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Essential Joomla extensions for any Joomla website

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After you’ve built one or more Joomla websites you will start to realize that there are a handful of Joomla extensions that, in your opinion, should have been included with the standard Joomla package. As it is, you’ll need to assemble your personal collection of tools and add them to your website. Everybody has their own list . . . here’s mine:

  1. JCE – TinyMCE, the WYSIWYG editor that is included with Joomla just doesn’t cut it. JCE (Joomla Content Editor) works, and works well. Install it, set it as your default editor in Global Configuration ? Site, and then disable the TinyMCE plugin under Extensions ? Plugin Manager.
  2. JoomlaPack – Having and using a dependable backup utility is essential to Joomla website security and your peace of mind. More than that, you can also use JoomlaPack to move a Joomla website from your local machine to your web server after you’ve built the site, or vice versa. Want to run scheduled backups?  Use JoomlaPack Remote to “set it and forget it.”
    1. As of Friday, February 26, 2010, JoomlaPack is now known as AkeebaBackup. You can read about that change here.
  3. Moovur – I’ve written about this before, but Moovur is a Joomla extension that allows you to use Mollom on your Joomla website to filter spam out of your comments and forms.
  4. Joomla Update Manager – With Joomla 1.6 on the horizon, I don’t know how many more updates to Joomla 1.5 there will be. Still, this is a good extension to know about and use if your Joomla website isn’t running the current version of Joomla, which is 1.5.15 as of the date of this writing. Updating Joomla manually is not an easy task, but this extension makes it nearly so.
  5. eXtplorer – According to the JED, eXtplorer is “a web-based File Management Component.”  While it won’t replace your FTP client, I have found it to be a quick and convenient way to manage files from within Joomla’s backend once the site is up and running.

There are some other extensions that are in my “optional” category. Whether or not they are added to a website depends on the website and its goals and purpose.

  1. K2 – K2 is a content component that really expands Joomla’s potential. K2 was developed by Joomlaworks, who produce some other great extensions that I’ve used as well, like Frontpage Slideshow and Simple Image Gallery Pro.
  2. Advanced Module Manager – Need more control over your Joomla modules?  With this extension you can set a module to publish and unpublish by date, edit module settings in a modal window, and lots of other cool things. Advanced Module Manager was developed by Peter van Westen of NoNumber!, and he has many other Joomla extensions you may find very useful.

All of these extensions, and many more, can be found in the Joomla Extensions Directory, or JED.