Five Power Extensions for Joomla

Joomla perhaps doesn't need any introduction. It's one of the most well-known

content management system and portal engine. Here we shall be looking at a few

free extensions that would help you turn your Joomla portal into an attention

hog.

Blogs



If you want your Joomla portal or a part of the portal to appear in the blog
layout, you can easily do this by using integral blog features of Joomla.

However, if you want all the blog features like Word Press or any other blogging

platform, you will need to use one of the blog extensions available for Joomla.

One of these, which we really found useful for blogging is “IDoBlog” Extension.

It can be downloaded from http://community. idoJoomla.com/download.html.

Available in both paid and free versions, IDoBlog is easy to implement. All you

need to do is install IDoBlog component. Once installed you can access CPanel of

IDoBlog component from the Component Manager of Joomla administrator console.

Here go to global configuration, to configure its main options. Under

Notifications, you can configure whether you want admin, authors and users

notified about latest posts, comments etc. To allow users to be able to blog on

your portal, create a new menu and under 'Select Menu Item Type' option, choose

“Write to blog” menu type under IDoBlog. This would simply allow users coming to

the site, to post a blog from the front-end.

Virtual keyboard



This extension allows you to have a virtual keyboard for your Joomla portal. If
you are running an ecommerce site or even a non-commercial site that stores

critical information pertaining to your users, which if stolen can cause a lot

of damage, then this extension is a must for you. With virtual keyboard, you can

protect your users against keyloggers, trojans and other password stealing

malware, which could be running on his machine. This also comes in handy when

users are trying to access their accounts from public machines, as such machines

might be infected or even a targeted attack could be running on them. Deploying

and using this extension is very simple. It can be downloaded from http://www.rawdev.net/category/Joomla/joomkey/

. Once installed, you can find it under module manager. First enable the module

and define position of the keyboard, depending upon the portal design. Now

whenever a user clicks on a login/password box, automatically a floating virtual

keyboard will appear. This extension works fine with IE and Firefox. However,

you might face some issues when using it in Chrome.

VirtueMart — Shopping Cart for Joomla



This extension allows you to integrate popular shopping cart software VirtueMart
with Joomla. It can be downloaded from http://virtuemart.net. If you are looking

for an easy way to sell products online on your Joomla portal, then this

extension can help you. It also has support for 16 payment methods which can be

customized. You can add new payment methods also. Once you have uploaded this

extension, you can access it from Components>VirtueMart. When you go there for

the first time after installation, it will greet you with a welcome screen and

ask you whether you would like to install sample data for your shopping cart or

go directly to the shop. If you are using a shopping cart software for the first

time, it's recommended to choose, install sample data option, as it will

familiarize you with the solution. Next you will see the Control panel of your

store. Here you can activate payment method type, Add/Remove and publish

products, track orders, add tax rates, view reports, manage users and perform

other shopping cart related admin tasks. A lot more plugins and extensions for

VirtueMart can be found on this website.

Under Notifications of the CPanel of IDoBlog component, you can configure whether you want to notify users about the latest posts or not.

jSecure authentication



One of the most common ways to find out if a site is created in Joomla is by
simply typing domainname/administrator (www.sitename.com/administrator). This

allows hackers to directly attack Joomla's administration console, and at times

perform a brute force attack to crack user ID and password. This nifty extension

denies access to backend administration console without a proper access key.

Using this extension is simple, it can be downloaded from http://tinyurl.com/

57zg2f.

Once installed, you can access it from plugin manager. Under plugin edit

option, you can modify the access key, which by default is “ jSecure”. Here you

can also modify redirect path. If someone tries to access the back-end console

without an access key. Once enabled you can access administration console by

typing, http://www.site name/administrator/ ?keyname (here instead of keyname

provide the key which you had earlier provided in plugin edit.

AllVideos



This is a one-stop media management extension for Joomla. With video sharing
becoming popular, you will find videos related to just about anything you are

planning to write about. Instead of giving external links to that video, it

makes sense just to simply embed it in your content.

This extension allows you to do that in a really simple way. Extension can be

downloaded from http://Joomlaworks. googlecode.com/files/ plg_jw_allvideos

-v2.5.3_j1.5.zip. Once installed you can find 'AllVidoes' under plugin manager.

Once enabled, using this extension is really simple. You don't need to

copy-paste any HTML code. For eg, if you want to embed an video with URL:

http://video. yahoo.com/ watch/ 1385962/ 4769356, you can simply do this by

inserting {yahoo1385962 / 4769356 (/yahoo)}.

The jSecure plugin denies access to the backend admin console without a proper access key.

This also allows all the external users who might be blogging on your Joomla

portal, to embed videos within blogs. However, you would need to educate them

about the process first. Entire tag list of AllVideos can be found at http://www.Joomlaworks.gr/content/view/35/41/.

As it supports almost every video provider, the list would be too exhaustive to

be published here.