I had been looking for a reciprocal links component for some time for Joomla and JV-LinkExchanger definitely works perfectly for this purpose. It is quick and simple to install and setup. It supports both text and banner links, as well as one way and two way reciprocal linking between your Joomla site and a third party site.

Visitors can also easily submit their site for inclusion in the links directory, and the ability to pay for monthly featured link subscriptions is also in place.

As a general external web links directory it is however currently missing a few useful additions that can currently be found in some of the other directory web link components such as Bookmarks, so it is worth testing both if you don't need the reciprocal link ability.

Front end link hits is due to be added in the next release so that is a good addition I have wanted as users can instantly see how popular each link is.

In order to track all visitors to a site, a mambot being used to insert tracking code into a Joomla site ideally needs to be a system mambot. Sadly this Google Analytics mambot is a content mambot and so it will not include the code in any third party component areas of a site.

I had this running on my site for a long time, but it was only ever logging about 10% of the traffic visiting my site. I know this because I compared the data with the server's own logs.

I've now switched to the new "Google Analytics Bridge" mambot that is a system mambot and should therefore include the code on every page of a site, even third party component based areas.

Originally I had been using the Analytics mambot from JoomlaFrance and although it did work I noticed that it was only logging around 10% of my actual site's visitor traffic. I then realised that it was a content mambot and was therefore only being included standard article content pages of the site.

I've now switched to this Google Analytics Bridge mambot because it is a system mambot and so should now be included on all pages of the site, not just content pages, and so every page visited should be logged.

I've only just added it to my site so I need to wait a few days to see if a truer representation of my site's visitor rates are now being logged, but as it is a system bot it should do a much better job than the bot I used to use.

I had no issues installing this Mambot on a Joomla 1.0.12 based site. It just installed without an problem. It is also easy to setup, just requiring publishing of the Mambot and entering you ID. And that is it.

For those who cannot get this mambot to work, as the author mentioned it requires PHP5 to be running on your server. I have this running and so had no issues. If your server is still stuck running PHP4 then please don't blame the author of this mambot. It works perfectly, but only with PHP5.

A very simple idea that overhauls the Joomla content voting, giving a much smoother and integrated feel to the system. The AJAX technology, meaning no page refreshes and instant message feedback when submitting a vote, gives a site a much cleaner and interactive feel.

The current release does have a few issues. It can conflict on the frontpage of a site with a template's css list properties and this can break the plugin. And there are times when other javascript code on the same page can conflict. But the support forum is quite well supported and most solutions to such problems can be found there.

After using random image modules for other galleries I was expecting a similar module for Coppermine, but I was very disappointed.

The Admin backend has no settings at all. All you can do is set the relative path of your coppermine gallery and where coppermine fetch is installed so it knows where to pull the images from.

Issues:

1, It has no support for css custom styles so it looks as the author coded it and you have no control to change this other than directly editing the module code.

2, No control over the layout and visibility of each elements within the module.

I would like to see options to:

a, Control the visibility of image name and author.

b, Relative position within the module of the image, caption and authors name.

c, Option to use the functionality of the cpmfetch utility this module is using to be able to pick the galleries and categories the images are taken from.

d, Ability to select different way to extract images based on functions like Last added image, most voted image, random image, top noted image, most viewed image, and random top noted image.

So to sum up, this module is very basic and only does what it is fixed to do, extract a random image from your coppermine gallery and place it in a predefined module layout with no control over how it looks.

With this module using cpmfetch to extract the images I was hoping the author would of taken advantage of it's abilities and features as I have outlined above. Sadly this was not the case.

Looking at this modules code it is very basic and would have only taken a short time to make. I easily rewrote it to suit my site's needs so if you have this ability it can easily be hacked and rewritten for you own purposes to look how you want it and to use the functions of cpmfetch more effectively.

It might be worth keeping an eye on this for future released as I hope the author does start to add some more advanced features and control abilities. But it is also worth looking at the cpgimage coppermine extractor bot as this does have many of the abilities I've mentioned above.

Word of warning. If you install cmpfetch and this module on your site and also install the cpgimage coppermine extractor bot (by tactis.net) you will get a fatal error on your site because the bot comes with the cmpfetch software already included so two copies will be trying to run at the same time. You can get around this issue by not installed cmpfetch on your site, and instead installing the bot and this module then pointing the module's setting for the location of cmpfetch to the copy included with the bot.

I had been using Phil Taylors mosGuestBook on my site since the site was created, but it had a very limited backend configuration and required members to post a website and email to leave a comment which I never liked. It also conflicted with the latest version of Knowledgebase by the same author, and was no longer supported or developed, so it was time to change.

I've looked through all the different guestbooks available, and after testing them EasyBook is definitely the best. It's clean and simple and works well. The backend configuration has all the setting you require and it doesn't force guests to leave details they don't wish to leave.

If you need a guestbook for your site I highly recommend this. And it works perfectly with 1.0.11 with register_globals off.

I run a retro gaming site and had been looking through and trying all the different directory, portfolio, gallery, multimedia, indexing, ecommerce etc... components for ages until I finally came across jReviews.

This is one of the best Joomla components I have found so far and I didn't hesitate to buy it as soon as I looked at some of the sites using jReviews that are listed on the developers homepage.

It's a little bit confusing when you first install it as you don't know what you have to do, or in what order. I highly recommend looking at the tutorial videos on the site and running through them all in order as you setup your site. Once you run through them once jReviews all falls into place and it's then very easy to use and configure.

If you have been looking for a Joomla component that allows you to arrange content into a directory structure, with each entry able to have an unlimited number of custom fields and images, and the adility to rate each entry with an editor's review, as well as visitor reviews, then this is perfect.

Your site members can also add new items to the directory if you want them too, including uploading images, and writing their own reviews.

The component is completely template based and you have free reign to change the position and look of every element so you can make it unique to your site and laid out in the best way to suit your content.

If there is one negative it's adding images. When you create a new item you have the ability to upload up to 10 images for that page. You can add more images after this from the backend to allow for a near unlimited number of images per item, but if anyone tries to edit the item again from the frontend they don't see the image upload section and cannot upload any more images. The developer is however working on adding this ability after I asked him about it.

Which is another huge plus point in jReviews favour. The developer of this component is very easy to contact via email and quickly answered all the questions I had about using the component. Features I hadn't noticed but needed and feedback on ideas I had for future versions.

I couldn't recommend jReviews enough and the price is easily worth it.

I wanted to add a Google Site Map to help improve search engine rankings and found Joomap to be perfect for this. It was very easy to install and setup and made adding the sitemap to Google very straight forward and easy to do. I had it submitted in 5 minutes of installing Joomap.

The Site Map also works well on the site and is very easy to configure if you need to hide certain menus from the map.

If your site is using Community Builder then GeoCommunity is a must have addition to your site. It instantly marks the location of all your members on its google map with colour coded times of visit and links the markers directly to each members profile.

I've tested other Google Map based Joomla extensions and none of them are as easy to use or work as well. I helped beta test this component and am very pleased with the final version. The developer offers great support with very quick replies to any questions and tries to fix any problems a user has as soon as he can.

I was after a component to award members based on competition results I run on my site and forum, and I have found jAwards to be perfect for this purpose. It's very easy to create new awards and to assign them to members and manage existing awards. The Community Builder integration is also a good feature, so that a member's awards can be seen in their profile.

jAwards has just been updated to work with register_globals off, so it will now work with the lastest version of Joomla with the recommended security settings in place.