Joomla.
org currently hosts over seven thousand third-party extensions.
Some of these are "duplicates.
" That is, if you want a blogging system, and go to the blog category and look, you'll find fifteen potential pieces of code.
How do you go about picking the right extension? Narrow your choices with the advanced search.
Either go to extensions.
joomla.
org and click on the Advanced Search link, or go straight to the URL above.
Category: If you know the category you are looking for, click on the drop-down box and select it.
Blogging software, for instance, is located under the main category of News Production.
If you don't know where your category is, click on "All Categories" on the left navigation links and all the categories of extensions come up.
Do a control F on your browser (for Firefox and Chrome at least) and then search for "blog" or "content" or "tag" or whatever you want to find.
Try and locate your category that way.
The category field is the best way to narrow your search.
Extension name: Unless you know the specific extension you're looking for, leave this blank.
Description: If you couldn't find a category, this is a good place to put in a few keywords.
License: Unless you know what you want, just leave this field blank.
Type: Select commercial (costs money but usually has support), non-commercial (free, but typically doesn't have support), or leave this field blank.
Compatibility: This is probably the second most important way to narrow your search.
Pick the appropriate version of Joomla.
If you're using Joomla 1.
5, click 1.
5 Native and avoid Legacy.
Extension includes: Components are mini-applications and when installed, show up under the component menu.
Components can typically be used all over a page.
Modules are usually designated for one block on the screen.
Plugins change how the whole site works, and are usually transparent to you once they're installed.
If you don't care, leave all of these boxes blank.
Filenames: Unless you know the specific extension you're looking for, leave this blank.
Installs As: Unless you know the specific extension you're looking for, leave this blank.
"Research" each potential extension.
Look through your Advanced Search Results.
Read the brief descriptions and determine if the product might meet your needs.
Underneath the product's name, look at the number of stars and the number of votes the product has.
Also look at the number of reviews it has.
A product with zero votes and zero reviews probably means it's a brand new product.
You can just give up on that product if you don't like to use new technology.
Alternatively, you can look for other extensions made from the same company and read those reviews.
That technique, at least, will give you an idea of the company's customer support abilities.
Examine the number of reviews the product has.
If a product has less than ten reviews, read the reviews carefully.
Not everyone does it, but some people write code and then have their friends and families write reviews for them.
Chances are pretty good, however, that if a product has more than ten or so reviews, you'll find some "real" comments.
Look at the average star rating, but it's more important to read the actual reviews themselves.
Every once in a while someone will use a product, not have the necessary technical knowledge or just have plain bad luck, and write a bad review.
How did the company respond to that review? Is there a demo or a "lite" version you can try for free? Once you've narrowed your choices to a few, go to the companies' websites and see if they have demos available or lite versions of the extension you can install and try out.
Usually, if a commercial product doesn't have a demo or a lite version, they'll at least have a video of someone using the product.
You can improve your odds of getting a good product, but you can't guarantee it.
I purchased a blogging extension recently.
I am a technical sort of person and I've written little extensions myself.
Basically, I know what I'm doing.
But that particular piece of blog software and I did not get along.
I kept finding bug after bug and incompatibilities with other extensions.
Customer support sort of answered my questions, but never actually solved, or helped to solve, the problems I had with their software.
I gave up on that software and chalked the fifty bucks up to experience.
What boggles me, however, is that this particular extension has a four and a half star rating and about a hundred reviews, almost all of which are positive.
That blogging software was an exception, however.
With every other extension I've used, the extension has been just what I expected after reading the reviews.