The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

The developer Omar, is responsive to your queries and fixes things when they are raised. His modules are discrete but full of functionality:

It enhances Site Title.
Replaces the Default Joomla! Generator.
Forces Compatibility View for IE8 Users.
Adds a contact and referral form.
Adds twelve social bookmarking icons.
Adds a note to users of the obsolete browser IE6.
Allows you turn off right clicking.

And more... I use it on all my Joomla 1.5 sites. I also use the Joomla 1.0 version on all my old 1.0 sites but the older version has slightly less functionality. In general 1st class.

It installs seamlessly and creates a good captcha, no more to say! It is good.

This is one of the most important extensions for VM as far as I am concerned if you want stock control for items with attributes.

It is now possible to set a stock value for an item with attributes without having to use the child/parent item relationship as per current VM. Virtuemart's system is unwieldy, complicated to use, counter-intuitive and results in thousands of child items. Some shops have items with 30 sizes, 5 colour variations and other attributes. With hundreds of products in your shop this could end up with thousands of child products and a requirement for a dedicated server...

The idea is simply that you can have a stock level for each and every variety of item that you wish to have in the shop. This extension accomplishes this and does what VM should have had all along.

So far, no issues with this extension. It works for Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 which is always a good thing, for me. If you need to incorporate a component's functionality into an article then this is the plugin I shall be using. It has been around for a while so all bugs fixed it would seem. Good job!

I have used jdownloads on my main site and depend on it a great deal. It is quick to set up and configure, it is easy to add categories and download items. The support from Arno is very good indeed and that is for the free version. There is one fault in the tool though, the inability to incorporate a captcha into the download page, this should be possible through integrating a 3rd party captcha tool. I am trying to persuade Arno to support this. Regardless, it is an excellent tool and with captcha support it will be perfect. Rating it as good rather than excellent until it gains captcha support

Install this on all your Joomla 1.5 sites by default. This tool significantly enhances the module assignment ability of Joomla. I do wish this was available for the old Joomla 1.0 sites too.

This was a good module before the take off of facebook. Since facebook is now the site to bookmark with then the absence of a facebook link button makes this module slightly pointless. It really does need to be updated to take into account that a lot of the bookmarking sites it can link to have gone. Developers - please update with a facebook link on both the joomla 1.0 and 1.5 versions. Both still useful if you do!

I love it! - It provides a full-featured shopping cart and the best thing is that it integrates with Joomla. You need to know/understand how Joomla works to appreciate how useful this integration is. Suffice to say that the two complement each other perfectly and you can get very good SEO results if you implement this combination properly. Virtuemart has flaws, glaring ones like the child product attributes and the poor and limited shipping structure. It also does not compete with the dedicated shopping carts like OSCommerce which are more fully featured. It is no good for very simple carts because it requires a lot of configuration - it is like having a site within a site and takes just as much work to implement. However, it is pretty well perfect for the small to mid-range shop as long as you are prepared to put the hours in. Only choose Virtuemart for your shopping cart after you have fully checked to see if it corresponds to your requirements. The combination of Joomla and virtuemart is perfect.

An excellent facebook connector for Joomla 1.5 or Joomla 1.0. The daft developer has forgotten to flag it on the JED as being J1.0 compatible too - fix that mistake! It is easy to configure, does what I want. I have run it on both Joomla 1.0 and Joostina and it works on both. I will use it on my 1.5 sites too. First class.

Nice little module that displays contact information where you want it to do so. Note to developer, you don't have a contact email address on your site so: there is a bug in the xml file for J1.0 which means that it won't install. The bug is in the description end tag. Also if you added the extra parameter - Then the module can be styled by the template. Apart from that a nice little module.

The tool is useful, extended fields, integration with existing Joomla user database, user import, simple massmail newsletters(?). All in all good for Joomla 1.0.15. Not useful for Joomla 1.5 though. The Joomla 1.5 version is a different product not called Juser and is commercial.

This front page editor takes over from the MyContent article editor in Joomla 1.0. It is very useful extension in fact it should be part of core Joomla. The last comment from jp_world can be safely ignored, he clearly does not know what he's talking about. ACL's are not a part of Joomla 1.5 and the ability to clamp down on who can do what to whose article will not be present until Joomla 1.6.
This is a good extension, download it

A review should tell you how good the component is and I would rate this as an excellent component if it were not for the back links. However because the back links are there I will just spend the time in saying that if you install Artio JoomSEF every page on your site will have the meta information changed, spammy links inserted and an "SEO by Artio" at the foot of every page. The commercial version removes these but do not install the free version unless you want to advertise someone else's site on yours!
If this spam was gone I would rate this extension as EXCELLENT. The Artio devs are good chaps - I don't know why they do this.

Clean, easy to configure, nicely thought out, works and has a limited type of spam code checking and a list of words it will bar from sending in emails. Would be even better if it had a captcha. would then get an 'excellent' review from me.

This component has a good back end structure allowing you to enable/disable per component. Unfortunately it had some weird side-effects on a client's site with the AT Akilas template and Artio JoomSEF. It worked well in firefox but in IE8 the captcha was rejected each time. In Opera it redirected all subsequent menu presses to the main page, with cacheing enabled all subsequent menu item selections on all browsers were presented with the wrong page from the cache. Killed the site stone dead, removed component, site OK.

I like this module! It is pretty.

I have just used Jcomments instead of Jom Comments on a J1.5 site and I am impressed. The site was brought to a standstill by the previous JoM Comments installation and I desperately needed a fast site with a comments system integrating with Virtuemart. I removed Jom comments and installed Jcomments instead. It worked perfectly straight from the box... This is a good modification. I still use Jom Comments on my J1.0 sites but on 1.5 it is slow...so from now on I'll be using Jcomments. On the subject of running slow, perhaps that's just Joomla 1.5!

I have terrible problems with VEMOD, I like it in many ways but it has some big failings. I am pretty technical but VEMOD often defeats me. It is completely counter-intuitive as to how to initiate a mail session. It seems to be a case of pull this, ring this bell, turn this tap, tick this box and pull one or two levers from the back end, do some tweaking at the front end and hope like hell that it fires off. Then to find out what it has actually done, when it mailed, who to &c seems to be another arcane science in itself. It is like nursing a old steam engine into life.

What is needed is the following:

A simple button to trigger a bulk email.
A simple link to a list showing us what this particular email trigger is going to do, to who, when &c.
A simple log from the back end showing what was sent, when and to whom and if not, why.

Before any bug-fixing, improvements are carried out the above needs to be addressed.

I am NOT thick and I am technically minded. I cannot however get to grips with VEMOD and every time I use it I find myself digging through the pages to find out what I actually need to do. I still do not know to this day whether some of emails are actually being sent at all... Reading the manual seems to have no impact on my ability to be able to send emails.

I want to use VEMOD having invested time and effort in it. When the project went in stasis I really thought about abandoning the tool completely. As it is already installed on three J1.5 sites I don't really want to go through the pain of finding another tool again. I have another three J1.5 sites to optimise, I also have six J1.0 sites to find a mailing tool for.

That's my penn'orth, a response to this on the forum would be really useful as I am doing my analysis of mailing list tools now. I have a bit of cash to point in the develope's direction per site install if that helps.

If this module could receive 6 stars then it would deserve it. All Virtuemart shops should have it installed. It allows you to automatically feed Google base with no user intervention required. Not only that but it feeds its own product directory. If all VM shops fed into Red Mystic then we would have a Virtuemart-dedicated product site. A head-start over other shopping carts! The support is also first class.

Yereverluvinunclebert

Some of the reviews below give the impression that this component does not work. I can assure you that it does in every respect. It provides translations to all standard Joomla content and menus.

There is a problem, the problem however, is a strange one. For a component that supports translation the product documentation requires some improvement in it's own translation. It is confusing and counter-intuitive. The chap below who is experiencing the wrong translation has made a standard error that can be fixed easily enough by configuring the component correctly. It is not his fault that it is confusing, he made the same mistake that I originally did... putting a Spanish translation in the English section.

If the documentation was to undergo a review and be translated correctly then I think the product would be much easier to implement.

Yereverluvinunclebert