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.

The Kunena Blue Eagle template has been around for a long time—over 6 years since it was first designed for K 1.6—and it is the basis for 95% of the hundreds of thousands of Joomla websites around the world that use the Kunena forum product.  As you can imagine, there have been a lot of changes in the last 6 years.  Apart from thirty-plus releases of Kunena there have been changes in web-browser technology, HTML, CSS and generally in the way people prefer to view web content (desktop computers, laptops, tablets and mobile phones).  It is not surprising that the Kunena Blue Eagle template developed 6 years ago (and that has largely remained unchanged over this time) is showing its age.

In the years that the author has been associated with Kunena we must have answered thousands—possibly tens of thousands—of questions about how to change bits and pieces of the standard Kunena template.  This article will demonstrate a couple of changes that you can make to give your forum template a simple, modern and more elegant look.

Kunena is a Joomla extension.  This means it relies on Joomla for account creation, user login and forum access.

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.

After my preliminary evaluation of Chronoforums [CF] as an alternative to Kunena (and taking the decision to install CF here), I am now in a position to give a report card on the product.  Obviously CF is different to Kunena and it would be unfair to criticise (or praise) CF because of those differences:  the two products have different features and, internally, they operate differently.  Some people will feel that CF does not have the range of features necessary to operate a forum on a Joomla website; the same criticism can also be levelled at Kunena, too.  It is my overall opinion, however, that while CF lacks some of Kunena's features, the absence of those features is not a show-stopper.  On the other hand, the presence of certain features in Kunena may prevent people from using it.  This article is concerned with Chronoforums.  If people want to compare CF against other products, that’s something people may do for themselves.

Purpose

Chronoforums is a Joomla extension.  This means it relies on Joomla for account creation, user login and forum access.

Chronoforums is a popular[1] forum product for Joomla. Perhaps the best example of its use is at the Chronoforums website.  It’s difficult to say how well this product will satisfy your requirements (because everyone is different) but, in general terms, CF provides the essential features needed to run a forum.  Lacking some features, a non-MVC internal design (and, therefore, making it somewhat difficult to adapt the component to suit different localities) and poor documentation may deter some people from using CF.  However, if you operate an English-language forum, require a basic range of features and you have the patience and willingness to persevere, you will probably find that CF will meet your purposes without needing to “tweak” it.  Generally-speaking, CF is fairly intuitive from the end-user perspective and should require little training of your users to make the most of it.  If your users are familiar with the basic features of a web-based discussion forum then they should have no trouble using it.