The AlphaContent component provides just what my client required: a way for visitors to access a fairly large alphabetical database of schools. The component is easy to install and configure. Then you need to set up menus of type AlphaContent, which was also easy to do.

The searching and ordering options are also excellent, e.g. to search by keyword or content, or to order (ascending or descending) by title, date created, visitor rating, and more.

This is a really useful extension! Heard about it at Joomla Day UK 2009, and it really is fantastic.

It enables web administrators to package the contents of a website and shift it to another server. This is great if you want to develop a site off-line, or test new extensions for compatibility, or whatever, and then load it all up to the live server.

The only thing is that the PDF manual is really long, so if you're teaching yourself how to use it in isolation, it takes quite a lot of brainwork to work out what you need to do to get it to work.