Review of content construction (cck) kits in Joomla

I thought I would review the top three Content Construction Kits (CCK) available for Joomla?

What is a content construction kit? Well, it is something that has its roots in the Drupal open source project.

What it allows you to do in Joomla, is basically modify your article
input form to have additional fields, which can then be used to enter
and display more customized content.

Below is the review of the top 3 available content construction (cck) kits for the Joomla content management system. (all free)

K2 

K2 Content Construction Kit

K2 is a new powerful content component
for Joomla! It provides an out-of-the box integrated solution featuring
rich content forms for items (think of Joomla! articles with additional
fields for article images, videos, image gallerie....).

-- FEATURES ---
Since K2 is extensible with additional fields to its base item form,
you can easily create category-specific content types, e.g. article,
blog post, product page, directory listing.

K2 offers as standard:
- nested-level categories (no section/category restrictions)
- commenting, integrated with reCaptcha
- tags
- item image (useful for articles/catalogs)
- image galleries
- videos
- attachments
- user pages (author blogs/user profiles)
- ajax-based frontend editing
- ACL for content
- Unique plugin system to extend item, category and user forms
...and more!

K2 fully supports the Joomla! API, which means all Joomla! plugins will
function properly within the component, either in the frontend or
backend.

Where do I start?

STEP 1. Download the latest version of K2 from the JED or from JoomlaWorks.

STEP 2. Install K2 using the Joomla EXTENSION MANAGER.

STEP 3. Open K2 dashboard from the COMPONENT MENU.

STEP 4. Create EXTRA FIELD GROUPS. Name your field groups Blog,
Catalog, Directory or anything you want. Extra Field Groups are used as
root for your categories.

STEP 5. Add EXTRA FIELDS for your extra field groups.

Default: Title, Text and Image are the default fields. This could be
readily used for your Articles, Blogs or News groups. Add extra field
for Directories, Catalogs, and other extra field groups.

STEP 6. Add CATEGORIES. Associate extra field group for your
categories. You can create categories for your Blog, Catalog or
Directory. Configure your desired parameters.

STEP 7. Add USER GROUPS. Defaults are Registered and Site Owner. If you
want certain user group to be able to add item at the frontend, select
yes for FRONT-END ITEM EDITING, yes for ADD ITEMS, yes on how they edit
an item: OWN or ALL, and yes for PUBLISH, if you want users to publish
their own articles.

DO NOT FORGET TO ASSIGN CATEGORIES for your user group. Options are all, none, and select from list.

STEP 8. Assign your existing users their own K2 USER GROUP. Set their
gender, add description, and upload an image for their avatar. These
details will appear as author's detail at the bottom of their articles
if enabled in your category parameters.

STEP 9. Add tags.

STEP 10. Assign menus using the Menu Manager.

Options:
Copy or form layout
Item - create a menu item directly to an item in K2
Categories - displays a list of items from one or more categories.
Tag - create a menu linking to a tag in K2
User Page (blog) - create a menu item linking to a user page (blog layout)

STEP 11. Publish K2 LOGIN module in module manager.

You can also publish K2 COMMENTS and K2 CONTENTS if you want certain contents and comments appear in your module positions.

STEP 12. Add an item for each category. If you followed Step 7, an ADD
AN ITEM menu will appear in K2 login module. This allows certain users
to add an item at the frontend.

Frontend editing is a little off because the creator of K2 used a
squeezebox instead of a standard form. The save and cancel button can't
be seen (or hidden) if you are using desktops or laptops with small
screen.

There are other parameters that need to be configured. I'll leave that
to you for experimenting and exploring capabilities of K2.

-----

Again, I had similar problems with K2. Any mod-rewrite seemed to
conflict with even the plugin, as I kept getting a white screen when
trying to create a content type. Very little documentation.

To Download this CCK for Joomla: http://community.getk2.org/

Which was the best CCK for Joomla? 

Probably none of them.

Honestly, it is apparent that Joomla
is trying to catch up with Drupal on this one. Also, drupal has a
mechanism to draw information from the CCK data base and show it in
different views.

I really had a simple need when starting the project, and that was to
allow a client to create one article, that would have certain content
displayed on the home page blurb, but then show different content
(without showing the original content) on the main page.

After going through these three plugins, and being a bit freaked out by
the huge changes they would make in the Joomla Core, I found a
brilliant little script called "Summary", which did everything I needed
and nothing else.

Check it out if you have similar need to modify front page blurb content: http://www.moleculargeek.net/summary.html

You can also contact me if you need help with joomla or drupal projects: http://digitalworkhorse.com/

You can also read more at http://www.squidoo.com/content_construction_joomla_cck