The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

Being able to construct your own content types from all sorts of standard and custom field types can be addictive. The same is true for nested categories. There are several extensions out there that can feed this addiction, and I looked into all of them. FlexiContent still has to mature a little bit, but already it is my favourite drug at the CCK party.

There are some negatives. For example, there is no front-end editing yet at the time of writing ('10-03) although that is in the road map. The documentation could be a bit better. The extension is under active development and that seems to delay support. But things like these are easily forgotten given the positive sides of this extension, and the potential it is likely to reach.

FC is very user-friendly and has the potential to become idiot-proof. It uses the core plugin system for field types limited only by imagination, the core category tables for multi-level categories, and the core database tables for content without cluttering text fields with codes. Many normal Joomla plugins and modules will work with FC. It has a template system which allows for drag & drop placement of fields as well as for custom templates. FC includes conveniences like rating and tags and easily integrates with a couple of commenting extensions. It is perhaps not the most capable CCK but it is not far off at all, and already now it is as complete as most people will ever need. Support is sometimes a bit slow but it is good. Moreover, all this comes for free. Of the two extensions that I think are as good or better, one is commercial and the other is just not simple in use.

If all this is not enough, you can couple FlexiContent with FlexiAccess at a small price. FlexiAccess completely integrates with FC and enables detailed access control of content, also on the front-end. There is a FC beta for J!1.6 but FC, FA and NoNumber's module manager already seem to do much of what 1.6 will do.

I find it hard to imagine ever making a website without FlexiContent again, especially if development continues to be as active as it is.

Finally there is a good blog calendar for Joomla. The module is good and stylish, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it shows both a calendar view and a list of years and months! The module links to the component which provides clear pages listing articles by date. Some css styles are Joomla standard styles and others can be modified easily. The only two things that I think could be better are a couple of tag ids for non-standard css styling of the component output, and a support forum or email in English.

All I needed to do in an article was to have alternative paragraphs for guest visitors and logged in registered users. That is exactly what this plugin enabled me to do, with easy to remember tags. It would be perfect if this was a native plugin.

I tried SC because I needed a caddy but a simple one. SC is exactly that. It is simple in functionality and simple in use. You create some products, and then you create an article with plugin codes referring to those products - and there is a module to show what is in the cart. There is no functionality to add charges or taxes, so I suggested that as a new feature. The layout is not great but good enough. Multi-lingual support is built in but few languages are packaged. I had no problems with bugs. All in all SC is exactly what the name says and what I needed.

Jonathan is very friendly and on the ball, and that shows in this extension. Attachments is one of the most user-friendly extensions I have seen and it provides a very simple but effective way to offering downloads.

I wanted to put some downloads on my site but did not want to put visitors through the motions of clicking through sections, categories and lists to end up wondering what the details really mean, as is the case on many Joomla sites with downloads. With attachments I can simply create an article, write something relevant about the download, and attach the download to the article. Convenient for me, and convenient for my visitors!

I would have rated this as excellent if there as a way to update an attached file, to select show or hide on section and category level, and to force downloaders to accept some terms first. I have hacked these features into my installation and I hope and expect that one of the next versions will merrit the full five stars.

Attachments might be too straightforward for commercial websites making money off downloads, but I warmly recommend it for other uses, including especially for other extension developers wanting to offer their extensions as downloads.