I always thought that handling databases and forms are not my cup of tea, being and hobbyist webmaster. Recently when I thought of adding this functionality on my site, did lot of research on various Joomla components that can enhance functionality of my site.

Read lot of reviews about Fabrik, but I realized that is was practically impossible for newbie's to use that. Today, after couple of trials, its functional on my site, Great thanks to its Forum, where I got proper support from admin.

Though I agree that its bit tricky for novice like me, but if you are firm and ready to learn and decided that yes I CAN DO IT, then its not all that difficult.

This is a great extension that will enable you to build fantastic custom apps for your Joomla site with much less knowledge and time than would be required to so it from scratch. The power of this component is quite amazing. But with power and flexibility (of which Fabrik has both) comes complexity. A simple form that is stored in a DB or emailed is quite easy to create in Fabrik. Many people seem to think that Fabrik will make creating complex application easy... not so. Complex applications are by definition... well... complex! Fabrik will make it much easier to create a complex application than doing it from scratch BUT it still takes a lot of work and time.



The support for both subscribing and non-subscribing members is excellent. My application was nearly complete by the time I registered. I wanted to be absolutely certain I could accomplish my goal prior to spending any money. The team there is willing to go above and beyond to make their customers happy. Only down side to the support is that there are really only 2 people who do support. They do an excellent job but they only have so many hours in a day.



In short, if you are willing to invest some time to learn this application, it will reward you with the power to easily create powerful custom applications for your site. IF you just need some simple forms stored in a DB or emailed, it can do that quite easily too!

Although this tool takes a day or two to get into and to be able to use it, it is the one tool that is needed when starting up a joomla site that has any sort of forms in it. Rob always gets back to me and has sorted out two issues which I have had. They have created an excellent tool without which I would still be busy coding and creating forms.



It is a snap to integrate into the joomla framework and allows you to create edit, delete, update and insert forms and tables with virtually a click of a button. The 20 Pounds for the documentation is actually a joke as the product is worth much more than that. I think Rob has done an outstanding job and with all the energy he puts into the project it should be a roaring success.



Thanks Rob

John Weber - johnkweber

I'm still wrapping my head around the details of how it works, but the documentation was and continues to be very helpful in clarifying things. I've been looking for a DB driven form development tool like this, specifically to develop some collaboration solutions for our site, and this fits the need almost perfectly Better than Dreamweaver CS3 with a a suite of DB extensions (full set from Interakt, now Adobe Developer Toolkit) has.



I'm used to developing forms and applications in Remedy ARS (client/server DB RAD tool)and much of the concepts and functionality in Fabrik seem pretty straight forward with some nice shortcuts built in.



Rob (developer)was very responsive to my intitial questions on the forum, and willing to make reasonabl tweaks to accomodate new functionality required. The new version (2.0) while still being developed looks *very* nice and will be a great deal easier to expand/extend.



Hugh (support and Dev assitance)is a great community manager and good at helping keep things on track, even if he's prone to threatening cartoonish violence to keep things moving ;-).



My general impression is that this is *not* a pick it up as you go extension like many of them are. This is a serious development tool for those looking to build database and email driven forms and applications for their Joomla site. DO NOT skip the documentation/sample data and tutorials and expect to be able to accomplish anything. If you're willing to spend some time learning the tool, this one is a goldmine of possibilities and seems to have a bright future.



I think a lot of the folks that have provided lowish ratings expected something less complicated/powerful and easier to use. ::shrug:: Anyway... After looking for a solid year for something similar to Fabrik, I'm overjoyed to have found it, and the fact that it's a Joomla extension makes it even better!



James

What a great component.

Actually I was searching for a Excel component to implement into my site. But the only one i could find was com_spread.

Not a user friendly component so uninstall and delete.

Than I'll found Fabrik. Woh , This was great because it is quite easy to understand and to create forms.



Out from the database you can easily export the records into an Excel sheet.



The only thing i'd like to have, is a feature that will reset the record counter to zero. When I delete all the records with the front-end interfase. Record counter is not going back to "0". Now I have to do this manually with PHPMYADMIN.



So maybe in the next update!!





Frits

As a veteran internet application developer my economic viability relies on my companies ability to write tools that aid in developing applications or even other tools. Some of these tools can take hundreds of man hours costing easily over $10,000. This tool just cut a fifty man hours off a project for us. I slapped down the 40 american dollars they were asking for the documents, as that was the least I could do for what I received as a free application. $40.00 for a full fledged tool that works is a steal. I feel guilty for using it!



Not sure how any one could whine about that little amount of money. Any app that does anything of value has a learning curve. I spent a few hours and I am comfortable. Great job fellows.



I give this five stars!

Great work, this is a very good comoponent



Installation - 10

User Friendlyness - 8



Very well programmed clean and easy to customize



best thing about this it is Open Source i want to thank the developer for making this open source, This component can easily be commerical and gain good value for the hard work which has been put in it...

I am frustrated with this component. On the surface it appears very good, however, basic functionality does not appear to work, and as they require payment for support I am unable to find out why things don't appear to work as they should, without paying and possibly finding out that it isn't possible.



For example, I would consider table sorting to be a basic functionality of any application. However sorting doesn't seem to work, it takes no notice of what sorting method I apply. Also, as there is no documentation and their FAQ section is poor, I don't even know where to begin to look for the code to change manually. I am not a complete novice with joomla, PHP & mySQL.



So the dilemma is, if I pay, I have no protection against being informed that what I require is not possible. The amount of money is not a lot, but if you were to pay £20 for everything you tested, wasn't suitable and didn't use, you wouldn't have much left over for anything else.

I tried several form processing components for Joomla. But fabrik is the best one out there. I tried it after seeing "Editor's pick" for this component. I had no issue with installation and it comes with a sample contact us form which helped me to understand it quickly without even a manual.



It has some minor bugs but it is not a road block for implementing my forms. Give it a try. you may like it.

Stayed away from this, given the previous comments. I was unable to get 2 other forms components to do what I wanted, so I figured I'd give it a try.



Not difficult at all. I would suggest you pay for the subscription, as the initial tutorial really helps a lot. I had my first form up and running within 3 hours of trial and error.