Top 20 TYPO3 Extensions

Out of the box TYPO3 is already feature rich, however what makes it so powerful is its extendability, you can customize almost any aspect of it if you so choose, tweaking the backend, writing your own modules or services, or creating frontend applications, the possibilities are really endless and it is no suprise that the extension repository has thousands of entries.

I have tried to condense what I consider to be the most useful extensions into a list of my top 20, these are extensions that I have used time and time again, if there is an extension you think is particularly useful and not part of my list please let me know in the comments section, I would love to hear about it, I am sure there are plenty of gems in the repository which I have still not discovered. 

So here we go, in no particular order... 

Real URL's (realurl)

Turns the parametres in your url's into a nice clean path which can help with SEO, minimal configuration is required for the basics, however if you have more advanced url's then you may need to sit down and read the manual, but it's well worth the effort.

News (tt_news)

A comprehensive News system for TYPO3, I don't think I have ever had the need for a feature which wasn't already supported and with a little imagination you can utilise it for listing, viewing, categorising and searching other content, it doesn't have to be news! 

Comments (comments)

With this extension you can add comments to any type of record you like, for a demo see the bottom of this post :-) 

TemplaVoila! (templavoila)

An alternative templating engine which allows you to visually map elements on to your template, it replaces the page module with it's own interface which allows dragging and dropping of content elements. You can also create custom content elements based on your own templates (Flexible Content Elements or FCE's) which gives you the power to be very creative. 

Page Style Sheet Selector (css_select)

This extension allows you to easily include one or many stylesheets for a specific page/branch, very useful and can cut down on requests. 

Mnogosearch (mnogosearch)

An alternative to the indexed search which is bundled with TYPO3, we have been using this for the past 12 months and found it to return fast relevant results and it is in my opinion much easier to setup. 

Spam Shield (wt_spamshield)

Stop spammers abusing your frontend forms, just install this little extension which employs a variety of techniques to filter out the good from the bad, suspected spammers are redirected to a TYPO3 page of your choice and all blocked requests are logged. 

Calendar (cal)

A calendar extension which allows you to have multiple calendars, configure venues/locations, event organisers etc. It also caters for frontend user interaction and can generate iCal and RSS feeds, there are too many features to list here, if you have a requirement for a calendar, check it out, you will not be disappointed. 

Forums (mm_forum)

If you want your forums to be tightly integrated with TYPO3 then try out MM Forum, it includes most of the features you would expect from a modern forums package including private messaging, search, the ability to follow threads and much more. 

Perfect Lightbox (perfectlightbox)

Not much to say here, it adds the lightbox effect to your images, there are a few in the repository, but out of them all this is the one that I felt was most complete, it's.. what's the word?.. ah yes Perfect :-) 

Media Links in a Lightbox (rgmedialinks)

A different kind of lightbox aimed at media like Flash, Youtube etc. it is based on Mootools, very easy to configure, and an elegant way to present videos to your visitors.

Multiple Content (jfmulticontent)

Display multiple content elements at once using a variety of methods, it supports tabs, accordion and slider views, a really neat extension to have in your toolbox!

Powermail (powermail)

Lets be honest, the mail form provided out of the box with TYPO3 is quite basic and cannot handle complex tasks, try Powermail I promise, you will never go back, it can store the form data in many different ways (DB,CSV,Excel), you can customise the HTML output, and you have more control over field validation, to name but a few enhancements.

Old2New Redirect (fb_old2new_redirect)

If you have ever migrated an old website into a new CMS you will know what a headache it can be to make sure users do not end up stuck staring at a 404 error, it's frustrating for them, and bad for business. One option is to write 301 redirects into your .htaccess file which is quite tedious, but with this extension it is a breeze to dynamically map your old pages to their new locations in TYPO3. 

Front End User Registration (sr_feuser_register)

If you're building a community website then the chances are you're going to need some kind of user registration form, sr_feuser_register works well out of the box, supports account activation via email and you can build in a confirmation stage if you want to have someone moderate registrations, the forms can be customised and are configured closely with the TCA, it also allows your users to modify or delete their profile. 

Social Network share for tt_news (ttnews_share)

Add links for users to share your article(s) using their favourite social network, not only does this extension include an impressive array of networks which you can choose to enable/disable out of the box but you can also easily configure new ones yourself in the TYPO3 backend. 

A Better Tag Cloud (vge_tagcloud)

This extension can take content from (nearly) any table in the TYPO3 database, split it into words and create a tag cloud by counting the occurrences of each word. It offers alot of flexibility for sorting, filtering and styling the results. It is also capable of handling multiple languages and workspaces. 

Static File Caching (nc_staticfilecache)

This extension will generate static versions of your TYPO3 pages which it will then redirect users to using Apaches mod_rewrite, this extension can drastically improve your websites performance, recommended for any TYPO3 website which receives a high volume of visitors, show your CPU some love and install it. 

Google Maps (wec_map)

A common request from clients is that they want to show visitors where their offices are using Google Maps, no problem with this extension you can easily map one or more locations and it is fully multilingual. 

SEO Basics (seo_basics)

This extension will add an additional function to your Info module, you can tweak the title, keywords and description fields for your whole website at once if you want to, it can also render a Google sitemap for your website which is easy to enable.

Phew...time for a coffee, I hope you enjoyed this list and I look forward to hearing what everyone elses 'must have' extensions are :-)