The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

I needed a blogging component for JomSocial socionet sites, and did a review of what was available. This one rated very high--but I was concerned about cost and real JomSocial integration. I went with MyBlog--and after weeks of headaches with CSS, JomComment integration and functionality problems broke down and subscribed to EasyBlog.

I sure wish that I had done that in the beginning. There is no issue at all with JS integration. This is a fully featured component that is very user friendly and provides true WYSIWYG editing with your own choice of editor. It has a native comment system, but can be seamlessly integrated with other comment systems such as jComments (for sitewide commenting function). Want to couple to Twitter, Buzz, or Facebook? It's built in. How about social bookmarking features? Already there--take your pick.

The included templates are very attractive out of the box and with a little CSS tweaking can match your site theme perfectly. Works with one blogger--or hundreds each having their own blog head. Support is second to none--Sam even wrote a plugin for me that swept jComment title and comment heads into the activity stream! In 5 years of using J! applications, I cannot think of another app dev group that is this "on the ball" with any level of support.

The only slight downside I can find is that image handling could be improved--and I understand that this is on the project list for future releases. Overall this is the one to go with instead of wasting valuable site development time trying to get freebie or poorly coded solutions to work properly. Three cheers for EasyBlog!

Although I have a solid backup solution in my WHM panel--this little application is a truly handy addition. Making changes to your site? Do a quick backup of files and MySQL for those times that it just did not work out right... Restore is a breeze.

Although the free version is pretty full featured, I like the Pro package, as it lets me schedule a cron job for the backup--and then automatically port it over to my Amazon AWS S3 cloud. The filtering on non-changing files is pretty granular, and makes for quick essential daily backups of user content something that you will not have to worry about.

Great solution, and very low overhead on your server when running.

One of the difficulties of Joomla! 1.5 is getting to a few of the admin tasks that are not "in the open". Akeeba's Admin Tools can help with that. Even the free version accomplishes a lot. Joomla! releases an update? Go to tools and click to update the core. No more FTP overwriting to accomplish needed security releases. It does the same for updating itself--something every J! application should do!

It has a temp directory clean option, will purge old sessions, and can call a repair and optimize directive for your MySQL database. A few more neat features--but something totally useful for ongoing site admin. I have installed and use this on all of my sites. Great job!