As of July 2009, SIMGallery was unpublished from the Joomla Extensions Directory (JED) as it is not licensed under GPL (Learn more). During its time on the JED, SIMGallery has been blessed with many great reviews from its users.
Here are the reviews in their entirety.
First time I saw this, I just knew I needed this component to get more action on my site. I have been testing it on a Joomla 1.5 site test server, and it meets all my needs when it comes to a gallery. It contains good modules, tagging, rating and browsing in a way that no other gallery for Joomla today offers. It is user friendly, and if there is one thing that is more important then fancy look, it is the way thing works in a user friendly way.
But this gallery have both the "fancy" way of working, and is very user friendly. Some things could be improved, like make it more clear to upload, and the configuration panel is not easy to find. I've been setting up user cases to test this, and they miss that little tool button.
Then, I ran into problems with java script. Nothing worked the first time, (the solution suggested in the documentation does not work for me), I found a solution in the forums, then I upgraded the component and plugin, and the problem was there again. It is not possible to upload pictures, not to browse existing pictures. The forum is new, without the old content. My suggestion is when you are making a good component like this, is to make sure to have all the possibilities to make your customer happy (since this extension cost a bit) I'm not able to find the solution and is therefor stuck.
I give the extension a 4.5 and the support at the moment 3.
Mike has give us the posibility to integrate a really good gallery to our community web sites. The component works great and the support works really well. You can contact Mike anytime and he will get you back in the following 48 hours with some help and in some cases ( at least my case) he will visit your web site to see what is happening and to discover where the problem is located.
I would reccomend this product to everyone looking for a photo system !!!
When I first tried out this component I was upset that the component add-on prices seemed high, so I canceled my license and received a refund.
Weeks later, I realized how vital this extension is to my site and came crawling back to purchase it all over again.
This is such a smooth extension and is so well integrated with Community Builder that no matter how upset you are with prices or support, that once you try it out, you will realize you don't just need it, you require it.
The interface is simple and understandable to the end user. It's powerful, pretty, and clean.
If you are looking for a CB gallery plugin than this is exactly what you need.
The Best Joomla Gallery fy Far!!
This is definately one of the best written Gallery extensions out there. Looks extremley clean and professional straight out of the box but at the same time is very configurable. The tie in with CB is excellent and in my opinion is a must for any CB users.
On installation I had a few problems but was contacted directly by Mike, the developer within 12 hours who sorted these out. Its rare I do reviews on Joomla.org because I use so many components / modules that are "OK" or just fit the purpose - This component stands out from those and in turn is more that worth the review. 10/10
Dave
Ok, I still use like version 1.13 of this but as of this review version 2.0.1 (something like that) is out with even MORE great features. Anyway, I can't say too many great things about this component or it's developer. This gallery looks frickin good! I love how it works with Shadowbox on the CB profile pages, especially. After adding this gallery I actually had to start upgrading the look of the profiles because the gallery out-shined everything else. Now, the one time I an issue with an updated version the developer personally emailed me a copy of the older version I preferred and stated, though he could not support every version of this component released, that he would include the feature I requested in a future update. THAT'S support! It's not the first time he's done that either. He actually LISTENS to his customers.
Like a lot of people, when I first saw Sim Gallery, I thought WOW! It looks very slick, thats a fact. With CB integration and all the features and modules you could want, I purchased a copy.
Version 2 has since come out and seems to have ironed out a lot the issues with version 1. It installed on my site with no issues.
Had some minor functionality problems, Mike replied to all my emails within a day and resolved all issues.
This is a great gallery and is quickly becoming a central part of my site!
Highly recommended.
We have tried and there is just a big WOW !
Anything necessary to run a community. Anything looks nice and professional.
But: You need ioncube, because the code is encrypted. And who will know, if a company will still exist tomorrow ? And then you can't upgrade etc. because you can't modify the code.
Owner's reply
Thanks for the review. The software is actually not encoded, it's just one file that controls some of the global variables (globals.simgallery.php), which in turn controls the license. Many users have actually modified the software successfully to suit their needs.
Also, the full sourcecode will be released if I ever decide to stop selling software, although that is very unlikely for a long, long time.
Actually excelent (including the support I recieved)
I have found this component to be quite excelent. I did have a few 'niggles' on install, however the support I recieved has been excelent (despite a significant time zone difference).
I would recomend checking out the demonstration on the creators site, I have all functions working on my site.
The gallery component itself it very user friendly with an intuitive interface and the full range of options for the user (with no administration required once installed, just what I wanted!). The modules that come with it allow for displaying the uploaded/rated/commented items in a variety of ways (as well as, of course, the individuals gallery).
I am very glad I have this product on my site :)
If you want to give your Comunity site users something to talk about, this component is simply the best, I have been working for 8 years in comunity sites and this component just has everything to make your users share their pictures easily.
Realy nice job with this component Mike, and looking forward for more components.
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A lot of effort has been put in to keep the code simple and straightforward, making it extremely easy to understand. You can integrate with your own software with little effort.
All software are fully integrated with either Community Builder or JomSocial - perfect for any community websites.
