Full Joomla Integration

Agora is an integrated, bridge-less forum extension for Joomla 1.5 and 1.0 as well.

What this means for you is that this feature packed Joomla forum solution 'snaps in' to your Joomla template for seamless integration with your site. This is a much cleaner solution than a separate, stand alone, forum installation that requires either a secondary login or a software bridge to link your Joomla sites login to your forums login.

Also, an integrated forum solution means that you don't have to open a secondary browser window or use a page wrapper when your users access your forums. Sending users to a forum in a secondary browser window gives them the feeling they are leaving your site while keeping the forum part of the site by using a page wrapper almost always invariably causes the site and the forums to look like they were cobbled together (which they were) leading to a less than professional looking site.

Simple Installation

With Agora you can install and be up and running with a new forum in under 10 minutes. Just install it through the extension menu's module installation page, create a new menu item and assign Agora to it.

Easy Configuration

While Agora is definitely feature rich its basic configuration is a breeze and quite intuitive. This is especially true if you have ever configured any other forum software before such as FireBoard or phpBB.

Configuration is handled a bit differently than most other Joomla extensions as Agora is configured via the front end, by logging into your Joomla site as the administrator, rather than through a back-end administrative configuration panel. Once logged in just select the menu item you created for Agora and it will launch. and when logged in as the Joomla administrator there will be an ADMIN menu item on the far left of the top level forum menu.

Agora's out of the box settings are very good for most 'standard' forum configurations though eventually you will want to dig in a little deeper and tweak its options to suit your taste and any special needs you may have. However,  if you just want to get up and running quickly, all you really need to do is to create your forum categories.

Of course you will also want to, at a minimum, change the forum name and description and set the site to your local time zone but once that is done you will have a fully functional forum integrated nicely into your Joomla template and you can then explore all its options at your leisure.

Feature Rich Forums

Agora has all the features you would expect from a modern day forum such as:

• User Groups
• User Avatars
• User Ranks System
  
• User Awards System
  
• User Reputation System
• User Post Counts
• User Bans
• User Sigs
• Custom User Profile Fields
• Smilies
• Captcha (for guest posts if guest posting is enabled)
• PM System
• RSS Feeds
• Quick Post
• User Maps (via a Google Maps API Key)
• Auto Registration Verification
• Social Bookmarks (Digg, etc)
• Adsense Integration
• Language Censoring
• BB Code
• File Attachments for Posts

There are many more advanced features as well such as a built in Spam Scrubber system for deleting spam, the ability to back up both the board and your entire Joomla installation from within the Admin menu and built in system reports.

Plug-Ins

Agora comes with seven pre-installed plug-ins.

Cons

About the only con we have found so far is the built in editor. We wish they had included a WYSIWYG editor or at least the option of selecting an alternate editor. The supplied editor will certainly do the job but we have grown accustom to using more advanced editors such as JCE and the editor built into WordPress. After experiences such as those the Agora editor just seems a bit outdated.

Still, this is easy to overlook considering all the other features they packed into the latest version and its ease of configuration and use.

Conclusion

Overall this is an excellent forum solution for Joomla. if you are looking for a Joomla forum then give Agora a try and, if you are still not convinced after we have raved so much about it, go check out our own forums to see it in action!