The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

I'm webmaster for a charity, and we needed to put our paper newsletter online to save costs. There was some resistance from members, who liked their paper newsletter, so I was looking for an extension that made it look as much like the printed version as possible. Flash Magazine Deluxe has achieved that for us, and the online newsletter looks good and is popular with members.

However, to get a professional-looking result from this extension you need first to be able to produce your magazine as image files for uploading. The built-in WYSISWG editor is extremely basic, and it would not be possible to make up a sophisticated page layout using this extension alone. The documentation is quite sparse, and lacks an overview that fully explains what the extension actually does. I'm sure that the developers will remedy this soon.

Overall, this extension does a good job of turning image files into a nicely-presented flicking magazine with reader-friendly controls, and I would recommend it to anyone who needs that functionality and is happy to work it through without much hand-holding. If you're looking for something that will take your Joomla! articles and present them as a magazine, this is not it.

I am more than happy with EasyBlog, and in particular with the very speedy, helpful and effective support provided. The package is easy to install, flexible and comes with loads of useful modules. Thoroughly recommended.