Back into the Joomla fray!

I've recently started work on another Joomla! CMS site, and it's good to be back in the land of near-instantaneous functionality gratification. Forums? Kerping!. Simple user text editing? Kapow!. Shopping cart? Kaboom!.

I must say a big thank you to Dan Buzzo, of the eponymous Buzzo Design for his advice with transferring a Joomla! site. My new client is in the process of moving servers, so they don't have a dev environment immediately set up for me. Dan suggested I use JoomlaPack, which basically enables you to transfer an installation of Joomla! from one server to another. So, it's fantastic for me to work on my own servers, or even locally, and then bundle up the finished article and hand it straight to the client.

It's also very useful for setting up a customsed standard install of Joomla! You simply install your favourite extensions and themes, JoomlaPack it all into an installable package from which you can spawn multiple glorious new Joomla! sites. And on that note, Dan gave me a list of his must-have Joomla! extensions:

• JCE Joomla! Content Editor - edit content plus cool image effects (for which you have to subscribe)

• JoomlaPack (kind of obviously!)

• sh404SEF - friendly URLs

• joomlaXplorer - file & FTP manager

Thanks Dan :)