dP's Joomla! on a Mac

Finding the Right Extensions in Joomla

This week I have endeavored into the wonderful world of Joomla extensions.  I have installed dozens of extensions this week and have been testing them out to see if they feed my purpose.  What I have learned from the extension community is that there are plenty of extensions to accomplish the same tasks with different approaches.  You have to be careful with people’s ratings, because some are based on the usefulness of the extension to the particular reviewer.  I will go over some of the extensions that I have tested.

Joomla Blog Extensions

iDoBlog - was a very powerful blogging format.  It’s main purpose seems to be to create a blog community on your Joomla powered web page.  This extension did not fit my need, but I had tested it out to evaluate the personal blogging format.  I wanted a set up like WordPress but this blog format looked more like a forum than a blog, attaching a picture of the poster next to their post.

WordPress for Joomla- This is absolutely brilliant.  Users have given it huge results, but it didn’t fit my needs as it is another blogging format for multiple users.  I am simply looking for a decent looking blog component to run a blog section for myself on the site.

Joomla Comment Extensions

First things first, these extensions require you to use SEO compatible links which you must set in the Global Configuration file of Joomla.  I have set this up, but I could not get any of these extensions working.  Disqus, Rok Comments, or Intense Database.  Every time I set up these systems, it would show a comment link under the article but when you click it it would just go to the article url, and nothing more.  I am not sure what I did wrong on these extensions, but there wasn’t any step by step guides for any of the extensions.  You would think that they would create some step by step installations for these extensions, but the ones that I saw were not very in depth.

Joomla CCK Extensions

K2 - Is very powerful, but the layouts didn’t fit my needs.  It adds a lot of power into organizing content and adding more versatility to your content.  You truly have to install it to understand its power.  My only problem with this extension is the layouts to display your content.  There are a couple templates that come with the package, but not nearly enough options.  There are some people that seem to be working on building more templates, but there isn’t much documentation driven behind the community.  I would like to see a layout template section on the site, and some tutorials on how to create layouts.  Without this it really is in the hands to experienced developers.  I would make a lot more use of this extension if they gave you more control on how your content was displayed, until then I won’t be using it.

Zoo from YooTheme.com – This extension package from YooTheme looks the most promising.  It has just as much control as K2 but with beautiful display options. The thing that appeals to me most about this extension is, multi-mapping content, you can assign content to multiple sections or categories.  Product catalogs is a super plus for me, and I love the way Zoo displays the content built for these catalogs.  My only problem is the huge price tag on Zoo from YooTheme which is $145 for 3 months.  This does include access to all of their templates and other extensions, which is a pretty good deal, but the demo for this product doesn’t give you much experience all of its features which makes it hard to convince.

5 Comments so far
Leave a comment