We've talked about eCommerce modules for Joomla, in particular VirtueMart, now lets look at some other neat functional modules.

Jcomments

You'll notice as you surf around this website that some pages allow the visitor to post a comment at the foot of the article or information. This feature is managed by the module JComments. It's a great way to allow interaction with your users, encourage feedback and, more importantly, build new contents and keep existing content fresh. Jcomments is a simple setup module which requires little in the way of configuration. You can assign it to work within specific categories/sections so it automatically switches on when you add new content/articles within a JComments section.

When comments are posted, you can set them to go into 'pending moderation', so you can censor the usual stuff that you don't want to appear on your website. Joomla will send you an email whenever a comment is made and you simply login and go the Component - JComments to approve/disapprove the comment.

Social Bookmarking

There are various social bookmarking modules for Joomla, we tend to prefer the 'Add This' module which you can see in action on the left lower side of this page. It provides a quick way for people to add your content into their online bookmarks and it also allows them to share the content with other users of the bookmarking tool. A simple to install and simple to configure module which can be up and working in 15 minutes flat.

Image Gallery Modules

Again there are many to choose from, and we've worked with quite a few. To be honest, I've never really found an image management module for Joomla that I really like. There are commercial modules which work well, but the non-commercial options are mostly a pain to setup and don't look great on the page. Check out a few for yourself but I think that ultimately you'll end up paying between $25 and $75 for a good commercial image gallery module.