Hello,

I write this post with a heavy heart...I have been using K2 for so so many years, and I have loved the component. I used it in every Joomla build I did for myself and my customers, and back in the Joomla 1.5 days, I even replaced the default Joomla articles with k2 items and used K2 for my info pages. K2 WAS the bomb back in the day!

When JoomlArt decided to drop K2 for EasyBlog, I personally protested and argued constantly, then I saw Gavick change to EasyBlog, and I protested again...I have been one of K2's biggest fan boys who has promoted K2 till I am blue in the face.

With that said, today I move to EasyBlog...I'll tell you why!

1) Joomla 3 does almost everything K2 does and it does it better and MUCH faster

2) If ALL a person wants is 1 blog (not team or multi blogging), then they don't need anything more than default Joomla articles and maybe disquss

3) The backend user interface is dated and doesnt look professional. K2 stayed with pretty much the same 'look' with its Joomla 3 implementation....This adds less professionalisim to our projects and it adds a different UI for customers to get accustomed to.

4) The front end user interface is horrible....if people want to use K2 for Team or Multi blogging, K2 simply is to much effort. Plus to get frontend editing actually working is to much of an effort...back when I started with K2, it took way to long to figure out how to get front end editing working...it should just be a check box, nothing more to enble front end editing...in fact, it should be enabled by default, especially with Joomla 3.

5) (this relates to 3 and 4)...K2 is only applicable for web designers or people who buy templates with K2 setup and styled. For anyone who is not a website developer, K2 is not an option. It is very ugly when you install it, and requires 'time' to style it. Therefore, K2 has cornered itself into the market of developers only...same goes for the front end and backend user interface. Compare this to EasyBlog, anyone can install this and not need to edit any code to make it look right.

6) K2 simply hasnt grown and adapted to give more than what default Joomla 3 articles can give. Look at the feature set difference between EasyBlog and K2? If K2 is to survive, it needs to adapt.

7) So K2 is a CCK, not just a blog! Yes, this is true...Lately, I have been trying to find any excuse to keep using K2, as I am so familar with it..I have tried to build business directories with it, a photography site with it, and much more....IK2 simply isnt flexible enough anymore for these things, there are better Joomla extensions out there that are designed for these exact things.

8) K2 is rather slow compared to default Joomla articles

9) K2 brings out maybe 2 updates per year...For a Joomla component that has won awards and has been used widely but many Joomla template clubs, the development of K2 has been very slow and very slow to bring out new features or just updates. updates are a sign of an active community.

10) For me lately, there have been to many show stopping bugs and things that don't work, which brings us back to no.9..with new versions of Joomla 3 coming out, we need updates. One example, is the Tags..selection based...When you choose a tag from the left list and then click ADD, NOTHING shows up in the right list...It is there, but it can't be seen. This has been a problem for almost 1 year now...this is ok for people like me that know its working, but for clients, It looked upon as a horrible mess up.

11) We are moving more and more into frontend editing, and as per no.4, K2 is quite awful. As a Joomla developer, I am personally ONLY interested in Joomla extensions that have decent looking and functioning front end editing capabilities. Clients are finally starting to use their sites more now and I am receiving less support phone calls asking how to edit this or edit that.

Guys, I know you provide a free component, but if you want K2 to endure, things must change, and they must change now. WIth Joomla template clubs like JoomlArt dropping support for you, it won;t be long before more drop support for you. etc etc....Template clubs are even dropping support for Virtuemart now, because Virtuemart won't provide a Joomla 3 version until it becomes LTS.

If you have to charge money, so be it....The JoomlaSphere has been changing to a subscription based model for extensions more and more lately, so why not do that?

Either way, I do write this with a heavy heart, and honestly I write this in hopes that you take what I write seriously and look to refresh K2 and bring the Joomla community back to K2...The trouble is, once you have lost people, its very hard to get them back....Its better to change when you have people, this way when you improve and provide great new features, customers love you even more and become even more loyal.

K2 has been great, but for me (and many others as it seems), we need to find something that caters to our needs better...

Sorry for this post, BUT I look forward to see where K2 goes from here!

Signed
X K2 Lover!

Mate, just go to the JoomlArt website, instead of saying something..

The LAST JoomlArt template that CAME WITH SUPPORT for K2 was the template BEFORE JA Fixel in August 2013..When they introduced support for EasyBlog:

www.joomlart.com/joomla/templates/ja-fixel

You can also go search on the JoomlArt forums (look for my username, and look at the topics where people like me request for JoomlArt to bring back K2 support. Instead of an inflamatory response, how about doing a search to verify what I say?

JoomlArt's latest template Purity III is a FREE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED template, that the COMMUNITY provides support for K2. I assume JoomlArt will provide some form of support for all their OLD templates to some degree.

While Gavick hasnt stopped supporting K2, they have added EasyBlog to their latest template:

www.gavick.com/joomla-templates/mo,151.html

Mate, this wasn't suppose to be an inflammatory post, I just hope that K2 can add new features and grow, as there hasn't been mush ground breakingly new stuff added for years....Little things here and there...

I appreciate this is your baby and you dont like anything bad that is said, I am just trying to be honest so that we have K2 as part of the Joomla community with great new features for a long time to come, but fore me, and sadly many others, we are moving ship for the moment.

Fotis,

I have done nothing but say what I have been reading and seeing for the last 12 or more months about K2...and the JoomlArt thing is completely correct.

With all this said, I can see why you get defensive, as you've just announced V3...Which is definitely needed!

I can say that I am now personally going to hold off on 'any other solutions that I may have mentioned', in anticipation of K2 v3.

As i said, i am a k2 lover, and the whole time while building a site with EasyBlog, I kept wanting to go back to K2...but since their hadn't been many major changes for a long time, and the big boys starting to support EasyBlog, it seemed time to change....Hell, If JoomlArt decide its time to change, they must know more than I do right?

Either way, these proposed changes will more than likely keep me with k2 :cheer:

One thing though, i really wish K2 was an integration within Joomla Articles...Using K2 for everything is great, but it kinda defeats the purpose of having Joomla Articles in the first place.. I would assume K2 was born out of the pore Joomla artciles system in 1.0 and 1.5, but Joomla 3 articles are good, especially now that we have tags in Joomla 3....this would be one of my big wishes, i also say this as all my clients struggle to see why they need K2 when Joomla articles 'seems (to them at least) similar to K2 (yes i agree its different, but these are my clients who pay my bills :).

K2 3 looks great, more so looking forward to K2 3.1...

2 more things:

1) I always seem to have a need to build business directory's were different 'fields' (k2 extra fields) need to be shown or hidden to clients in frontend editing based on the joomla user group they are (IE: they have subscribed to gold, silver, or bronze package and each package will give subscribers access to different K2 extra fields). Not many Joomla directory softwares can even achieve this, without modification...so if K2 could do this, there seriously would be no need for the directory softwares that are available for Joomla right now

2) the new k2 2.6.8 has the new innoDB...You said that existing sites wont be upgraded to this. Could you advise how we can upgrade existing sites to use innoDB? I have a few projects in development using K2 and a couple of recently live sites that would benefit from this.

Great work..i do hope that anyone who has gone away from K2 does come back now with the new version about to come out...i would also be more than happy to help alpha / beta test it..

@John Dunstan

Hi. Regarding InnoDB support you can change the database engine using a tool like phpMyAdmin. But before doing this you need to ensure that:

1. You have K2 2.6.8 installed. An older version will break your site.
2. Test against any third party K2 related extensions that are not using any MyISAM specific features to their database queries.
3. Take a backup of your database since changing storage engine is not the simplest task.

I'm founder of zootemplate.com - a template club which supported K2 CCK but last month, we decided to drop K2 CCK too.