Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5.x - Essential Extensions

Essential Extensions

I consider the following extensions essential functionality for any Joomla! website, regardless of your site features. Other extensions I'll describe later depend on what features you want. They are all excellent and I'm very grateful to their authors for providing them; for free and everything! In many cases I evaluated multiple extensions to get the functionality I needed, and the ones I settled on here are the best I could find.

I will cite the version of the extension that my comments pertain to below, but there's a good chance that they may have been updated by the time you read this. Always use the latest version available in the extensions library at the time you go to install. The links in the headings will take you straight to the latest version of each extension in the library.

sh404SEF

Version: 15_1.0.16_Beta_build_222

The main feature I wanted from this extension was URLs that were more Search Engine Friendly than the core. I highly recommend it. If you don't use some form of SEO extension, your site will not rank as well in search engines. The alternative commercial Joomla! SEO solutions seem redundant when this one is so good. It's principal drawback is simply that it's needed at all; this functionality should be built into the Joomla! core. The author has had to play some tricks to get this extension to work, like rewriting meta-tag and other information on-the-fly as a page is generated.

There are places where sh404SEF's integration with Joomla! is lacking, because it needs core functionality that just isn't there yet. One example is setting description meta tags on Section and Category tables that I mentioned earlier. Sh404SEF provides a way of setting meta tags on any arbitrary URL, but it would be better if the meta information was entered alongside the Section or Category description, like you can with content items.

I found it easy to get URL-rewriting with .htaccess working by following the instructions in the sh404SEF documentation. Using the htaccess.txt file supplied with the Joomla! core unmodified works fine, but it took me a while to work out how to set the appropriate Rewriting Mode the sh404SEF Configuration. It's on the Advanced tab, which only appears if you have the Extended Display active on the sh404SEF dashboard before selecting sh404SEF Configuration. There are a zillion settings in sh404SEF, which is a bit bamboozling at first. The author has tried to make it easy for novice users who aren't up to getting .htaccess to work, but hiding this tab really confused me.

Another tip is to activate the option to re-write content item titles as H1 elements under Meta/SEO in sh404SEF Configuration. Ideally this should be on by default, but it's not because most templates will require CSS tweaks to apply the appropriate H1 style information; otherwise the headings will look like headings to search engines, but not to humans.

sh404SEF generates SEF URLs on-the-fly and any time you change your sh404SEF Configuration settings, it will suggest that you purge your cache. This will make every page on your site generate 404 “Not Found” errors for offsite visitors coming from search engines or bookmarks, until you force sh404SEF to regenerate the SEF URLs for all your pages. The easiest way to do this is to view your own Sitemap; and if you forget, once Google has seen your Sitemap they will view it for you every day or so. See Xmap below on how to do this.

The author of sh404SEF is very active in the forums on his site, which is the best place to go for support, and also on the Joomla! SEO forum. He often releases new test versions on his website before they are available via the extensions directory.

In my ideal universe, the Joomla! core team would integrate sh404SEF functionality into the core nice and cleanly, choosing the defaults I need so there aren't so many things to play or get confused with. When I think about the lengths that the authors of SEF extensions to Joomla! have had to go, like developing plugin interfaces for other extensions to rewrite their URL's, and the number of permutations and combinations to consider, my mind boggles with: “Why isn't this core functionality?”

JCE

Version: Administration Component 1.5.0, Editor Plugin 1.5.1

I needed the Joomla Content Editor (JCE) extension in order to make it practical to insert hyperlinks between my content items. It's so good that I wish it was the default Joomla! editor. It just works. My only wish is that it could automatically execute the Spelling Checker when opening a content item.

Remember to install both the Component and the Plugin file for JCE to work. I sometimes had trouble uninstalling it, getting error messages saying “It was not possible to delete the selected file.: 'en-GB.com_jce.ini'”, and a few others. Removing the Component also removes the Plugin entry in the Extension Manager, leaving stuff behind that will give you an error message if you go to reinstall. If you want to remove JCE, remove the Plugin first, then the Component.

Xmap

Version: 1.2

You need a Sitemap on your site, for three reasons. Firstly, it's nice for your visitors to get a big-picture view. Secondly, search engines like Google like being able to find everything on your site in one hit. Thirdly, it forces sh404SEF to regenerate SEF URLs for every page on your site.

Google has a nice friendly Sitemap submission tool in their Webmaster tools, you should also put a reference to it in your robots.txt file, where every Sitemap-enabled search engine will find it. The line in robots.txt should look like:

Sitemap: http://GrahamStoney.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml&no_html=1

The link should be whatever Xmap shows as the XML Sitemap in Component Xmap, Sitemaps, Options, Preferences. Note that Google recommend that you still submit the Sitemap to them manually, so they can give you feedback on it.

I wasn't happy with the CSS supplied with Xmap, so I recommend replacing it with this:

.sitemap ul {
	display		: block;
	margin		: 0;
	padding		: 0;
}
.sitemap ul li {
	margin		: 0;
	padding		: 0;
	white-space	: nowrap;
	background	: transparent;
}
.sitemap a img {
	border		: none;
}
.sitemap ul.level_0 li {
	margin		: 0 0 1em 2em;
}
.sitemap ul.level_1 li {
	margin		: 0 0 0.5em 4em;
}
.sitemap ul.level_2 li {
	margin		: 0 0 0 4em;
}
.sitemap .active {
	font-style	: italic;
}

Check that the CSS classname in Xmap's Options, Preferences is set to match the class name in Xmap's CSS window, for example sitemap if you want to use the styles listed above.

I couldn't get Xmap's built-in template editor to save my changes to its .css file. It says it saved the changes, but when I opened it again, the old file was still there. I had to use the cPanel editor to edit the file.

By default, Xmap generates a Powered By line with a link back to the author's site, which is probably not what you want. But you can disable this via Components, Xmap, Sitemaps, Options, Preferences and uncheck Include link to author in Display Options.

JoomlaPack

Version: 2.0.1

Once you've built your site on your local machine using XAMPP, you need a way to transfer it to your hosting provider. And once it's in operation, you need a way to back it up in case your hosting provider crashes or your site gets hacked. JoomlaPack is the answer to your prayers in both these respects. My hosting provider charges for the privilege of restoring my data and script kiddies get a thrill out of finding the latest exploits and taking sites down, so I want to know my data is safe. This extension builds a .ZIP file containing everything on your site including the Joomla! installation, your content database, and an installer to set it all up. It's gold.

One quirk with JoomlaPack is that depending on the configuration of your hosting provider, the .ZIP files it generates may not always have correct CRCs and so you may get warnings if you go to open them with your usual .ZIP extraction tools. The data is safely stored though, and this is thoroughly explained in the extensive PDF documentation and on the developers' website.

I had trouble restoring my JoomlaPack archive on one hosting provider due to PHP security settings, which led to warning messages saying: “Warning: ini_set() has been disabled for security reasons...” and ultimately a fatal error. The workaround was to:

• Create a "php.ini" file in the public_html directory with:

disabled_functions = 

• Open .htaccess and include this line, with “username” replaced with your username:

suPHP_ConfigPath /home/username/public_html

Another snag I hit was that my hosting provider only ran MySQL 4, whereas XAMPP comes with MySQL 5. In order to migrate my site to go live, I needed to set the JoomlaPack Configuration, Advanced, Database Export Style to “Force MySQL 4 Compatible”. Otherwise I got fatal errors during the database restore on my live site. The JoomlaPack crew run an excellent support forum where I found answers to questions like this.

Missing Metadata

Version: 1.0

In case you haven't worked it out by now, metadata is important to get a good search engine ranking. This extension provides a list right on your backend dashboard of all content items which currently have no metadata. It's indispensable. After installation, you must manually activate the extension under the Extensions, Module Manager, Administrator Modules pane and set the position to CPanel for the information to appear.