Joomla was recently featured in a comparison test between three different CMS platforms: Joomla, Drupal and WordPress.

Joomla did great in this CMS showdown! I'm not surprised.

Every Joomla user has their own favorite extensions. Still, there's a huge selection of extensions available in the Joole Extensions Directory. And the task of finding the perfect one's for you can be a daunting one.

In this article, I tell you which are my favorites, and why they make my life with Joomla so much easier.

The CB Team is proud to announce the public release of CB 1.2 stable. CB 1.2 stable suite can be installed and works on Joomla 1.0.X, Joomla 1.5.X (natively) and Mambo 4.5.0-4.6.5 CMS systems.

This "free as in beer" GPL suite remains the most popular Joomla extension with hundreds of free and commercial extensions available (165 CB extensions are listed in the Joomla Extensions Directory) that further extend its already powerful functionality taking advantage of its powerful API. If you like the new speedy (jQuery powered) and feature-rich CB 1.2 stable release, please take a moment and give us a review on the JED.

Most of the time, using a ready-made template is a good choice and provide you with great value and time-saving functionality.  However, there are times when I curse the day I downloaded the glossy, shiny, all-bells-and-whistles template and installed it on my Joomla site.

When I'm developing sites for my own use, using a template from RocketTheme, Yootheme or another company is a great choice. I have the 100% creative control of the project, and can decide if a functionality is needed or just "nice to have".

However, if I'm developing a site for a client, the case might be another. The client may have wishes that at first sight can look easy to implement, but when I start adding new functionality to the template I sometimes experience odd results.

Joomla 1.5 was a giant leap for Joomla-kind. And with the upcoming 1.6, Joomla users will be even more addicted to this CMS than before.

Join me as we explore some of the goodies you can expect from Joomla 1.6, and what it will mean for your site.

A common task many web site owners do regularly, is to add PDF files or other documents to their articles. In this post, you will learn how to add a link to a PDF or any other document file to a Joomla article. I will explain how you can do this using a basic Joomla installation. In a separate article, I will show you how to insert a PDF file into a Joomla article using the JCE File Manager plug-in.

Most likely, you know that you can assign modules to specific menu items in Joomla. You can assign modules to all, none or specific menu items. This will make the module appear when clicking on the particular menu item.

That's fine, but what do you do when you don't have a menu item for the particular article?

In this tutorial, I will show you how to have modules appear even when you don't have a (visible) menu item pointing to it.

Even though Joomla is a great platform as it is, there are times when you will have to alter the core files to fit certain needs. For instance, you can't stand how the elements in Joomla content are put together in Joomla. Or your client wants to alter the way the date is shown, where the author appears, how the list of contacts is displayed. We could go on for ever.

The point is: You don't want to be restricted by the platform, do you? You won't have to!

I will show you the basics of how to customize the output from Joomla components, modules and plugins, by applying something called template overrides. Sounds scary? Relax, they're your friends.

Sometimes, you might want to create a Joomla page that is not available through a menu. You only want the page to appear when the URL is entered. This might be a 'thank you' page after form submission, a log in page or some other type of 'hidden' page you would need on your Joomla site.

Many users ask about this in the Joomla forums and on Twitter. I decided to write a short tutorial on how to set up a link to an element - article or other type of Joomla assett - with no menu item visible on the site.

Earlier this week, I explained how to add a link to a PDF file to an article by using the Joomla core installation. This time around, I will show you how to accomplish the same using the File Manager plug-in for JCE.

Using the JCE File Manager makes the job a lot easier. The File Manager is a plug-in to the very popular Joomla Content Editor. The plug-in is part of the package you get when subscribing. JCE itself is free, but the File Manager, Media Manager, Image Manager Extended and some other plug-ins are paid.

In my opinion, these plug-ins are well worth the subscription price, which is starting at $30 for a year (renewals from $20/year).