Essential Extensions for Joomla! Developers Part 2

It's time to continue our safari through the open source world of the Joomla! Content Management System, one of the most used and well known CMSs worldwide. With over 10.000 extensions, it is easy to customize and tailor to client perfection. Joomla! is currently available in versions 2.5 and 3.0.


Last week we presented you some of the "Essential Extensions for Joomla! Developers" and will now continue to show you further Joomla! extensions that a web developer should have in his tool box.

Virtuemart (Joomla! 2.5, Joomla! 3.x)

This is probably the most commonly used Joomla! shopping cart system. Make sure you read the set-up instructions, as although it is easy to install it has got plenty of features you wouldn't want to miss. Vituemart also comes with no licensing fee which makes it definitely worth to try it. The feature list is unlimited but here are some of the essential product features:

  • Meta Tags for SEO
  • Dimensions (Weight, Size)
  • Multiple media
  • Reviews and Ratings
  • Unlimited child products
  • Related products

The full feature list of Virtuemart can be found here.

Download Virtuemart here.

Community Builder (Joomla! 2.5, Joomla! 3.x)

Community Builder gives your site additional interactivity and community features. It lets your users get active on your site. Probably the most popular community networking solution for Joomla!. The component is fully scalable, robust and reliable, lets you add custom user profiles, lists, and makes your site social. Additional features include:

Allow login using email address and password (instead of just username)
Create unlimited Community Builder user lists with searching
Let members connect with each other
Custom field validation
Integration with Joomla! articles
Manage fields in tabs to be displayed in different profile positions
If social integration is a requirement for your website, then this component is a must!

Download Community Builder here.

JEvents (Joomla! 2.5, Joomla 3.x)

This simple to integrate events calendar is one of the best we’ve come across. The component is free also includes several additional modules and plugins. In addition it is fully compatible with the Joomla MVC framework and therefore allows developers to add their custom code very easily. Certain events can be inserted in multiple categories and calendar views can be customised to show individual categories. To make layout editing more accessible for the user a tool is provided to perfect the presentation on your site. A major advantage of this component is that it also has a "Search" plugin built in which allows the Joomla! search module to access results from the JEvents component helping users to find event descriptions through the standard search form. If you're looking for an events calendar plugin, this is probably where to start.

Download JEvents here.

AllVideos - Video player (Joomla 2.5)


Multimedia is definitely what website are now made of, therefore every website will normally require video playing capabilities. Previously, developer would have to use long HTML tags to embedd external video from sources such like YouTube, Vimeo or Dailymotion. This plugin allows you to simply include your video link in the plugin tag within the standard WYSIWYG editor in Joomla!. So instead of using the long IFrame tag you could use just simple shortcuts like {youtube}.

AllVideo also allows you to use additional parameters like the width, height or autoplay. Furthermore you can also embedd mobile-friendly MP4 videos. Major media formats that can be used are:

YouTube
Vimeo
Dailymotion
Metacafe
MySpace Video
Flickr
Veoh
Google Video

A full list of media formats can be seen here. AllVideo is definitely essential if you want to embed videos into your Joomla! content.

Download AllVideos here.

SobiPro (Joomla 2.5, Joomla 3.x)

A very powerful directory extension for your Joomla! site that allows you and your site visitors to submit, filter and search custom content on your website. You can create a functional directory that lets your website visitors submit entries from the website front-end. These entries can be listed in multiple categories as well as formatted within several templates. This is a major component if you want to create a business directory listing businesses in several sectors.

Download SobiPro here.

Joomla! Extensions are a good way to improve the user experience on your website. Instead of spending a lot of money on building your own component you can easily download and install them without hassle. This is why we created our list of essential Joomla! components for Joomla! Developers.
Joomla! is a very reliable and powerful CMS solution that requires some experience if you require custom made components. Alchemy Interactive is an experienced and award winning Joomla! development agency that can help you build a CMS system and improve the user experience on your website.

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