Possible Game-Changer Alert: K2

Written by John Coonen

Wednesday, 18 March 2009 18:00

Could this be a game-changer for Joomla! Website Creators? Time will tell, but the success of Developer JoomlaWorks Ltd in the past should be a healthy indicator of good things to come from their sparkly new creation, called "K2."

Paraphrased from K2's creator, Fotis Evangelou: "You no longer need a dozen components - and even more modules - to do things like run a news site or blog." Implying, "All you need is K2."

Sound yummy yet? Does to me too. ;)

If you're familiar with Drupal, you might be asking yourself whether this sounds rather CCK-esque. You'd be correct. Just like Drupal's Content Construction Kit, K2 is not your everyday "add-on" component to create a sweet little effect, or make a minor UI enhancement.

Nope, if it shapes up right, this could go into the "evolutionary" category for Designers and Developers using Joomla CMS. K2 is a core content component, intended to enhance and simplify the way you work on the very core CMS itself - much like the evolutionary CCK did for Drupal's core.

As a content construction component, K2 gives Website Creators the power to create a wide variety of functionality, all within one dashboard. Creating a document management system, product catalog, portfolio, knowledgebase, directory listing or more; these can all be done through the new K2 component.

K2 is extensible, plus users can add content fields, create category-specific content items and more. Many out there will do a silent "happy dance" in knowing K2's nested-level categories replace the section-category hierarchy too. Evangelou adds, "K2 provides the Website Creator with the tools to start building a flexible and correctly organized website without the need to use Joomla Articles."

So, yeah. We'll stop right there and point you to their website. Methinks they may be onto something very interesting indeed.

Oh, one last bit - Lead Developer Fotis Evangelou announced the launch at 2:17 pm on March 19, 2009 (US GMT -6), with the words, "K2 out." By 2:25, the Joomla Skype Chat was buzzin. Progress is a good thing. ;)

So now that K2's out, the question is, Are you in?

The Free, OS-GPL-licensed K2 is available right now for download here.

See JoomlaWorks Blog here.