Jomsocial or Community Builder?

Question

I'm going to make a small social network and I do not have any experience in this issue. Which is better to use, JomSocial or Community Builder? Which one is more secure? Please give me your reasons.

Best Regards, Ata

Answer 1

Community Builder
My first touch with social extensions for Joomla was with Community Builder, some years ago, on my early steps into the Joomla world. At that time, I found it troublesome enough, as it needed a significant amount of configuration steps. Since that time, I have never used it again, not because I didn't like it, but just because it never happened.

JomSocial
As for JomSocial, I have used it on Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2.5 websites as per customer needs. As you can find in various posts in the web, it does indeed a pretty good job on letting you build rather fast, an adequate social network in Joomla "out of the box". It has a significant amount of features and comes packaged with nice layouts, that will let you be up and running.

Comparison
But comparing to Community Builder, it will reach rather soon a limit, regarding the configuration and extensibility options, particularly if you want to take your Social Network to the next level. Furthermore, I have heard many users complain about the level of support, but I know that recently JomSocial has changed owner and I can't be sure about the current situation.

Integration
Regarding extensibility and integrations, both components are well-known in the Joomla community and there are dozens of plugins, templates and other extensions that integrate with both.

MVC
As Lodder said, MVC is critical point when we are talking about Joomla extensions these days. It just makes coder's life much more flexible and the maintenance is a lot more easier. If the new CB is going to be released using MVC, then this is surely a very huge advantage, considering that in the long run, it looks like a more solid and extensible extension.

Migration
One other thing, that you might want to consider, is the option to migrate from one component to the other. On this topic, I have heard about a JomSocial tool, that will let you migrate a community builder social network to JomSocial, while there is not such a tool for the other way so far.

Plan & Research
I would suggest to make a plan of what you want your Social Network do and write down the features and functionality you are going to need. Then compare the features of the 2 extensions and also try extensively their demos and search on their forums about posts related to your desired features, issues etc.

Conclusion
Finally, it all comes to what you want your Social Network do. If you need a quick and simple social network without much work, then JomSocial looks like your choice. If you envision a much more complicated social network, then better consider CB.

Answer 2

I noticed that you're putting JomSocial and Community Builder on the table; have you considered EasySocial as an alternative solution?

EasySocial, developed by the Stack Ideas team, is currently one of the most rising social networking component to date. With EasySocial, we have most of the features that other social networking extensions has to offer PLUS the Stack Ideas Support which is top-notch. Should you have any inquiries about the component, you don't have to wait for long before the support team comes to your rescue.

You can check out more about EasySocial here (http://stackideas.com/easysocial).

Answer 3

Don't get me wrong, Community Builder comes in very handy as it integrates with other extensions and is rather flexible. However, it's an absolutely massive extension. This is due to the fact that it supports Mambo and Joomla 1.0 all the way through to 3.x, therefore there is simply a load of code sitting around. Another drawback is that it wasn't written using MVC therefore things like template overrides (which are widely used) are impossible. Having said that, Community Builder 2.0 has been completely re-written so it might be worth waiting till it becomes available to download.

I have never actually used JomSocial, so I'm unable to comment on the features, however I do know that this extension uses MVC and will make life much easier for you.