#1 Joomla Extension – K2 (vote for your favorite extensions here)
If you are a Joomla user there's a good chance you have heard of K2. It is one of the best content creation systems on the market offering a user friendly interface, easy setup and lots of options for customization. It's great for blogging (especially with teams) and content where you need great data flexibility. K2 now has a robust set of over 150 extensions specifically made for it and is widely adopted by template developers which makes it even easier to use and more
#2 Joomla Extension – Better Preview (vote for your favorite extensions here)
Although not a huge extension, Better Preview is probably one of the most helpful and time saving plugins available for Joomla. Once installed, Better Preview will allow you to see an exact preview of the piece of content, menu item or extension you are currently working on so you can easily make changes, updates or modifications to the content before publishing it live. There is a preview function that is included in the core Joomla plugins, however, for those of you who have used it know it is severely lacking in functionality. Better Preview is the great solution for being able to quickly preview your content.
#3 Joomla Extension – ChronoForms (vote for your favorite extensions here)
All websites should contain some type of form for visitors to fill out and that's where ChronoForms steps in. Although there are many different form building extensions on the market, many easier to design, the reason ChronoForms takes the highest rank is because of their high ability for customization and integration to third party systems. From Authorize.net to most 3rd party API's, ChronoForm can be integrated to work in some complex situations. Though it's not the easiest form component to use in Joomla, it is one of the most flexible and feature rich with an entire published book written about the many things it can accomplish. It is one of the only published books about an extension we are aware of.
#4 Joomla Extension – SH404SEF (vote for your favorite extensions here)
Anyone with a hint of internet marketing knowledge knows the importance of optimizing your website for SEO. The core Joomla set of SEO optimization features is lacking. Luckily, Anything-Digital developed the hugely popular extension SH404SEF. The primary function of this extension is to create effective search engine friendly URL's and manage any 404 requests, however, SH404SEF is chalked full of many other helpful SEO optimization configurations such as managing duplicate content, meta info manager, short URL's, rel canonical and rel language options, just to name a few.
#5 Joomla Extension – Akeeba Backup (vote for your favorite extensions here)
For those of you who have had MS Word close on you before you were able to save and you've lost all your data, you know the importance of saving and backing up your information and so does Akeeba Backup. With Akeeba Backup installed you will easily be able to quickly and effectively back up your website to keep critical copies in-case of human error, server error or hackers. Additionally for developers needing to move sites between servers or development and live environments Akeeba offers a very easy way to quickly move your sites around. Akeeba Backup has saved thousands of Joomla users from a living hell of lost information.
#6 Joomla Extension – JCE Editor (vote for your favorite extensions here)
Joomla Content Editor (JCE) is probably one of the most common extensions used on a Joomla website. It's one of those extensions that most people immediately install on their Joomla installations. JCE is a content editor that allows you to easily edit your content almost like you are working right from MS Word. Additionally, you can easily add in videos, pictures and other media rich content using their great managers.
#7 Joomla Template Framework – Warp 6 (vote for your favorite extensions here)
Many of the newer templates being developed in Joomla are being built along with a framework in order to successfully pull code, manage module positions, etc. Warp 6 is the robust framework developed by Yootheme and helps facilitate a great deal of customization when creating your own templates or modifying existing templates on the warp 6 platform. It also is built with the latest web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and jQuery. Additionally, in Warp 6.2, themes are now responsive and will automatically adjust to any screen size, making the framework that much better.
#8 Joomla Extension – XMAP (vote for your favorite extensions here)
Submitting a sitemap in Google Webmaster and Bing helps give these engines a road map for their crawlers and also expressed which pages on your website you feel are most important.
Xmap is a very easy sitemap creator for Joomla that will create a complete website map either manually or generate automatically depending on config. Additionally, it gives you some custom sitemap options for those of you who want to make tweaks or adjustments. This extension makes the life of doing SEO on Joomla that much easier.
#9 Joomla Extension – Mobile Joomla (vote for your favorite extensions here)
Google stated that by 2013 the internet will be accessed more by mobile devices than desktop PCs. With this staggering trend continuing, Mobile Joomla created a mobile website solution for anyone on the Joomla platform. Users are able to easily create a basic mobile website very quickly or take some time and custom create the perfect mobile website using their mobile templates and framework. Mobile Joomla is a great option for Joomla users looking to cater to the mobile audience.
#10 Joomla Extension – Widgetkit (vote for your favorite extensions here)
Are you looking for a slick way to present content, graphics, slides tabs or icons? Widgetkit is a great solution for designers looking for a unique way to easily display any type of content . The extension is overall pretty easy to use and is loaded with great dynamic features such as: slideshows, slidesets, galleries, maps, accordions, lightbox, spotlight, twitter and a media player. All of these micro-extensions come prepackaged with Widgetkit so you use the same familiar interface to create each one of them. This extension is a great addition to any website and will really excite and spice up the look and feel of the website.
These are the current (August 2012) top 10 extensions on our Top 100 Joomla Extensions chart. We value your input on the chart rankings and encourage you to vote on each extension and leave comments on this article with your thoughts and ideas. The Top 100 Joomla Extension chart will be updated every 6-months to reflect the most current top extensions in Joomla.
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