing themes to make them look unique.

For those reasons I am anxiously awaiting v3 and new themes just like everyone else.

As for going with just Joomla core install... I would not consider it - zoo would be my next option.

As for the turmoil...
Joomla should come out with paid pro version and forget ads - community will support itself if they put out quality.
.