My Favorite EE Add-ons

Here are my top 5 Expression Engine Modules, Extensions and Plugins to give EE that extra special sexiness.

My Favorite EE Add-ons

So as most of you know Expression Engine (EE) is my favorite tool for deploying feature rich and dynamic web sites. It's a true CMS, unlike what was running grantmx version 3.0, that unnamed blogging tool.

Nonetheless, as much as I think EE is the best thing since the invention of watermelon; out of the box, it does lack a few things I typically need when deploying client sites. But lets be honest, what CMS/Blogging tool ALWAYS has everything you need "right out of the box" for EVERY situation?

At any rate, here is my top 5 EE Modules, Extensions and Plugins to give EE that extra special sexiness:

Modules

  1. User - A must buy for any site requiring custom member management templates.
  2. Freeform - The excellent replacement to EE's default contact form.
  3. LG Social Bookmarks - Although you can add social bookmarks to your sites manually, LG Social Bookmarks makes multiple social site bookmark deployment quick and easy.
  4. Tag - A full featured tagging system to EE
  5. Pages - A quick and easy way for your clients to add, remove and modify pages.

Extensions

  1. SL Combinator - A must for compressing your JavaScript and CSS files for a smaller script size and fewer HTTP requests
  2. ngen File Field - The simple way to upload files via the publish form
  3. Playa - complete awesomeness when relating multiple entries from multiple weblogs.
  4. Edit Tab AJAX - The easy way to sort entries in your Edit tab.
  5. MD Add Sitename - This will be a default for EE 2.0, but its a welcomed addition to the 1.6.7 family

Plugins

  1. Word Limiter - A EE default plugin, but quite handy for those summaries on the home page.
  2. Image Sizer - Total awesomeness when you need to compress and resize images clients may or may not know how to edit.
  3. XMLGrab - If you ever need to pull RSS feeds as entries, this is the go to plugin. Set up a server Cron job for hands free updates.
  4. Pages Nested Menu - A must when using the pages module to easily create a dynamic navigation.
  5. EE Gravatar - This plugin allows you to easily insert a "globally recognized avatar" image from Gravatar.

I want to also note that most of these add-ons will be available in the default Expression Engine 2.0 package, due out this year.

Filed in: Expression Engine    |    Posted on: May 07, 2009    |    (2) Comments  →  Add yours

Michel
October 19, 2010

For ExpressionEngine 2.x there is the free HJ Social Bookmarks plugin which is similar to LG Social Bookmarks.

Berry
October 22, 2010

@Michel Thanks for mentioning my plugin - HJ Social Bookmarks

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