The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

If my memory serves me correctly, LazyDbBackup was introduced on January 29, 2011 based on the excellent plugin called LazyBackup developed by Stefan Granholm. A great moment in Joomla plugin history.

Robert Gastaud, the developer of the latest iteration of the plugin, has done the Joomla community a great service by updating this extremely useful plugin to backup your Joomla databases.

We use it for all our sites to automatically backup the database once a week by email, which we use for our local backups running on WAMP.

A big thanks to both developers for writing such a high quality and reliable piece of software.

A very nice concept to utilize extra space on your site. The icons are great and the tabs are easy to configure.

One request to the developer: Can you please as an example insert for new users info for one tab with a path to the image and the home page. I tried five module positions, but did not see the tabs on the site. It took me a while to figure out that you first need to fill out the path to the image and the link before the tab is shown on the site.

Great work. We give five stars to the developer.

We give the developer 5 stars for this plugin based on a review of the demo site, although we could not test it ourselves after installation. It is a great alternative to other commercial plugins, but the syntax is not clear. This is a real pity since this plugin is undoubtedly an extension many have been waiting for.

We hope the developer will add a contact option or a forum on the developer's site and clarify the syntax further with more detailed examples (what do we need to insert between the tags to replace the "...").

FlashCharts is a free, high quality framework for presenting interactive graphs on the web. Designed by an enthusiastic group of developers, the framework could be a bit daunting to non-PhP enthusiasts when they want to use it on Joomla websites. This should not stop them (or you). Joachim Schmidt has developed a great plugin so everyone who can insert a plugin tag in an article can use FlashCharts on his/her Joomla site.

We tested the plugin documentation extensively and it is excellent. There are no typos in example tags, everything works directly out of the box and clear examples are provided that can be copied and pasted for instant gratification.
We are also impressed how fast the graphs load and that you can link them directly to Joomla databases. This is a great feature that enables you to do more with your databases.

We give this plugin and its developer 5 stars for building upon the powerful FlashCharts framework, acknowledging the exceptional work of the FlashChart developers, the first-rate documentation of the plugin and the ease of using the plugin.

This is a great extension to make your site special. We tested it in Explorer 8, Firefox and Chrome. It works out of the box. No conflicts with other extensions, easy to install and to implement. The developer has added more color pins.

It is an excellent module. We give it five stars because it is innovative, builds upon the great work by an original developer and we really like the concept.

Wish list: The option to include Urls in the note.

This component is extremely useful for displaying massive amounts of data that otherwise would not fit on a page or that would be difficult to manage in Joomla.

If you have a lot of data in Excel files (CSV) and you want to use it in Joomla, than this extension is something you really need to look into. It is ideal for large repositories.
The extension is robust and easy to use.

Wish list:

1) Once you open a record in detailed view, you cannot move to the next record with a button (such as a next or previous record button) or enter a record number to jump through the list. You need to go back to the previous page with your “go back one page” button in the browser and click on a new entry in the list. It would be very useful if users were able to scroll through records while they are in detailed view.

2) Better documentation on linked tables.

3) Another great option would be to link to files in a field directly from a directory on the server.

4) Option to manually add additional fields (now you can only upload the CSV with a predetermined number of fields).

5) The option to enable, disable the search function and set the default number of rows to be displayed.

6) If you search a table on a key word, the list shows only entries with the keyword which is correct. The problem is that when you go to another table, the entry in the search box is also used to display the contents of new table. So, if you are out of luck, no entries will be show in the new table. The search box should be empty each time you click on a new table.

That all said, it is a wonderful and functional addition to Joomla, an extension with a great future.

Highly recommended.

A very useful and powerful solution to add scripts to a page. It should be part of the core functionality of Joomla.

The problem: I kept on running into the auto cleanup functionality of tinymce when I inserted scripts in pages. I looked for a solution to keep my scripts in an article while using tinymce.

The solution: Sourcerer. I no longer have to switch between editors, I can use tinymce and my scripts work. Just place the code between two tags in the editor and you are set. No need to switch to the html viewer. Thanks Nonumber.

This is one of the extensions my sites can not live without. It works out of the box. Well done. One suggestion for future releases: the option to select all categories/section and than exclude particular sections/categories. This would be nice, but is not essential.

Thanks to the developers.

Cheers

We were looking for an admin module that allows short cuts and icons to be linked to standard admin functions. You can of course place links to functions in the custom html module, but we were looking for short cuts to functions (for example to open a component or the article manager without the need to go through the menu structure). In particular, we wanted to use Ctrl+w as a short cut to open the editor for a new article.

This module makes it very easy to define the short cuts. It not only give you a drop list of components and menu items you can link to. Especially useful is also the opportunity to link to any url.

Two thumbs up for the developers.

This plugin is very useful if you want to set up your own file sharing system on a Joomla website. It is especially useful if you want to share documents that are too large to attach to an email message and/or when you do not want to use other file sharing services or an FTP site. Since it is a plugin, you can insert repositories directly in an article with a simple tag.

The graphic presentation is great and the plugin works out of the box. Really fantastic.

One of the best plugins we have seen!!! If we could give it 6 stars, we would.

It is an excellent module, but do have the problem that the text appears for 3 seconds and then it disappears and an empty note is shown. I tried the module in two different templates and the same problem occurs. I nevertheless give it five stars because I really like the concept.

Wish list: I hope this problem can be solved and it would also be good to add more color pins. The current one is green and may not work well with the color scheme of sites - a choice of a few primary colors would be excellent.

Templater is one those extensions that fill in a gap in the Joomla core functionality. Highly recommended for sites that need to standardize content.

Wish list: To be able to set a default template that is loaded in the article automatically for articles in a certain category - in the current version, users need to select a template from a drop down under the editor first.

This extension is excellent.

I have used Xtypo for a while and it is a fantastic plug in for those who need beautiful CSS in articles. Installation is simple. Using the code is even easier.
The developers provide a very useful list of style examples in the plug in. You just copy and paste the syntax into your article and voila, it works.

After some trial and error, and checking the forums, I found out that IE7 renders the code differently than FF. Some styles work in both browsers (quotes), while other styles seem to generate problems with IE7(rounded boxes) - or perhaps it is better to say that IE7 is creating the problems, because it works with FF.

The solution is incredibly simple: When you copy and paste the code from the examples in the plug in, the typo coding syntax is in bold characters. This seems to be a problem for IE7. Just make sure the code you place in your article is not in bold and the styles work in FF and IE7!!!

Two thumbs for the developers.