Two Essential Extensions for Joomla

I’ve been blogging a lot about various extensions for Joomla and I’m going to take a step-back and mention two extensions that I install on all of my sites at the very start of the development process. I consider them essential for me to be able to quickly develop and maintain websites of all shapes and sizes. I would encourage all Joomlaphiles out there to consider these extensions simply because of how much time and energy they save. And of course, in keeping with my ongoing theme in favour of open-source technology, they’re free!

The first extension that I want to mention is Joomla eXtplorer. It is a “web-based File Management Component for all your needs. It has a desktop-application-like interface with drag&drop, grid and a directory tree and makes heavy use of the ExtJS Javascript Library. You can use it to access and modify the files and directories on your server via FTP or direct file access.” Basically, it lets you navigate and interact with all of your folders on your website like you were in windows. And it has some FTP functionality as well like chmod settings for controlling file and folder permission levels. I use eXtplorer almost every time I’m making changes to a site and I pretty much can’t live without it.

My other essential extension is JCE which stands for Joomla Content Editor. This is my personal favourite of all of the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) extensions. I especially like that I can change the layout and add/remove certain buttons reminiscent of MS Word. I’m not saying that I like Word per se but I’ve gone through the learning curve of adopting various products and it’s nice to know that JCE can be adapted to suite my own personal taste. For the advanced users, JCE also allows for custom plug-ins and has a nice [show/hide] feature that let’s you see your article as straight HTML code which is nice when you want to manipulate certain elements in a way that the buttons can’t accommodate.

So there’s two great extensions to add to your Joomla repertoire.