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.

What were the site requirements?

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.

How is JReviews being used on the site?

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!

What are the key advantages of using JReviews for your website or business?

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.

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.

What were the site requirements?

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.

Why was JReviews chosen?

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.

How is JReviews being used on the site?

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.

What are the key advantages of using JReviews for your website or business?

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.