About the author:
Russell English is a freelance web designer and has been running StormIT for the past 10 years specialising in building Joomla based wesbites. https://www.stormit.co.uk
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Joomla is a content management system (CMS) which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications and thanks to it’s easy to set up and support from a large community of developers, it has proven to be one of the most popular one click installs that comes free with Heart Internet web hosting.
Having designed many Joomla websites, I always find myself installing the Joomla package on my latest website and then having to remember which Extensions I need to install to make the site streamlined for SEO and work the way I need it to. After several years of running Joomla I started to realise that I had to compile a list of “Must Have” Joomla extensions. This is a brief run down on which extensions I think every site needs!
An advanced, configurable WYSIWYG editor for Joomla! based on Moxiecode’s TinyMCE. Includes advanced Image/Media, File and Link handling, plug-in support, and an Administration interface for editor configuration.
A must-have Plugin to make Google Webmaster Tools verification a bit easier. Works with the Meta Tag method and no template adjustments are needed. This is ideal for website with multiple templates or demo sites, no templates adjustments needed when you add a new template this Plugin will make sure you stay verified.
You can improve the SEO settings of Joomla 1.5 with this free SEO patch for Joomla 1.5. This patch solves the issues in regards of the settings within the html head section of your html page. The patch allows you to gain fully control over the META and title settings in the http header settings in Joomla 1.5 generated pages
Google Analytics Tracking Module
Your perfect companion for getting Google Analytics to work on your Joomla site!
Joomap is a sitemap component for Joomla. This gives you control over which menu’s you want present in your site map, which you can then upload straight to Google!
FTP Manager within your Joomla backend! It allows you to edit files, delete, copy, rename, archive and unpack files/directories directly on your server, all from within the Joomla Adminstration site!
This is the must have forum for your site. Does everything that a good forum component should do and more!
This component is the easiest and best photo gallery component that there is. You can have multiple categories along with child objects within them. Very good and very useful!
The one and only e-commerce solution for Joomla as far as I’m concerned. This is a great component and integrates perfectly into any Joomla installation.
The ONLY open-source backup component for Joomla that you need! It’s simple mission, is create a site backup that can be restored on any Joomla! capable server. Ajax powered, very easy to use!
All good extentions but don’t bother with Joomap – it won’t work on sites hosted with Heart as the method of generatiing the sitemap is blocked at the server level (uses CURL)
addjsecure to the list,a plugin that hides the joomla admin page by requiring a second level password.
Works out of the box.As for Virtuemart, I have never been able to install it as it times out. So I stay with zencart.
Nice List Russel,
I would like to suggest “RSfinder” which is an invaluable tool. This module is for Joomla! admin panel; you can easily search through articles,Joomla modules,plugins,menu items or users.
Nice article by the way
Thanks very much for your feedback, glad you liked the article. I’m sure there are alot more extensions that could have been added.
As for Joomap, I have this running on all of my sites, which are all hosted by Heart, so not sure why your’s isn’t installing Neil.
G Miller, I’ll take a look for RSFinder!
Does any one know of a usable podcasting plugin for Joomla, cos I’ve been looking and so far havn’t found one that takes less than 3 steps to simply add a new podcast.
You must be psychic. I was about to start my first site using Joomla.
Good article, although I’d drop the old legacy Google Analytics plugin in favour of this more up-to-date extension.
J!Analytics
https://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/site-management/site-analytics/4300
And VirtueMart is not what I’d use in the top 10. It’s big, and it does ecommerce but after building a site in it you will discover how buggy it is and how poor forum support is. Like Tim said, use a stand-alone cart.
Agree with you Russell, these are the essential extensions as well as some of these extensions are also important for search engine optimization that helps Google to crawl the website and rank on it.
It’s really a great read! Keep sharing such informative tech information. 🙂