Collaborative Effort
January 2009 - Present
J
oomla! Component Manager was created based on a need in a specific segment of the market. Within the Joomla site development venue many people use an advanced user registration and profile management system called Community Builder. This tool captures customized information about a user during the registration process. This information is useful as a precursor to social networking and a way for visitors to learn more about others on the site.
I saw a need to take this profile information and use it to customize a site for the specific person. A simple example is to welcome the user with their name once they successfully login. Another example would be to capture information about their interests and direct specific content to them based on their profile.
Read on to find out more about JCM
With the help of an excellent programmer (Joshua Lust), we created two plugins to Joomla. The first one called CBP (Community Builder Personal-izer) retrieved and displayed a user's profile information within a page's content. The second called ITB (If-Then-Bot) tested a user's profile information, and if true, displayed content.
A simple example of its use would be to guide a user to purchase a specific product. Let's say we capture a user's favorite type of pet (e.g. dog, cat, bird, ...) and the name of their pet.
Then when after they login, they can see something like:
"Joe, we are glad to have you back at ABC Pet Supply Shop."
"We wanted to let you know that Skippy should get a new flea collar for the Spring. Use this coupon code [FL37A] and click here to order one."
Where the information is taken from his profile and a link created directly to the product from using CBP and ITB.
To see it in action, go to: Joomla! Component Manager.
We created free (limited functionality) and pro versions. They were priced for volume.
Over the time this site and product went live in January of 2009, we are seeing (on average) 210 downloads per month.
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