Hi to everyone in JED community, first of all, I need to say to all those looking for the best CCK for Joomla that they do not need to look further, that they have found it.
I run a community website dealing in real estate and tourism, using some other specific extensions to manage some parts of our website, I was looking for a proper extension to create an activity listing directory and a course listing directory, since I already used MosetsTree for some other parts of the website and Sobi2 could not fit my requirements, I decided to look for a CCK extension to build the directory myself.
First, I tried K2, another well known CCK extension but K2 really lacks of features, the main features missed in K2 is about the search & filter integration, there is another extension that helps to integrate search and filter tool to K2 but first it is commercial and secondly, the extra fields can only be used once in the search plugin and there also some other issues that make me abandon the K2 idea.
Secondly, I tried JSeblod, I am not telling that this one also is not good but the configuration is quite complex and really not suitable at all for newbies in Joomla.
Finally, I take a look at FLEXIcontent, after some hesitation, since our website is a productive website, I decided to give it a chance and tried it, the result was totally awesome, I could build all two directories as I wanted it with the same extensions and I could also add as many features as I wanted such as video embed from YouTube, photo gallery, map & location, and much more simply by using some content plugin available for Joomla core contents, I was really impressed and from now, every website that I will design for my company, I will only use FLEXIcontent and no other CCK extension.
Implementing the search and filtering features within each category was just like a child stuff, so easy to implement, just create a select field with the required filter option and add it to the template and type of content, that's it, you have a fully functional search feature without the need to implement any other third party 'commercial' extension.
Additionally, after creating the first directory, I noticed a small error in the display, which was caused by my own website template CSS, since I do not really know how CSS stuff works, I decided to add a support request in the free community support forum of FLEXIcontent team, here again, I was really impressed, within less than 2 hours, yes really, not more than 2 hours, Micker helped me to solve the issue, he came to my website, looked for the issue, and found the error and sent me the solution to solve it.
Dear JED community, there are other commercial extensions team who do not even reply to support on their own support forum and do not even care to reply to support request in a timely manner, I will not mention any of them here, but I will say a great thank you from the bottom of my heart to the FLEXIcontent team and say them that what they are doing is really fantastic.
I know that it is not easy since it is a non-commercial extension but guys, try your best to keep FLEXIcontent alive and even for later Joomla version, as I mention you on your website forum, as soon as we start to generate some nice income from our website, we'll definitely send you some of it since you helped us very much to find the right solution for what we were trying to do.
Thanks again guys, T.
