JOOMLA! EXTENSION FOR WEB 2.0 (SOCIAL NETWORKS AND FORUM)
test and description of main
Joomla 1.5 extensions
non-commercial for implement web 2.0 functionalities
Luca Salvatori
why Joomla 1.5 and not 1.0 or 1.6?
Joomla 1.6 is too recent and there are not many components
Joomla 1.0 is too old
there are many good components for Joomla 1.5
which components did I examine?
connections between social networks and Joomla
Joomla forums
connections between social networks and Joomla
there are many types, but I will show you only the most used:
myApi
ShareMe Plugin
ITPs
Trendy Social Share
myApi
The most complete extension to integrate facebook in Joomla:
Facebook Connect
●Full Community Builder Support
Comments
Share
Fan Box
Activity Box
Live Stream
Open Graph Meta tags
Send buttons
ShareMe Plugin
●will allow Joomla users to share sites contents with users of Facebook, Google Buzz and Twitter
Button positions can be changed only by the css. (Hard for not expert people)
ITPs:
ITPShare
ITPFloatingShare
ITPConnect
ITPSharePoint
ITPShare
●for: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus One,LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Buzz, Digg,ReTweetMeMe, Yahoo Buzz
●Specific settings for each one
●You can choose the location of the categories,articles or front page: before or after
ITPFloatingShare
the same as the last one
ITPSharePoint
●This code {itpsharepoint} indicates the place where the buttons will be rendered.
ITPConnect
allows users  to login with their Facebook accounts
Trendy Social Share
This is only one module or plugin (not a different one for each action)
It allows you to insert some popular social network buttons:      Tweeter, Facebook, Digg,Yahoo Buzz and Google Buzz
●the module is available for vertical and horizontal style
●the plugin is available for Intro Content or Full Content
Vote (from 1 to 10)
myApi
ShareMe Plugin
ITPs
Trendy Social Share
Number of social network
Number of functions
for each social network
Easiness to install and configure
1
5
8
9
9
8
7
7
5
8
6
9
Joomla forums
The three most used are:
Fireboard
Kunena
Phpbb
Fireboard
Integrated into Joomla
Only for Joomla 1.0 (or 1.5 in legacy mode)
Complete
Very used
Easy to configure
Not very fast to run
Kunena
Evolved by Fireboard
Integrated into Joomla
Joomla 1.5 native
Complete
Very used
Easy to configure
Not very fast to run
Phpbb
Not directly in Joomla
You must configure a bridge to connect Phpbb with Joomla 
Difficult management of the users
Not for inexpert people
Complete
Very fast to run
Benchmarking FireBoard vs Kunena vs Phpbb
After a short test it is possible to see how various forum systems for Joomla use server resources (MySQL queries).
The forums contents are equal. FireBoard and Kunena use avatars from Community Builder.
After performing some common tasks, the amount of MySQL queries used by each forum System have been calculated:
Homepage
(categories)
Single forum
Topic
FireBoard 1.0.5 RC1
Kunena 1.0.7 b
Phpbb 3.0.4
95
7
84
31
8
32
79
10
78
In conclusion, a perfect Joomla forum does not exist:
Fireboard is a little old but complete and easy to configure
●Kunena is not fast but very easy to configure
●Phpbb is very fast but very hard to configure
Thanks for your attention!
different position: left or right side
This material is distributed under the Creative Commons "Attribution - NonCommercial - Share Alike - 3.0", available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/