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Category: News

Published: 12 January 2015

Last Updated: 13 January 2015

Hits: 7294

CB Auto Actions 6 is now CB 2.0 Compatible and supports 23 action types ready to help you implement your use cases without the need to code.

CB Auto Auto Actions lets you and your members save valuable time, by automating specific repetitive processes on your site.

It executes specific actions depending on specific events if specific conditions are met.

E.g. When a new user signs-up, you can automatically send an email to a specified manager depending on registration details. Or when a user updates profile data or logs-in, an activity counter can be incremented.

The 23 action types are: CB Activity, AcyMailing, CB Antispam, CB Blogs, CB Paid Subscriptions, Code (11 different methods), Connection, Content, Email, Field, CB GroupJive, CB Invites, K2, Kunena, Login/Logout, CB Menu, Private Message, CB Privacy, Query, Redirect, Registration, Request, Usergroup.

Configuring an auto action involves the following steps:

1. Select one of the 23 available action types
2. Decide the user events and environment that will trigger the execution of your action
3. Optionally set extra conditions that need to be present
4. Configure your action (based on type selected)
5. Enable your auto action

There are virtually infinite possibilities and combinations available with this awesome Professional membership tool.

To help and inspire you, we have prepared a CB Auto Actions video tutorial playlist that currently has 5 short and sweet videos but many more are in the pipeline - so subscribe to our video channel now.

Discuss this on our forums.

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Category: News

Published: 07 January 2015

Last Updated: 08 January 2015

Hits: 8081

The Community Builder extension has been around even before the birth of Joomla and it's being used on millions of websites worldwide. And most of all it is both free as in beer (no cost to download) and free as in freedom (GPL).

This free status is not easy to maintain as there are many cost elements involved and many moving targets to track. So, no matter how free spirited we are there will always be the reality of expenses and the need for a commecrial aspect that funds and keeps the project going.

The CB Team and the entire Joomlapolis community -THANK YOU- have been doing a great job of keeping Community Builder powerful and free and very secure.

The next generation Community Builder 2.0 series has incorporated 11 previously commercial add-ons into its core - yes these add-ons are now included in the free CB 2.0+ releases.

The previously commercial add-ons now in CB 2.0 are:

1. CB Ajax File field
2. CB Rating field
3. CB Admin Navigation module
4. CB Forums
5. CB Blogs
6. CB Articles
7. CB Ajax Points
8. CB Bootstrap template
9. CB Video Field
10. CB Password Strength
11. CB Verify Email

Community Builder 2.0 with these extended features and its new mobile ready user interface is just plain awesome!

See for yourself watching our 40+ short and sweet CB 2.0 Video tutorials and then consider upgrading to any one of our 12 month paid membership levels to get even more add-ons and great support and of course contribute to keep Community Builder free and powerful.

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Category: News

Published: 21 December 2014

Last Updated: 22 December 2014

Hits: 16671

First of all we would like to appologize for having to communicate this news with you during the holidays - it was not our intention.

The new EU-VAT regulations will affect on 1.1.2015 not only all EU consumers but also everyone - worldwide - selling to EU, so it will affect everyone directly or indirectly.

This new - as of Jan 1st, 2015 - regulations completely changes the way in which VAT (consumer sales tax) is charged on digital services.

Instead of the tax rate being applied according to where the supplier is located, the seller must determine by 2-3 independent methods where the buyer is located and apply the relevant local rate of tax to the purchaser. So that means if you (as seller) live in Italy and someone in Germany purchases your digital file, you need to pay VAT at the German rate to the German authorities. Just to be clear, that's a total of 75 different tax rates across 28 different markets!

The intention of this new legislation, is to put a stop to billions of euros of the consumer tax being lost due to multi-nationals locating in low tax jurisdictions.

However, the implementation of these rules will cripple, and potentially force into closure, hundreds of thousands of micro-businesses including Joomla Extension providers across the EU and also worldwide.  The costs in paperwork, bureaucracy, and amendments to websites and payment processing will simply mean that many businesses are no longer viable.

And this is just the first step, as there are plans to extend this concept to physical goods selling in 2016!

More references about new law:

• European Union notes on VAT tax rule on E-services and telecommunications
• EU VAT Action Site
• Take action on EU VAT Action Site
• Commission Blog on EUVAT (also see comments to the blog)
• Telegraph UK article impact analysis on EUVAT
• Facebook #EUVAT pages
• #EUVAT Tweets

What does this mean to you ?

The new law will influence you in one of the following ways:

• If you make a purchase from an EU location, you will be charged VAT accordingly based on your purchasing location (and your invoicing address will have to match, unless there is a third proof of your real location)
  
  
• If you sell digital products (no matter where you are located) to EU located purchasers, you need to charge them appropriate VAT and keep digital records for 10 years of all these transactions and of course quarterly funnel collected VAT to each EU state

So as a purchaser, you will most likely experience price increases when purchasing from a EU location (regardless of the seller's location).

As a seller, you will most likely need to suffer extra costs to setup compliance with this new EU law and to be able to handle the extra book-keeping and accounting and digital record-keeping. Increasing your prices to offset these extra costs is an option, but it will still affect your business.

If you use CBSubs for your digital goods sales, it is useful to know that its Tax integration functionality already supports the new tax calculations. However, as there is no reliable technical way yet to get 2-3 proofs of EU-country of the customer, that part is not yet solved - in no cart yet - as that new regulations' requirement is not implementable yet.

How can you help ?

This law is just plain wrong. It will not accomplish it's main objective, but it will cripple small and mid-size digital businesses and surely increase consumer prices for EU located purchasers.

Here are some ways you can help and voice your objections now:

• Read and sign the Petitioning Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs PIERRE MOSCOVICI
  Once you sign the petition share it with your friends on all social networking platforms and email
  
  
• Send a message to all your Members of European Parliament (MEPs).
  Just click your country on this map to find your MEPs and send each one your objections about this law.
  
  
• Comment directly on the EU Commissioners blog stating your objection / opinion.

Purchase now instead of later

It is not our intention to turn this into a purchasing call. However, if your Joomla livelihood depends on Joomlapolis digital goods and services, then you can avoid price increases that will most likely happen (if this law is not reverted) on January 1st, 2015. So purchase now and even stock up your subscriptions by purchasing back to back yearly subscriptions (you can purchase this way 2 years worth).

The same of course advise can be used with all your Joomla third-party purchases.

Discuss this on our forums.

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Category: News

Published: 01 December 2014

Last Updated: 01 December 2014

Hits: 6646

--
See the huge benefits of CB Privacy in action in
our short and sweet CB Privacy tutorials
--

CB Privacy 4.0 gives you full control to deploy your privacy strategy on your website for your user profiles and user lists.

Fully compatible with the Next Generation Community Builder 2.0, CB Privacy 4.0 is a powerful tool to manage the privacy of user profile content.

Here are 4 huge benefits that CB Privacy gives you:

• Let your members decide who sees their profile data (specific fields or tabs, or even entire profile)
• Setup private content field or tabs for users on their profiles by specifying "private" as the default privacy setting for this content
• Empower your users to delete or disable their accounts and data from your website
• Keep track, monitor and administer all your user privacy settings from backend administration page.

 Here is a short list of configurable features:

• Turn on privacy for viewing or editing a field or tab basis
• Enable privacy for entire profile view
• Configure initial default privacy settings for each case
• Let moderators control privacy settings from frontend
• Force privacy control for specific field or tab to default value (instead of allowing user to select privacy level)
  
• Configure settings to allow users to disable and/or delete themselves

This awesome add-on is demonstrated and explained in our short and sweet CB Privacy tutorials and is available to Advanced, Professional and Developer members.

Details

Category: News

Published: 17 November 2014

Last Updated: 17 November 2014

Hits: 17560

Getting up to speed with the powerful next generation Community Builder 2.0 is now super easy and fun.

Since the 2.0 release, we have been publishing a new short video tutorial every day on our Joomlapolis Video Channel.

Today we published tutorial # 21 and we intend to keep publishing as often as possible (so make sure to subscribe to our channel) to help our community harness the incredible power and flexibility that Community Builder 2.0 provides.

Keep in mind that all Community Builder 2.0 administrative pages now have a Help button that leads to a handy online help page and also make sure you take advantage of our new Community Builder Getting Started articles.

Our current CB 2.0 Tutorials playlist has the following tutorials:

1. Short tutorial covering first steps to install CB 2.0 on a Joomla 3.x website
2. Short tutorial covering basic CB User Profile page updates in frontend and also adding menu links to the Joomla User menu
3. Backend and frontend registration processes and approval workflows
4. Creating our first user list and making our Joomla menu for user lists publishing
5. Grid user list with profile image and canvas image variations
6. Getting started with list searching
7. Creating our first CB Field - Gender radio button field
8. Getting started with Field Layouts and CB Substitutions
9. Configuration options for uploaded profile images - how to get perfect squares and have circle images
10. User List wrap-up - extra settings and Joomla menu to single list
11. Terms and Conditions field and how to configure it
12. A first look into Community Builder Tabs
13. The CB Articles plugin and how it works
14. The Joomla CB Author bot plugin and how to link author of article back to author's CB profile page
15. First look at CB Blogs and Internal storage mode
16. CB Blogs and Joomla storage mode
17. Exploring the Date field type
18. File and Video fields
19. Single select dropdown and multi-select checkbox fields and user list searching
20. The new 6-in-1 CB Online module
21. uddeIM Private Messaging integration

Discuss this article on our forums.