Reviews

Current Version

No reviews found.

Before 1.2

Review posted by luk911 on at

very nice

luk911
Very flexible Single-User or Multi-User blog package.
If you want setup Multi-User blog you jus need it.
very responsive support

Thank you Michael

1.2 -

Review posted by appamada on at

Fantastic blog package, terrific support

appamada
I'm not a professional designer, and I'm in the midst of development of our small Zen center's website. We needed blog capabilities not only for administrators, but for members of our center. This is a terrific blog package with the capacity to set up multiple blogs. That alone would make it a great choice. But the developers have created a wonderful instructional series of videos that make setting it up very easy to do, step by step. You can easily set up and design great-looking blogs and if you miss a step, you can go back in the video and watch again. The developers are very responsive to queries and in fact implemented a new design for blog buttons within a few hours of my request, at no charge. This is incredible support!

1.3 -

Review posted by alxbob8 on at

Great Add On and SUPER support

alxbob8
After installing the add on I took the time to watch the nice video's how to install the whole blog functionality. The video's are very helpful and after doing exactly what is told I got my blog working. I had some lay out questions and the C5DK support was very very good and it helped me to understand the basics.

Thanks to C5DK people.

1.4.0 -

Review posted by appamada on at

Update to 1.4.1

appamada
With the new Page List full content option, this add-on is even more terrific. Now the blog entries are listed in full on our main news page. The minimalist design should work very well for all kinds of themes and designs. This C5DK team is fast, efficient and responsive. We are delighted!

1.4.1 -

Review posted by zanedev on at

Good blog package

zanedev
Perfectly fine blog package for most people's needs. I like how it uses the built in C5 mechanisms rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. Although I do wonder why it just didn't use the standard composer interface for creating blog posts instead of a custom single page. The composer interface would have allowed for further customization with attributes, custom blocks and default page attributes/composer blocks.

The installation could be better as it requires a lot of manual steps but you learn about C5 as you do them so I recommend doing them manually for C5 newbies. The documentation is in videos only so grab your favorite beverage and be prepared to watch and stop the video a lot.

Couple things it needs to improve:
1) Ability to upload pngs as a thumbnail even if not resizable. Currently only jpgs allowed.
2) Ability to add blocks or stacks to the blog post at creation time.
3) Auto-setup option for people that don't have the time or want to set it up manually.
4) Text documentation instead of only videos, if nothing else put the transcript of the videos out there for people.
Response by C5DK on at
C5DK
Thanks for your fine review.

I would like to answer your 4 points and why we made our own composer/editor interface:

First about the editor interface. We did it this way to be able to allow non administrators to create pages. And we did this to be able to make a tru multi user and multi blog system.

About your points:

1. We had a ton of problems to use the same image crop functionality for both PNG and JPG. At the moment it just makes too much problems to make it work. Secondly we wanted to be sure that non administrator blog writers still would have the abillity to upload images to the blog without any technical knowledge.

2. About adding blocks and stacks at creation time. I am going to say almost the same as in point 1. We need to make the easiest and best solution for blog writers and not for web editors.

3. We have thought a lot about making a auto setup system. But because of all the different ways you can install and use our package, we could not deside what would be a standard installation. We would like to see our blog package as a toolbox to create a great blog.

4. We are actually working on some kind of text based quick setup guide. But because a lot of the setup is actually concrete5 settings, and some of them are actually kind of complicated for the minority of users. If you look at our support page, you will see that we are helping out a lot setting up the blog correctly. But let's see what we can do about a text based documentation.

Regards
/Michael
Concrete5 Danmark

1.4.3 -

Review posted by DustyStrings on at

Excellent support

DustyStrings
Very responsive to support questions and suggestions for improving UI. Blog takes a lot of setup, but the documentation videos are very thorough, and it works well once set up correctly. Thanks!

8.0.6.7 -

Review posted by ScottsdaleUnified on at

C5DK Blog

ScottsdaleUnified
Very happy with this blog addon so far. The instructional videos are very straight forward and appreciated.
Review posted by natweb on at

C5DK Blog rocks!

natweb
This is a fantastic and easy to use blog!

Follow the steps the C5DK team lays out and it works just beautifully. I had one problem strictly due to my lack of knowledge around the page_theme.php file (you definitely need one!) and Michael, one of the developers, quickly figured out what I was doing wrong, explained the situation to me over a very pleasant Skype conversation, then sent me a number of examples to work with. It took me no time at all from there to make things work perfectly. So 10 stars for C5DK support too!

It's very responsive and you can use it just the way it's set up and afterwards edit each blog post like any other C5 page, even adding additional blog types to the post, so it's highly customizable.

I've had a lot of fun with it as you can see here:http://www.duncanvillebookstore.com/store-blog/how-i-discovered-spi...

Thanks C5DK, I highly recommend your product!
Review posted by digitaris on at

Excellent Blog Solution for v5.7 and v5.8 Sites

digitaris
This is my new go-to blogging add-on solution for v5.7 and v5.8 sites. As a former evangelist for ProBlog (v5.6 and early generation v5.7), I can confirm that C5DK Blog works great for the newer Concrete5 versions. I have converted two sites and multiple users from ProBlog to C5DK Blog, and every user raves about the ease of managing and authoring blog content compared to their experience with ProBlog. It is a well-conceived solution and worth its small price! The training videos are outstanding too. While I haven't needed developer support, other reviewers attest to the excellent support provided by Michael and the C5DK team.

8.0.6.7 -

Review posted by melange on at

Great support

melange
I am using CC5 5.7.5.13 and just started using CC5. I had been struggling to understand how to set up the C5DK blog. But the support team went above and beyond to get it all up and running! Looks great and I look forward to seeing what the team has installed in the future.

Thanks !

8.2.0.1 -

Review posted by ScottsdaleUnified on at

Excellent Add-on - Even Better Customer Service

ScottsdaleUnified
I can't speak highly enough about the customer service I have received from the C5DK authors as well as the very clear directions for setting up the blog package.

I look forward to working with them further!

8.2.0.2 -

Review posted by brandscapes on at

Almost perfect blog package

brandscapes
I'm adding an update to my review below.

I bought this add-on in December when I was working on a website. Michael was wonderful about getting back with support quickly.

I got sidetracked with other client's work and put my website on the backburner. Fast forward to today, April, 5 months later and I finally got back to my site and finished implementing the C5DK tutorials so my blog would work just as claimed.

I came back to Michael with more questions and he walked me through some minor details and straightened me out on what was native to his add-on vs Concrete5 native and I was able to get my site complete.

I'm going through each page and implementing Open Graph for sharing now and ran into one more hiccup but because of what I learned from Michael was able to figure it out on my own.

The hiccup occurred while using the Facebook Developer Debugger. I had told Facebook where to pull all the images and copy from but Facebook was still pulling in the thumbnail which wouldn't allow "shares" to post correctly. to anyone in the future that runs into this problem....go to the attributes page and turn off/uncheck "thumbnail".

Works perfectly now and I can be a lot less stressed.


Thank you C5DK,
John


+++++++

Posted December 1, 2017:
Michael and his team have been very helpful in getting this add-on running on my website and I believe they've gone above and beyond to help with minor glitches when I did a C5 update that crashed C5DK.

The documentation to get the package installed was very thorough and worked spot on at my first try.

I'd like to see the ability in updates to have:

- an About the Author placed at the end of each blog as we've invited some guest bloggers and it would be nice to have their pick and a small bio

- a clickable headline (Michael, to clarify, the only way to read the blog is to click on READ MORE. It would be nice to be able to click anywhere in the block containing the blog image, blog headline and blog copy in addition to Read More)

- an option to center images when editing in text mode

Great add-on! Well thought out and great use of stacks and blocks that I'd never have figured out on my own.

THANK YOU!
Response by C5DK on at
C5DK
Thanks for your nice review.

As an answer for your wishes:

1. I have actually played around with this a few times, but it will demand a new package/functionality just like the "Page Attribute Display" block that the core already supply. But this block is only able to show page attributes. So for having the User Attributes available on a page, a new add-on has to be developed.

2. "A clicable headline". I do not think I understand what you are thinking about.

3. A center image option in CKEditor. That would be nice. But because the CKEditor is not our software, we have no way to do this at the moment.

8.2.1.0 -

Review posted by mobius2000 on at

An amazing product for clients to manage their own blogs

mobius2000
This package is fantastic... It's always been a concern giving certain clients the ability to go into the backend of their C5 website when all they need to do is post some news. This has answered that requirement and then some.

A fantastic package and highly recommended for anyone using C5 for clients that may be slightly less technically minded.

Thank you for all your hard work.

8.3.1.4 -

Review posted by austinquakers on at

A Challenge to set up but worth it

austinquakers
The main thing to understand about this package is that it is not an out-of-the-box plug in and go blogging system. Rather it is, as the documentation puts it, a tool box of blocks, templates and supporting functionality for you to set up a blogging system. Its virtue is its broad flexibility.

After several hours of experiment I managed to set it up just like I wanted. The video documentation was my lifeline. However, I found that it was inadequate concerning some details, especially to use of the topic block on the blog post pages.

It is my practice when doing a complex configuration task to document as I go. So, the result was this document intended for the use of my content managers, See attached.

I'd appreciate any comments or corrections.
See:http://staging.austinquakers.org/download_file/18/0...
Response by C5DK on at
C5DK
Very nice review.
About documentation... We have been chasing bugs in the whole concrete5 version 8.x branch, so documentation is lacking behind. Your PDF is very helpful. Thanks...

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