| 9 results - showing 1 - 9 |
| Solution | Advanced Content Management |
Boutique travel agency specializing in honeymoons and exotic travel.
The site was for a boutique travel agency that has a lot of expertise in exotic travel – but little to no expertise in website maintenance. We had to make a self-service site that allowed the agents to easily enter information about resorts and travel specials. There was also the desire to allow users to tag their favorites.
We needed more control over the visual presentation of information than Joomla alone could provide, as well as easy input forms so that the agents could easily create new content items of different types. JReviews fit the bill perfectly. We were able to use JReviews for just about everything: the main list and detail views, as well as custom modules. Although the client ultimately opted not to have a directory of resorts, it was easy to build. Ironically, we did not use the reviews function! It was the CCK functionality that attracted us to JReviews.
JReviews is the essential component on the site. It drives the main content – resort overviews and specials – as well as the modules.
JReviews extends Joomla to make it a truly robust system. We really appreciate that JReviews builds on Joomla’s native section/category/articles rather than creating a secondary content repository; by doing so, we’re able to use the same content with other 3rd-party extensions. The templating system makes it possible to create any type of view or module, taking Joomla from a simple and basic CMS to one that is absolutely configurable and customizable.
| Solution | Education |
Cyprus High School's Media Center website.
We needed something to catalog the books in our Media Center. We wanted the ability for students to rate the books and to be able to give some comments about the book. We wanted to be able to search by author, genre, and/or publisher. We needed the ability to approve any reviews that went on the website prior to them being published.
We read the reviews about JReviews and we used the demo to get a feel for how it worked. JReviews met all of our requirements and I found them to be very helpful and they answered all of my questions.
JReviews is the cornerstone of our website. We currently have approximately 2,000 book listing and teachers and students are able to search books, submit reviews, and read about books so they can find books that interest them or meet their needs.
The most important selling point for me is the support I have received form Alejandro. He has been very helpful as I solve the problems and has helped me configure our website so it is user-friendly and informative. I have been able to do all of the things we wanted to accomplish and as new ideas have come up we have been able to modify our site to meet our expanding needs.
| Solution | Advanced Content Management • Consumer Products • Entertainment |
An editorial staff and user driven review site for movies, blu-ray, digital media, video games and other technology.
We were looking for something that had a very intricate backend that allowed for a relational database. We got something that helped us build very detailed databases and that allowed us (through little effort) to make our site more searchable and accessible to the outside world while allowing users to add their own opinions. We could not have been happier with JReviews.
JReviews is, well, for reviews! Since we mainly do reviews it seemed like a natural fit. We had certain requirements - configurable field types, cross searching, weighted scoring tight integration with the CMS(Joomla). Again, we got more than we anticipated originally! In addition, having the ability to use the built in thickbox for images without an additional plug ins is a great plus and the templates are well commented and easy to adjust.
We use it for everything. We currently have over 700+ reviews and it compliments those needs. Our Frontpage uses JReviews modules in three module positions to highlight the newest reviews from the primary categories we review on - Games, DVDS and Anime. It also is used to generate our section pages and is used within the content using a JReviews template that has been modified to allow for tabbed reviews with related items using sliding drop downs. This and various other little bits help make our site look and feel professional. It created a very solid backbone that established an organized system that works and integrates related articles together using the fields configured within JReviews. In addition, our authors don't even need to really think about what's been set up in the backend. From the front end the submission process is seamless.
First and foremost, the support from Alejandro has been unrivaled. He dedicates himself to clarifying any issues and correcting them. Service goes a long way and it shows. Now, to the beef. It fits our mold for our review site perfectly. It allows us to do so many things that we didn't feel Joomla could provide. It allows us to do a lot of relationships between fields. JReviews submission interface works well within Joomla's interface and allows for our authors to work on what they need to do, submit reviews.
| Solution | Advanced Content Management • Social Networking |
rugbyUNITED.com is a social network and news community for rugby players and fans worldwide. The site allows users to share news articles and match reports from their local regions, join groups, discuss issues on forums, share photos, and have user profiles with private messaging. The site employs the best collection of Joomla! extensions, including jReviews, Jomsocial, Jomcomment, Kunena, Eventlist, and HWDvideoshare.
The site needed to employ a very simple process for users to upload their own local news, attach pictures, and categorize their items into a complex searchable and sortable vertical and horizontal hierarchy. The site needed to accomplish all of this without sacrificing design or security and not requiring extra administrator work verifying and editing items. The final requirement was a tight integration with the community features of Jomsocial and Jomcomment.
JReviews was initially used because of it's ability to add additional horizontal categorization functionality (virtual categories) to the standard vertical hierarchy of joomla (sections and categories). It shortly became apparent that it's advanced templating capabilities and override functionality make it a very extensible solution. The final piece of the puzzle is it's out-of-the-box integration with Jomsocial.
JReviews is being used to allow our users, all of whom are members of individual athletic teams, to post their own news stories and photos in a specific category and section. However, it also allows them to tag each article with a number of virtual categories. These virtual categories are important because a reader might be interested in a specific category (college news), as well as all news in their region across multiple categories (Northwest college news, Northwest high school news, Northwest youth news, etc.). These virtual categories span the traditional Joomla categories and allow for click-to-search functionality by region, team, division, and other important features of the news articles. A number of custom templates for articles and modules were also built to allow for a more traditional news website layout with leading articles and links to additional articles in each category, all on one page. JReviews is also tightly integrated with Jomsocial, showing author avatars with links to their profiles on articles, lists of users' articles on their profiles, and notifications in the Jomsocial activity feed any time a user posts or edits an article.
The key advantages to jReviews are easy to list because it has few rivals among Joomla! extensions. The support is first class, the template code is transparent enough for even rookies to understand, and both the backend and frontend user interfaces are exceedingly powerful while remaining easy to understand for all site users. It is an abolutely critical component and does its job smoothly.
| Solution | Consumer Products |
iPhone Speaker Reviews is the premier resource for iPhone Speaker information. The site provides the best information on all iPhone Speakers, buying and brand guides as well as editorial and user reviews.
When designing iPhone Speaker Reviews we needed a system that would:
• display different custom attributes
• allow users to leave reviews
• separate editor reviews from user reviews
• have a flexible layout to maximize usability
• incorporate advertising and affiliate links
• be easy to manage and update
• keeps costs low so profitability could be reached sooner
JReviews was chosen because of the extensive list of features, excellent support and continued development. JReviews 2.0 has all of the functional requirements we needed and the theme templating system was flexible enough to meet our design requirements.
JReviews runs the core functionality of iPhone Speaker Reviews. When visitors first arrive at the home page, they are presented with several ways to find what they are looking for. These features are all JReviews elements. From the Editor top rated speakers, to the newest listing and user reviews, to searching the site using custom JReviews fields, JReviews provides it all. When the visitor finds a speaker system they are interested in, they are taken to the detail page where they learn about the unique features, read the editor and user reviews, and have the ability to leave their own review.
JReviews has allowed us to create and implement a sustainable business model. This model consists of a full featured review website, user generated content, and low costs. Using JReviews and good SEO techniques, which JReviews accommodates, we are able to achieve high search engine placement, consistent traffic, and steady advertising income. JReviews has allowed us to take several hobby sites to real revenue producing sites.
| Solution | Directory |
Astia is a unique, international not-for-profit organization. Astia provides innovative programs that ensure companies gain access to capital, achieve and sustain high-growth, and develop the executive leadership of the founding team.
A major requirement of the site was to serve as a directory for the companies and individuals for the Silicon Valley start-up community. A challenge was to figure out how to selectively search any content items based on search criteria, but to make the search results feel like part of the normal site content. For example, a company such as Microsoft might be both a sponsor of the program and a sponsor of a specific event: rather than creating multiple content items, we wanted to dynamically generate the list of sponsors based on metadata. With Joomla, this is impossible, because it's not possible to add detailed metadata to content items.
With JReviews, we were able to add "hidden" fields to normal content items that we could then use to search and display the related content items. So, in the example above, we had a basic category for "Companies". With JReviews, we created a field called "Sponsorships". For each company, we could then check-off all of the events that the company sponsored. Then, we simply created a module for each event, and "tuned" the module to only show content items with a specific event checked.
Additionally, because we wanted the site to be self-service for the client, we ended up using JReviews for everything: news items (so we could include a web link and source), a resource directory… even user profiles, so that members could search for people with special skill sets!
It's worth noting that we didn't use reviews anywhere in the site!
The one-size-fits-all flexibility of JReviews. It has been great for us – and REALLY great for our clients – to have a single system for managing all the major content types in their site. And because there is good front-end editing and content addition capabilities, our clients seldom have to go into the administration, which is how we like it.
| Solution | Real Estate • Directory |
DeedQuest is a real estate mashup that brings together – in one convenient place – analysis tools, property listings, real estate market data and networking features to help investors make faster, better investment decisions.
A major challenge for us was presenting property listings, as well as market profiles. In both cases, we needed a way to create complex, structured content items that included data – such as state, zip code, etc. – that could in turn be used for search and filters. We also needed a way for users to submit their own property listing. While we have some user reviews for market profiles, reviews are a very minor part or our site.
We had tried all of the other, out-of-the-box real estate solutions including Hot Property and EZ Realty, but they were neither hot nor easy. None of the targeted solutions provided the richness of features or the flexibility we needed.
JReviews allowed us to do everything we needed and more. Better yet we found that we could use a single product not just for our real estate listings, but also for our market profiles, and for our directory of real estate clubs, and for our directory of real estate books and conventions. We only had to learn one product to get a very rich site.
The templating of both modules and component views. The ability to create custom views – one for property listings, one for market profiles, one for real estate clubs, etc. – was what made it possible for us to a) use JReviews for just about everything in our site, and b) achieve a unified look, feel, and behavior across the site.
| Solution | Consumer Products • Social Networking |
Kumbooka is a Social Shopping site with a twist. Most sites build recommendations around the stuff we buy, kumbooka however works on the stuff we own. Users add their "Stuff" to their "Shelves" and then can become expert reviewers, on-line traders and trusted advisers.
The strength of Kumbooka is our unique "Search & Find" engine. You can find the stuff you own by typing a few keywords or even a barcode. Our key requirement was a well structured database that we could parse the search results into, and from there, allow the user to do more with their stuff, including reviewing items they own. Data entry into the database (listings) had to be transparent to the user.
JReviews offered everything we were looking for, more or less out of the box. As Kumbooka was to be built around "Social Networking" the fact that jReviews had support for Community Builder, and JomSocial, was another deciding factor.
Apart from acting as our database for the parsed search results, jReviews is linking our users together by the stuff they add. Although items are first added with our own "Search & Add" engine, even at this early stage, jReviews is the receiver of the data. Once added, most other "Stuff" functions are done directly from within jReviews. We have probably not yet pushed it to it’s limits, but we are using related modules, embedded into jReviews core. We are using the $customfield variables to a great extent, allowing users from different countries to have relevant product links etc. JReviews $customfield is also used to find other users that already own items being viewed, and really allows us to knit the whole site together.
The support on this product is second to none. The developer even assists with integration of other components into JReviews, whilst at the same time, observing trends in the Joomla market place. For example JReviews was ready to support JomSocial integration, almost as JomSocial launched.
| Solution | Education • Entertainment |
PlayShakespeare.com is the Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource providing high-quality plays, reviews, a discussion forum, a download library, and the latest Bard news.
At first, the site had a very limited roadmap, but users requested features right away. Having reviews was always part of the original plan, but we implemented other aspects like a document library, discussion forum, and a customized search first.
After a survey of the available options, we chose jReviews because it appeared there was strong support and a future. For us, the product cost was only a small part of the overall investment—most of it going into the time and effort of building and maintaining a reviews section, which could all be lost if a product suddenly died. So the stability of jReviews played a major role in our decision.
jReviews was able to do most of what we needed out of the box. But we have very specific needs that pushed the limits of the product and the developer responded to a multitude of challenges, solving our every need.
We use JReviews to allow our team of Shakespeare reviewers worldwide to contribute reviews on theatrical performances, books, DVDs, feature stories, or just about anything Shakespeare related. Reviews are evaluated on a variety of criteria as well are cross-referenced to the theatre profiles and reviewer profiles in Community Builder. Custom fields allow us to automate and monetize our reviews with aspects like Amazon and other product links. The Listings Module helps more fully integrate JReviews content into relevant areas of our site. In the future, we hope to build a directory of Shakespeare products to take full advantage of the power of JReviews. By extending Joomla's core content functionality we're able to do things previously not possible.
We're happy to see that the developer was interested in seeing jReviews work in real world applications. While it may be a challenge for some to learn the ins-and-outs of the product initially, the benefits are clear in the long run. We're trying to find other ways to leverage the power of jReviews and push it to its limits.
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