Joomla is an excellent content management system for making powerful community websites, but I am surprised that there are very few community portals that has been developed by using joomla and its modules. Recently I was involved in the development of a community portal themithila.com. There I saw the power of joomla not only as a content management system but also as a community management system.
The real power of joomla lies in its extensions which are called modules/component also. If you are making a community site with joomla then the most important component will be community builder.
Community Builder suite extends the Joomla! user management 
system. Its Key features are addition of extra fields in profile, enhanced registration workflows, user lists, connection paths between users, admin defined tabs and user profiles, image upload, front-end workflow management, integration with other components, like PMS, Newsletter, Forum, Galleries
It is available free for download on joomlapolis.com In addition to this there are 51 plugins available on joomla official website which can convert your community portal comparable to any world class social networking website.
Hey, do you recommend Joomla for like NewsPaper websites? I’m trying to make a news oriented sites by “community journalists”
I think joomla will be great for the newspaper articles website. Also you can use drupal for such a site. I have some example http://theonion.com uses drupal. It is a very famous news site of USA. I also use drupal for a MBA community sites where users post their articles, news, stories etc. That site is http://100rupees.com
[…] better CB support, native userlist etc.This site is also using Community builder component. Community Builder highly extends the Joomla! user management system. Its Key features are extra fields in profile, […]
Community Builder is a very disappointing system.
I don’t deny that on paper is very seductive. But with Joomla 1.5 (last version) it’s almost impossible to install. And don’t expect joomla forum to help you. The developers are devoted only to develop, not to get their products be used successfully. Information is given drop by drop, and most is useless.
What confidence can have one to invest time and effort in a system whose creators think like: we do fairly enough with inventing, it is up to you to manage how to use it, and don’t make us waste time with questions or bas functions problems.
Any alternative could be better.
I have just developed a community site in Joomla. We used a pretty new community system call JomSocial. It’s a great tool, it has everything CommunityBuilder has but it is far superior.
The information you have given is tremendous. Thanks for the nice article.
Yes that is correct . Jomsocial is a great application. I have used it in a number of sites . It can be easily integrated to other components like the Jomtube etc. via plugins. Moreover than that there is special templates available for Jomsocial like the ‘ja-sulfur’. Recently I came through a component called ‘Joomunity’. It is still in the beta state but it is looking good. I have a comparison of various Social Networking solutions for Joomala at
i made a community on joomla with community builder. I am trying to make it better as i dont know more of css and html.. (sorry for my english) 🙂