State of EasySocial and Future (A mini review/request post)

Hey guys, having been one of the early adopters of EasySocial I decided that it was time for me to weigh in on the progress and roadmap.

First of all, I want to say EasySocial has come a long way in a short time and aside from a couple of essential missing features (Search plugin, Events etc.), I would argue that you have successfully beaten all the competition from the start... and the rate in which you are improving EasySocial is genuinely impressive and something we all truly appreciate.

I also want to mention that your approach with Roadmap, Feature Requests and BETAs is one of the best organized and best utilized growth and customer service strategies I have seen in the world of Web Development in a long time, especially as it relates to Joomla communities/developers. Rarely, have I felt as included in the brainstorm process as with Stackideas.

Now, it has been a few months since launch, and we are approaching the stable version of EasySocial 1.2... and I want to speak on a couple of things that I think have been done well, and a couple of essential things that I hope to see implemented asap to complete the product.



First of all, with the release of 1.2 I have to say seeing K2 integration, Groups and a new template was very encouraging, because all of those features were very needed. I also feel like the layout has matured and is making more sense.



I will point out however, that I think there are 2-3 very essential features that I would like to see implemented asap, as well as some ideas which I think would improve the product.

To start out with, the most obvious missing feature, which I apologize for repeating myself with is good and consistent Search Plugins for EasySocial, EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss. Live Search in EasySocial is broken, and I want to use a third party Search module (Offlajn's Universal Live Ajax Search, which utilizes any search plugin). Either that, or fix EasySocial live search, and make it compatible with EasyBlog, EasyDiscuss, K2 etc. (ideally offer both options)....

The second feature that I feel is missing, which I am aware that you actively are working on, is Events. I have a live site that I want to migrate over from JomSocial to EasySocial... but events are very important for that community. So it is imperative that you launch that feature and that it features a proper migration process... but based on your track record, I do not need to mention this

Thirdly, and more importantly, it is imperative to offer ways to integrate EasySocial, EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss into the same site more seamlessly. What I mean by that is offering a Universal Sidebar Module inspired by the EasySocial sidebar... and adding EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss features to the current EasySocial Toolbar Module. I want my sidebar and my top bar to look the same on all pages.... I don't want to have different sidebars and toolbars depending on what page I am on.




To recap.... please offer Universal live search that works with all components, or release search plugins so we can use third party search..... release events with a proper migrator..... and develop a universal sidebar, and make the current toolbar more universal.



Those are just my thoughts, I love your products, and I look forward to seeing how they evolve