The 3 Best "Must Have" Joomla Components

Earlier on today I was in a meeting with a potential web-design client and I was asked what i thought were the best addons for Joomla. The question at first seemed like a fairly easy one to answer, but the more I thought about it, the more i realised that there are a ton of great components, all of which are equally as good as the next depending on your needs.

So i go to thinking, specific components and modules aside, what are 3 Joomla Components i personally could not build a website without. After consideration, I came up with the following 3 components. Each of these serve a unique, but essential purpose and are all highly relevant to your Joomla website(s).

1. K2.

K2 is one of the most powerful components I have used in a long-time, and turns your regular Joomla website into a far more powerful content driven site. K2 essentially "replaces" the standard Joomla article manager. When you add new content you do it through the K2 component, which gives you a broad range of great new features, and most importantly, a killer new look and feel. This article was created using K2. It is simple to use, 100% free and really easy to learn. Better yet, the latest version is compatible with SH404SEF out of the box, so you don't have to stress about getting your website Search Engine Friendly URLs working. K2 can be downloaded here.

2.SH404SEF

SH404SEF is, in my opinion, the best SEO component you can get for Joomla. It's purpose is to re-write those long Joomla URLs and replace them with much cleaner looking URLs that search engines like Google love. SEO and SEF URLs are no longer an option for websites, they are a "must-have", and SH404SEF delivers perfectly. There is a small cost for the component (less than $40), but it is money well spent. SH404SEF can be found here.

3. XMAP

Coming in at number 3 is the often disregarded XMAP component. It doesn't make your site look better, and it doesn't add any features that your customers will enjoy, but it does deliver a service that is paramount to your websites long-term success. XMAP is a Joomla Sitemap component. That means, it takes all your websites URLs and collates them into a single, usable and viewable file. This Sitemap can then be submitted to Google and other search engines so they can "spider" and list your URLs in their search engine. I want to give a shout-out to SEF Service Map also, which is another Sitemap component that does the same job, and is just as good (from experience). Each time you submit a new article, XMAP will automatically add that new URL to your sitemap, and, depending what version you have, ping the ping-networks (much like Wordpress does). Get XMAP today here.

There you go, 3 great Joomla components that play 3 very important roles in your Websites; Content creation, SEF URL Re-writing, and Search Engine Sitemap.