5 Extensions to Convert Your Joomla! to a Blog!

Joomla! can be used to build any website. Starting from small business websites and personal blogs up to huge community portals, e-commerce solutions and shopping cart, Photo galleries and more! Everything is possible with slight modifications and a magical touch by extensions! Through the next few lines we explore 5 essential extensions that convert Joomla! into a powerful blog.

Tagging : JTags

Tag is a keyword or term used to describe a piece of information. It helps your visitor to search the contents faster and more efficient. It’s one important feature of any Web 2.0 service. Joomla! wasn’t developed to work using Tags but to use hierarchical sections and categories instead. This was something Joomla desperately needed. JTags is a Joomla! Extension for adding tags to content.

Adding tags is easy you just add it or choose from existing tags while you create or edit an article through a custom form just below the editor . Using special plugin, linkable tags will appear below the article title. Clicking the tag will trigger Joomla!’s search component to search through your tags using a special plugin and will display all the contents that match the tag. JTags also comes with a cool module to display Tags Cloud. JTags is a must-to-have for any blogger using Joomla!

Get JTags

Most Popular : Popular of Late

Let me quote what the developer of this module say as there is no better way to describe it!

Often there is such problem with the “Popular” (”Most Read Content”, mos_mostread) module. There some articles are located, and everyone click on them. As a result these articles do not leave from “popular”, and new articles don’t appear here. It is vicious circle. One of solutions is to show popular news for the last NNN days. The “Popular of late” module based on the original “Popular” module and have one additional parameter only – the period of “novelty”.

This is a very cool feature to have. Popular of Late is a simple module but very useful. This is a must have if you want your site to be fresh!

Get Popular of Late

Rating : Extra Vote

Improve your articles with a five-star rating using ajax with this extension. You can also add rating inside your article independently to rate special parts of it.

Get Extra Vote

Comments : DISQUS

DISQUS is a popular comment services will turn your articles into discussion threads quickly! You will need to sign up for a DISQUS account to start using it on your Joomla! website/blog. You can manage all the comments via DISQUS dashboard or directly from your websites.

Why DISQUS is Special :

1) The look:

• Ajax based. Your visitors won’t have to wait for the page to reload.
• Tableless Div/CSS design doesn’t break your layout.
• Threaded replies make comments interactive and expressive.
• Fully customizable, you can change the look, fonts, colors, pagination and more

2) Features you’ll really like:

• Trackback support.
• Support for Gravatar.
• Video replies using seesmic.
• Rating for comments to mark spam or bad comments.
• Word filter.
• Block people of certain username, IP or email address.
• Add moderators so you wont have to do all the job alone!
• User profile. Check the latest comments and rating for a user without leaving the page.

3) Widgets for:

• Recent comments.
• Popular threads.
• Top commenters.

Get DISQUS

Social Bookmarking : DDRFS

I’ve tested most social bookmarking extensions. Let me tell you why I chose this one; Its simply working. Install, publish and done! Other extensions require manual modification of files, include unwanted links or uncustomizable! DDRFS is a simple plugin will provide links for Delicious, Digg, Reddit, Facebook & StumbleUpon.

Get DDRFS

I hope you enjoyed this collection and feel free to comment and ask!