We have put together a list of Joomla Extensions that we believe that EVERY Joomla website should take into consideration. No matter what kind of Joomla website you have, these are the very basic extensions that you should install first on your websites. These Joomla extensions are crucial to the operations of any Joomla website no matter what kind of site you are maintaining.

Backup Manager

    The backup of your Joomla website and database should be your number one priority. With so many threats today of getting hacked, this is an area that you should not even think twice about. There are a host of backup utilities available for Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 that will do the trick. One of our favorites here at Joomla Showroom is "JoomlaCloner" - backup and restore and it is available for both Joomla 1.0 and Joomla 1.5. Do your research and find the tool that best works for you.

WYSIWYG Editors

    Your WYSIWYG Editor is something that you will use every day on your Joomla website. It is very important that you choose a good one. Most new Joomla users do not understand that there are better alternatives available than the editors that ship with the standard Joomla installation. We have tried so many WYSIWYG Editors in our search for the best that it isn't funny  We at Joomla showroom have come to favor an editor named XHTMLSuite. With an available 508 compliant version this editor can be invaluable to your website. This is a commercial editor but trust us when we say that it is worth the investment. Another free alternative that we like is JCE Editor. It is a nice free editor that has a lot of nice features however we have found the  XHTMLSuite to be more stable and has better product support.

eXtplorer

    This extension is free, and allows you to easily manage files right from the back end of your Joomla website. Most importantly, it lets you change permissions of files. The nice thing about this extension is that it works on both Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 and also can be used as a standalone application for any website. You can use it to access and modify the files and directories on your server via FTP or direct file access.  

SEF Extension

    To get noticed by search engines, your URLs must be "Search Engine Friendly" (SEF). There are many free SEF extensions and also some commercially available options. Joomla Showroom has tried out a host of these extensions and we have chosen the free sh404SEF extension. This SEF Component has become one of the hottest SEF tools available for Joomla. We have seen countless installations of other comparable components but this one is a great choice for any Joomla website looking to improve your search engine standards. sh404SEF is available for both Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 installations.

Sitemap

    Every site should have a sitemap. Sitemaps are very valuable to your visitors that are trying to find information on your website. Sitemaps are also very valuable for search engines that are crawling your website. One sitemap tool that we have found to be reliable and easy to use is called Xmap.  Xmap is a component based on the popular Joomap component and it is availabe for both Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 versions.

 Analytics

    If you can measure it, you can manage it! how do you know where your visitors are coming from? What were they looking for when they came to your site? Did they come from a referral link on another website?  We strongly recommend signing up for a free Google Analytics account. You can simply insert a small piece of code script into your template html and have the answers to the questions above. Although this is not a Joomla extenstion itself you can use it to track your visitors using some very robust reporting aids. If you are looking for an installable Joomla extension to manage this we recommend that you try FireStats. FireStats is an Ajax bases web statistics system with Joomla integration. Works well on high traffic sites without creating a significant server load. FireStats is also available for both Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 versions.

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