Thursday, July 30, 2009

Extensions to make your Joomla site better

On it's own Joomla is a very solid content management system (CMS). For very basic sites you get everything you need: a method for adding new content to the site, a tool for allowing people to contact you, a basic search engine and a media manager. If you want a more exciting, more personalized site you will need to turn to extensions. But don't worry, there are thousands of free extensions available so you won't go broke getting the site you need.

Community Builder
Community Builder is the quickest way to add an online community to your Joomla site. It's built in features are impressive: customizable profile fields, user connections and image uploads. But even more impressive is the fact that it can easily be extended to integrate with other components on your Joomla site. A large number of these plugins are even maintained by the core development team. These plugins include: profile galleries, blogging systems, profile guestbooks, paid memberships and much, much more.
Visit the Community Builder site | View Community Builder tutorials

JCE Editor
While Joomla comes with a built in HTML editor it's features are somewhat lacking. This is where JCE editor steps in. JCE stands for Joomla Content Editor. It's is a combination of a plugin and component. The plugin is simply the editor. The component allows you to control it's impressive feature set. Unfortunately to take full advantage of some of the better parts of this editor you will need to spend some money. Fortunately they aren't overpriced and you only need to buy them if you need the functionality.
Visit the JCE Editor site | View JCE Editor tutorials

Joom!Fish
I will admit that I've never once installed this extension on a site, but that has nothing to do with it's quality. If you need a multi-lingual site this is THE extension to use. Nothing else out there will even get close to this. There isn't much to say about it's features as it's fairly straight-forward, you can have multiple languages for any content item and the user can choose which to view.
Visit the Joom!Fish site

sh404SEF
If you're not satisfied with the lack of control you get with the built in Joomla SEf support then sh404SEF is what you're looking for. Not only do you get URL rewriting with complete control over every URL created on your site, you also get: built in security systems, title and keyword meta tag management, a caching system to improve performance. automated 301 redirection from your old non-SEF URLs and complete control over the behavior of these options. It works perfectly with Joom!Fish and has plugins available for custom URL options from Community Builder, Virtuemart, Fireboard (now Kuena), Docman, HotProperty, myBlog, iJoomla's extensions and more. This is the first component I install when doing a new Joomla installation.
Visit the sh404SEF site

Virtuemart
Virtuemart is far-and-away the most popular shopping cart system for Joomla. For years it has been one of the most downloaded extensions. It offers all the basic features you'd expect from a shopping cart system. Unfortunately it kinda stops there. This is a free extension so if you aren't expecting to do a lot of business or have very basic needs this will likely address them perfectly. If you are expecting a busy store then you are better off finding a standalone system for your store.
Visit the Virtuemart site | View Virtuemart tutorials

Docman
If you need to share documents with your visitors, look no further than Docman. Whether you're looking for a simple downloads area where everyone can download stuff, a download section for only your registered users, or a system where you want only a single user (or a special group of users) to have access to files Docman has you covered. It allows several methods of uploading files into the system, and you can even offer links to external files/sites through the system.
Visit the Docman site | View Docman tutorials

So now you know the extensions that can take your Joomla site to the next level. Is your current host holding you back? BuyHTTP offers Joomla hosting and works perfectly with all of these extensions. Are you looking for an extension that's not listed here? Check the Joomla extensions directory for thousands of more options.

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