Blogs - The Conticreative Joomla Blog

Joomla 1.5 base install add-on list

Attention: open in a new window.

Written by Marco Conti Sunday, 14 December 2008 13:00

For some time I have been keeping a list of Joomla add-on that I install almost on every website I build for my clients or for myself. Some are "must have" like the JCE Text editor, others are "nice to have" like the Quickicon component that customizes the administrative front page with custom shortcuts.

Since I kept this list in my Google Notebook I thought that maybe I should publish it on my site in the hope it may come in handy to others. Many a Joomla website suffer because their developers are unaware of these add-ons existence. They are what makes Joomla the best CMS around.

This list is subject to changes and frequent updates. Bookmark it.

Must Haves

These are components that you must absolutely install in your basic Joomla installation for best results.

JCE - Joomla Text Editor

Don't leave home without it. But do yourself a favor and "donate" the $20 the developer ask for the premium plugins. They are worth every penny. JCE allows you, among other things, to insert pictures (resizing, rotating and creating thumbnails in the process), videos, snippets, templates and tooltips. In addition, JCE "reads" the Joomla content and facilitates creating links to other pages in your website.

JCE is definitely a must have.

[website] | [Download Page]

JoomlaPack - easy and complete Joomla backup

JoomlaPack is a very nifty component for Joomla that allows you to backup your files and database easily from the Joomla administration. What's more, for those that don't have a good Cpanel to work with, and therefore no built in backup features, JoomlaPack is a great solution that can save hours of work otherwise lost to bad data, bad disks or bad programming (mine). JoomlaPack even allows you to create a complete backup complete with installer, so you can move your site to a different server and restore it the same way you install a fresh copy of Joomla.

[website] | [Download Page]

eXtPlorer

This is an awsome file management utility that works from within Joomla or stand alone. If your site does not have Cpanel/whm or you need to frequently upload or move files to and from the server, this is a very powerful and handy solution.

[website] | [Download Page]

ReReplacer

Wow, this component can search and replace practically every string in your Joomla website. From commonly mispelled words to custom replace tags to make links and classes entry easier, ReReplacer does it all and does it well. I wish I could show you how it fixed my spelling, but ReReplacer would find it and correct it.

[website] | [Download Page]

Easy Template

Easy template is a template and snippet manager component. It can insert any number of snippets into your editor easily and reliably. Since many Joomla typographical treatments are hard to remember or difficult to insert for many people, I consider this a must have. Even for expert users it is a nice addition that will help managing your snippets.

[website] | [Download Page]

Good to have but not critical

These add-ons are not always absolutely necessary but they add features that are not present in the default Joomla installation but are often requested.

mosmodule

MosModule is a very nice plugin for Joomla that allows you, among many other things, to place modules in your content by module title, content in content, code in content and a score of other useful things. It's a great Swiss Army Knife.

[website] | [Download Page]

Xtypo

I love this plugin. It is by far the best and quickest typography plugin for Joomla. Load Xtypo in your Joomla site and you suddently have drop caps, floating blockquotes, round cornered boxes and other nice elements to spice up your site with.

[website] | [Download Page]

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email this

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (2)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/hide comments

essays

I like it, specially the "section of Color" Animation & "Simple Slide Show"

because it may help to chose best color & slide show help to creative designs.

essays on accounting , August 16, 2010

Changing the default installation package to include the above items

I read a post from a Wordpress guy some time ago that went through a process of including various items that he always included in installations, and took out some that he never wanted.(I wish I could find that tutorial too!) Anyway, I was wondering if there is a way to build a default install package to include the items you mention, and maybe clip out some that I don't want to inlcude?

Response:
Indeed there are ways to do it. One fairly easy way is to use Joomlapack (mentioned above) which lets you back up a site and it creates an installer for it.
In theory, one should be able to also extract the DB from any Joomla site, restore the "installation" directory and insert the new DB code in place of the default Joomla one. That's what most of the Template providers do with their "QuickStart" packages. I think spending a bit of time reverse engineering one of those Quickstarts would probably give you an idea of how it's done.. Personally, I have not tried it.
But I have easily "cloned" a basic site by just zipping the files, move them to another server and uploading the DB. I show how to do that in my latest Podcast:
http://www.conticreative.com/1...erver.html

Be careful on the extension you delete. Some are necessary to make Joomla run.

jerryLEe , March 24, 2010 | url