What's in John's Joomla Toolbox?
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Everyone has their favorite Joomla tools, and I'm no exception. And I am often asked, "What's in your toolbox? What do you use when you are working on a Joomla website?"
So, here's my list of tools that I use regularly.
Basic Tools |
If you are primarily editing an existing website and adding new content, you may not need an FTP program or a text editor. But there are some things that you must have these tools to do. For an FTP program, I use the free Filezilla. Although the interface is a bit old, the program just works fine. A text editor (not a word processor) is also an essential program to have. You can use Windows Notepad (if you are using Windows), but I prefer PSPad, while others prefer Notepad++. |
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Image Editor |
My primary image / graphics editor is Corel's Paint Shop Pro. It is a commercial program (about $70) but I find it well worth the money. Many other people prefer Photoshop (or its little brother Photoshop Elements), but I have not wanted to spend the money for Photoshop and have just stayed with Paint Shop Pro. Other Joomla users have used some of the free image editors, like GIMP and Paint.net. Photoshop Express is a free web based photo editor that is also a good choice. |
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Screen Image Grabber |
I use Snagit from Techsmith to take screenshots. I love this program! It is a bit expensive (about $45) but it just does the job very quickly and I use it a lot. | Snagit |
Image Manager |
For managing the pictures on my computer, I use Googles free Picasa. This wonderful tool also does basic photo editing, and does a nice job making photos "web ready." It makes it easy to crop, enhance, and then save images in a size that makes them useful to put on a website | Picasa |
Firefox Add-ins |
I primarily use FireFox as my browser, although Chrome is moving up fast for me, too. The new Internet Explorer versions are not bad either. I use a number of Firefox addins that help when doing site development Firebug is a great tool for people doing web development. With this tool, I can do a right click on any element of a web page, select "Inspect Element" from the menu, and Firebug pulls up the HTML that generates that element, shows me the css that is at work here, and helps me see that is happening on that web page. It is a wonderful, free, tool. I also use ColorZilla. This lets me point at any thing on a web page and it tells me the exact color code of that item. This makes it much easier to match colors on a website and I use that information in my graphics editor and when editing css. Another useful addin to FireFox is FireFTP. This adds a full FTP program into your browser. It opens in a new tab and is quite handy. |
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Joomla Extensions |
I have written elsewhere on this site about my favorite Joomla extensions, but let me summarize a few of them here. There are some extensions that get installed on EVERY site I do. Every one of them. |
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Joomla Editor |
I use the JCE - Joomla Content Editor on all of my sites. This editor replaces the default editor that comes with Joomla (called TinyMCE). The basic version of JCE is free, but I have paid for an advanced subscription which adds a number of enhancements to the images manager, link manager, and file manager. But the basic version is all that most people would need. | JCE |
Backup Tools |
I install LazyBackup on every site I do. This free plugin makes a backup of your Joomla database every day and emails it to you. I have it email to my gmail account and it is just filed away daily. You can set it up to do the backup more than once a day, and it also does it on demand. It's a great tool. | Lazybackup |
| Akeeba Backup is a full featured Joomla backup, site clone, and site moving tool. This exension (also free, but they do have a "pro" version available also) is just a delight to use and gets better and better with each release. It quickly does a backup of everything on your site ... Joomla itself, all of your extensions, your images, media files, configuration, and the entire database and puts it in a single file. Then, you can just save that file as a backup or use it to easily move your Joomla site from one server to another. | Akeeba Backup | |
Update Manager |
The Joomla update manager puts a "one click to update your Joomla to the latest version" ability right into your Joomla administrator. Well, actually it is more like 4 clicks, but they are 4 quick clicks. | Joomla Update Manager |
Front End Article Manager |
There are several of these types of exensions available, but I use the "Front End Article List." This let's me give a list of all articles on the site to a front end administrator and is very useful. | Front End User Article List |
Module Management |
The Advanced Module Manager is a very useful extension that dramatically enhances module management on your site, and makes it much easier to control when a module appears and does not appear. | Advanced Module Manager |