In a recent post on Joomla 1.6 administration improvements, I discussed at length one of the coolest new features Joomla 1.6 will bring: a new and vastly improved workflow on editing modules. Upon further research, I discovered that our friends over at NoNumber! have created a component/admin plugin that brings those exact features to Joomla 1.5. I'm not sure if the chicken or the egg came first, but all I really care about is that I can bring that functionality to all of my own sites and those of my clients. I'll give you a brief overview of its benefits below, but I suggest you check it out immediately yourself.
So what's the problem in the first place?
As any experienced J! admin knows, you edit modules from the module manager. Each module has an individual admin screen which allows you to edit the parameters, menu item(s) the module is published to, position, etc. However, there is no easy way to see what modules are published to any one menu item, nor a quick way to get the basic params of the module without opening its dedicated admin screen. This slows down administration and keeps less-experienced users from managing sites on a page-by-page basis as many are accustomed with static sites.
And how does Advanced Modules fix it?
Our friends over at NoNumber! have developed a Joomla! component and plugin that allows for three main features to work on all Joomla 1.5 backends:
- Edit module options on the fly through a popup box - on the module manager screen, you'll now see a little "edit" link that pops up the module edition screen in a popup instead of taking you to a new screen
- Edit/view modules published to any menu item - in the menu manager, you'll now see every module published to a menu item, along with a link to edit each (again in a quick popup)
- Publish modules to all menu item BUT a certain one/many - allows you to hide modules from one specific menu item or multiple menu items
Doctor's Orders:
If you want to speed up Joomla administration for yourself, make things easier to understand and manage for your clients, and fix something that seems like common sense in the first place, head on over to dowload the Advanced Modules extension pack from NoNumber. If you like it (which I guarantee you will), send them a quick donation via PayPal so they can keep coding awesome extensions like this.
