The Intersection of Social Making Things Happen 

On the Web, where all things have become social - social media, social networking, social bookmarking, etc. - it is important to bring attention to another entrant in the social movement: social collaboration. But first we must address the meaning of the term 'social' and dispel any confusion about how it's applied to the Web today.

Understanding the term Social

Due to its online origin, for many, the term social has been particularly confusing when it precedes the word 'networking.' Although the term 'social networks' existed long before the advent of the Web, it was only popularized online communities such as Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, etc. Social networking then quickly evolved to include more professionally-oriented communities like LinkedIn, Xing and others.

From this evolution, the term social began to represent a movement toward openness and the communal aspect of the Web. As a result, the word 'social', as it related to the Web today, does not mean social, or socializing, as we usually think of it. Rather, it means 'community,' as in the greater Internet community and the groups among it. 

phpBB3
phpBB3 is a powerful forum, and is the platform of choice for Joomla.org as well as our very own RocketTheme forum. The Affinity phpBB3 style is a product of the RocketTheme phpBB3 styles club and you will need to be a member in order to access the theme. Note: Joomla Template Club members do NOT have access to this theme.

However, as a community template, the joint launch of bother Joomla and phpBB3 counterparts is important, hence the synchronicity. Although, there are important Joomla elements that should be noted. Firstly, the Joomla and phpBB3 sites are synced via RokBridge, a free bridging component for the two platforms, and a series of modules to extract data from phpBB3 into Joomla are present, such as Latest Posts.

K2
K2 is a content construction component (similar to CCK for those acquainted with Drupal), which lets you create custom content types (items) for your Joomla! website. With K2, you can transform your Joomla! website to a news site with author blogs, product catalogs, work portfolio, knowledge base, download/document manager, directory listing, event listing and more, all this bundled under one component. Again, Affinity has styled support for this component to visually integrate the powerful component from JoomlaWorks.gr.

Javascript Styling: Radios and Checkboxes
One of the many new features in the template is the inclusion of JavaScript powered styling for radio icons and checkboxes, such as the ones used on the Polls and the Search pages. Traditionally, styling of these form elements is bland, default and ordinary. However, using special scripts, these elements can be manipulated as to allow styling as is present on the many demo pages. The template styled itself changers depending on body type chosen as well as the type of module class suffix in use. Yet another diverse and additional feature in the May template release.