Two major Nooku releases

During the past week, both Ninjaboard, the forum component, and Anahita, the Social Engine has released their first stable versions. These are the first stable, major components based on the Nooku Framework to be released. This if course, is not counting Nooku Content, the translations component which spawned Nooku Framework, and Ohanah, which is an SaaS for event management.

Anahita Social Engine, version 1.5 is released

About Anahita

Anahita is comparable to the older JomSocial component in many ways, but JomSocial has been out with a stable version for a longer time and thus has a larger userbase. Anahita is different though:

First of all, it ships with a modified Joomla code as part of it’s distribution, so it’s aimed more at site owners wanting to run this as the core of their website, and not as a small addon. Anahita is not even present in the Joomla Extensions Directory, so it’s target market does not seem to be your average Joomla webmaster.

Anahita also builds all it’s applications, like groups, images, discussions and so on, on top of a flexible Node-Graph-Story architecture, instead of building all apps as standalone products. This allows easy reuse of features such as comments or locations, so that you can comment on anything from an image to a wall post, or store geolocation info on any node, be it an activity update or a person’s whereabouts.

This architecture is totally reusable for people wanting to develop new social apps in Anahita, and they call it Anahita Framework. Anahita is a very large production and an impressive project, having passed 6000 revisions not long ago, and the Anahita Framework is perhaps also larger than the Nooku Framework.

To learn more about this impressive project, read more about Anahitas features and technology, read the Anahita blog or follow @anahitapolis or lead developers @rastin and @peerglobe on Twitter.

The Anahita package

Until recently, Anahita was a Joomla component and installed as such, but now Anahita comes as a ready-to-go bundle with a stripped down Joomla 1.5 distro at the center. Joomla merely serves as a container of web platform though, and Anahita does not utilize much more than the extension, user and menu management that Joomla offers.

Anahita may also very well be released with Nooku Server instead of Joomla. Nooku Server is a similar, stripped down version of Joomla 1.5, but with multi-site capabilities. For now it’s only released to Nooku contributors. Joomla 1.5 does contain a lot of legacy content, some dating back as far as the Mambo days, so in both cases you can expext a much lighter package.

Anahita also comes bundled with the Nooku and Gantry Frameworks, the latter a template engine framework made by Rockettheme.

As lead developer Rastin Mehr said himself:

Joomla was merely a stepping stone. A social network is at least two generations ahead of a CMS; you go from a CMS, to a read/write-web, to a social web. You can’t do it the other way around

Ninjaboard 1.0 stable is now available

About Ninjaboard

Finally a no-hassle forum component that plugs right into Joomla and it just works. It even adapts it’s template according to what you already have up and running, and blends right in. Not a project the size of Anahita, but impressive nonetheless.

Lead developer Stian Didriksen of Ninjaforge, Lead developer Stian Didriksen of Ninjaforge, also a consultant at Timble, the guys behind Nooku, was among the first ones to put into numbers the difference between the Joomla and Nooku Frameworks. By converting Ninjaboard from the former to the latter, he easily demonstrated how much code he was saving. And bear in mind: This was a much earlier version of Nooku Framework than what Ninjaboard is running today.

With Ninjaboard, the bar has been raised in regards to what to expect from a forum component, and how fast you’d expect new features to make it into the system. Major template producer Rockettheme has already been showcasing Ninjaboard in their template demos, and recently the official Joomla demo partner, CloudAccess.net, announced that they will be using Ninjaboard for their community. The release has been given great feedback from the community too, so this all goes to show the level of maturity this project has now reached.

To learn more, subscribe to the Nekkid Ninjas blog and follow lead developer @stipsan and his crew @ninjaforge on Twitter.

Download

Both components are released as GPLv3, like Nooku Framework, though Anahita requires a paid membership to download. Paid membership is priced at $500 annually, and will also give you access to support groups, project management groups and addon social apps.

Anahita social apps include discussions, groups, photos, projects, and there is one more social app coming in the next week or so. The Anahita team promises frequent releases in the time to come, and they’re also working on a solution to accommodate this by keeping your install up to date in an easy way. This solution is due in Q1 of 2011.

Ninjaboard can be downloaded directly from Ninjaforge at no cost, and can be installed like any other Joomla component.

Other projects to look out for

We have put together a nice list of Nooku resources and extensions that may be of interest to many. It includes a list of Nooku powered extensions that is growing. As Nooku is becoming more and more of a mainstream product, I expect it to grow more and more up to the point that I need to arrange the list in another manner. For now though, it stays in it’s current format.

Nooku Framework lead developer Johan Janssens is rumored to have some aces up his sleeve, as always, so it’ll be exciting to follow the Nooku blog in the time to come.