We all make mistakes—tactical decisions which, with the benefit of hindsight, we wish we hadn’t made—but, if we’re honest with ourselves, we try to make the best decisions in the prevailing circumstances.  It may turn out later that the decision was the wrong one but we play the cards we’re dealt or we walk away from the game.  When I wrote my earlier article (A Tale of Two Forums) I had to make a choice:  continue using a forum product that was impossibly stuck in trouble or venture into the great unknown and try something else.

I chose to go with Chronoforums because it seemed like a viable alternative for my needs at the time[1].  I knew the risks, I weighed up the evidence for and against, and I followed my instincts.  A lot has changed with Kunena since I took that decision.  Even though Kunena has changed (and it’s still far from being completely trouble-free) I decided a few days ago to re-install it here.  My journey for the “ideal” forum product is not yet over but I thought I would share some things that I’ve learned in the hope that people reading this will find some usefulness if they’re in a similar situation

Kunena 4.0 is a Joomla 2.5/3.x component that ships with with two different template “styles” technically called MVC and HMVC[1]; these are informally referred to as Blue Eagle and Crypsis respectively.  All currently available third-party templates are based on the “MVC style”. The “MVC style” style is deprecated—meaning that the developers would have preferred to have removed entirely but it was mainly allowed to remain for people who use J! 2.5. The developers will remove support for all MVC templates from the next major version of Kunena [K 5.0].

Aside from the obvious differences in appearance, there are structural differences in the use and administraton of the product depending on the choice of template used with Kunena.  As far as I know, no-one has attempted to list the important differences between the MVC and HMVC forms of Kunena. This article is a first attempt to list the major structural differences between Blue Eagle and Crypsis. The table below is incomplete and it may contain errors.  If you find mistakes or important omissions to the list please let me know by using the comments form at the end of the article.

My last report about Kunena was not favourable; it was written more than six months ago and there have been four releases since then.  It is therefore time to update the report card.  Kunena is a popular[1] forum product for Joomla. Despite the overall declining popularity in internet forums and Joomla in general—and Kunena in particular—it remains one of the most widely-reviewed extensions in the JED.  Perhaps the best example of its use is at the project team’s website[2].

It’s difficult to say how well this product will satisfy your requirements (because everyone is different) but, in general terms, Kunena provides the essential features needed to run a forum.  Generally-speaking, Kunena is fairly intuitive from the end-user perspective and should require little training of your users to make the most of it.

Opinions matter.  In today’s poll-driven world public opinion decides the fate of governments, business success and little “successes” (and “failures”) like which movies you watch, the restaurants where you dine and even what brand of toothpaste you buy.  All opinions are personal and subjective; everyone has a different opinion about what they like and dislike.  In the end, we are totally responsible for choosing how we think and act:  we cannot blame someone else because we followed their example.

In today’s world—where opinions become the news—is it any wonder that governments want to know what voters think, that manufacturers and suppliers want to know how consumers rate their products and services, what your friends, colleagues and family think of your views?

This article discusses our current perceptions about Kunena and, just as importantly, whether the Kunena developers care what we think.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire, 1906

There must be literally thousands of different ways that site owners handle user navigation around their websites; people probably spend countless hours (and sometimes a lot of money) searching for that “ideal” menu that highlights and facilitates access to the site’s content.  There are an unlimited number of menu modules one can obtain for Joomla; some menus are included when you obtain a Joomla template and others can be installed separately.  The choice is limited only by one's imagination.

The whole point of having a menu is to make it easy for people to find what they’re seeking or to display what area of the site that they’ve found.  Whatever menu system you choose, it’s probably a good idea to keep it simple!

This article demonstrates how, with a few lines of CSS, you can transform the “standard” menu in the Blue Eagle template for Kunena from its “tabbed” appearance into a Bootstrap-like “nav pills” design without installing a Bootstrap-compatible Joomla template or an additional Joomla menu module.