Joomla! is a great CMS right out of the box.
It's got the power to run a great blog, corporate website, or news site.
It's very easy to customize to make it fit what you need it to do.
One of the really great ways to do this is to add extensions to Joomla.
Extensions are third-party pieces of software that tailor Joomla to fit what you need.
Joomla! may be great but it is lacking just a couple things.
The good news is that there is extensions to fix this.
For this, we've decided to compile the top extensions that should be included in Joomla! right out of the box.
Each extension is free and we've included the links to download them for your convenience.
Simple Image Holder - This extension just seems like a no-brainer.
Need to place an image or flash file in a module position?Perhaps your logo? Perhaps a header image?Perhaps you want to have a flash landing page? There's a million uses for this plugin and I highly recommend it.
It will also allow you to add alt-text and a link to the image from backend.
Place Here - Sometimes placing just an image isn't enough.
You want to add text, links, tables, or anything else you normally have in an article.
But you still need to place all that stuff in a module position.
That's where Place Here comes in.
Just write an article with what you need and enter the article ID in to Place Here an specify where you want the module.
Easy peasy.
JCE Editor - Joomla! comes with the default WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor called TinyMCE which is a great editor.
But if you need a little more functionality like total font controls, a more convenient image uploader, table builder, sub and super scripts, smilies, and more, you'll need JCE (Joomla Content Editor).
Once you have JCE, you'll never want anything else.
Akeeba Backup - I've done it before and I'm not saying I won't do it again and I'm guessing you've done something that has "broken" yourcomputer, portable HDD, or worse...
your boss' computer.
You need a backup solution for this problem.
Joomla! is no different.
Akeeba Backup really is a great and well thought out extension that's got your back.
It backs up your entire site into one file that can be saved on your server or on your hard drive.
It can even backup automatically.
And restores only take about 5 minutes to get you back to where you were before you hit the "nuke website" button.
Highly recommended.
Xmap - All sites need a sitemap.
Sitemaps add accessibility to your users and also allow search engine spiders to crawl your site easier.
But with a dynamic website it can be tedious to build them and maintain them.
You may have 400 pages that change continually.
That can be a real pain.
Fortunately Xmap makes it really simple to create a visual html sitemap for your users and an XML sitemap for crawlers.
JoomSEF - If you don't understand what SEF means, learn!It stands for Search Engine Friendly and is a topic on its own.
But for us we need to know that Joomla! does not, by default, build SEF urls.
It builds really ugly and hard to read urls, but JoomSEF can fix that.
Instead of a url for a blog article of "http://www.
yourdomain.
com/index.
php?option=com_content&Itemid=25&catid=901&id=27&lang=en&view=article", you'll have "http://www.
yourdomain.
com/must-have-extensions-for-joomla.
html".
The urls are easier to reference for you, your users and search engines.
These extensions will really help you to build your site and make it successful, but they aren't the end all pieces you'll need.
Website building/maintaining is hard work and is time consuming to do properly to maximize impact.
If you think you need a professional to do the work for you let Simple CMS Design know.
Visit us at http://www.
simplecmsdesign.
com to get started.
It's got the power to run a great blog, corporate website, or news site.
It's very easy to customize to make it fit what you need it to do.
One of the really great ways to do this is to add extensions to Joomla.
Extensions are third-party pieces of software that tailor Joomla to fit what you need.
Joomla! may be great but it is lacking just a couple things.
The good news is that there is extensions to fix this.
For this, we've decided to compile the top extensions that should be included in Joomla! right out of the box.
Each extension is free and we've included the links to download them for your convenience.
Simple Image Holder - This extension just seems like a no-brainer.
Need to place an image or flash file in a module position?Perhaps your logo? Perhaps a header image?Perhaps you want to have a flash landing page? There's a million uses for this plugin and I highly recommend it.
It will also allow you to add alt-text and a link to the image from backend.
Place Here - Sometimes placing just an image isn't enough.
You want to add text, links, tables, or anything else you normally have in an article.
But you still need to place all that stuff in a module position.
That's where Place Here comes in.
Just write an article with what you need and enter the article ID in to Place Here an specify where you want the module.
Easy peasy.
JCE Editor - Joomla! comes with the default WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor called TinyMCE which is a great editor.
But if you need a little more functionality like total font controls, a more convenient image uploader, table builder, sub and super scripts, smilies, and more, you'll need JCE (Joomla Content Editor).
Once you have JCE, you'll never want anything else.
Akeeba Backup - I've done it before and I'm not saying I won't do it again and I'm guessing you've done something that has "broken" yourcomputer, portable HDD, or worse...
your boss' computer.
You need a backup solution for this problem.
Joomla! is no different.
Akeeba Backup really is a great and well thought out extension that's got your back.
It backs up your entire site into one file that can be saved on your server or on your hard drive.
It can even backup automatically.
And restores only take about 5 minutes to get you back to where you were before you hit the "nuke website" button.
Highly recommended.
Xmap - All sites need a sitemap.
Sitemaps add accessibility to your users and also allow search engine spiders to crawl your site easier.
But with a dynamic website it can be tedious to build them and maintain them.
You may have 400 pages that change continually.
That can be a real pain.
Fortunately Xmap makes it really simple to create a visual html sitemap for your users and an XML sitemap for crawlers.
JoomSEF - If you don't understand what SEF means, learn!It stands for Search Engine Friendly and is a topic on its own.
But for us we need to know that Joomla! does not, by default, build SEF urls.
It builds really ugly and hard to read urls, but JoomSEF can fix that.
Instead of a url for a blog article of "http://www.
yourdomain.
com/index.
php?option=com_content&Itemid=25&catid=901&id=27&lang=en&view=article", you'll have "http://www.
yourdomain.
com/must-have-extensions-for-joomla.
html".
The urls are easier to reference for you, your users and search engines.
These extensions will really help you to build your site and make it successful, but they aren't the end all pieces you'll need.
Website building/maintaining is hard work and is time consuming to do properly to maximize impact.
If you think you need a professional to do the work for you let Simple CMS Design know.
Visit us at http://www.
simplecmsdesign.
com to get started.
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