10 ExpressionEngine Production Add-ons

published on Sep 10th, 2008 // 14 Comments

Speed is always an issue in the commercial field so here is a list of 10 useful production add-ons in no particular order to make life a whole lot easier. Feel free to add your favourites in the comments below

LG Better Meta

Add and modify page meta data tags on a per entry level through a new publish tab. Improve your sites SEO with custom page titles, descriptions, robot meta tags and more. This extension will takes the groan out of SEO and makes it easy for clients to update meta data tags on an entry basis. Hugely popular with clients who have an awareness of SEO – link

UPDATE: LG Better Meta 1.7 now includes sitemap meta and a search engine site map generator tag!

LG .htaccess Generator

Automatically generate / update your .htaccess file every time a template group or weblog entry is modified. Simply remove the index.php from your ExpressionEngine URLs. This is a great quick way of updating your .htaccess – link

Playa

Playa is a powerful one-to-many field loosely based on Mark’s Multi-Relation extension. I only recently found this but have put it to good use. – link

Unlike the others, it enables you to…

• Pull content from multiple weblogs
• Limit the number of selectable entries
• Order your selections with drag-and-drop
• Close your entries and mean it
• Set selections as searchable

Edit Tab AJAX

Adds the Ability for Dynamic Searching and Sorting in the Edit Tab. This one I always install first – link

Repeet

Repeet allows the user to simulate repeating events. When used in a template, Repeet tags display EE weblog entries as though they repeat at an interval set by the author. The repeating effect is only simulated; the EE database is not modified in any way.great for events calendar. – link

Sitemap

The Sitemap Module is an ExpressionEngine add-on that automatically generates a configurable sitemap of your website and notifies search engines about changes in your site. – link

Child Categories

Display a list of subcategories for a given category.Lots of useful variables and parameters which has saved me lots of time. – link

Freeform

The Freeform module allows developers of ExpressionEngine websites to easily create forms on the fly and post submissions into the Freeform database. Results can be sorted, filtered, emailed and exported. Attachments can be submitted and stored. Any number of fields can be collected and validated. This is a top class module with a Pro version promised. – link

Selected

The Selected plug-in allows you to dynamically select the state of form elements and CSS objects at page load time. Some possible uses include highlighting a user’s current site location in the nav, or dynamically selecting form content based on user profiles. Very simple but highly effective – link

CSVGrab

CSVGrab is a plugin to import data from a spreadsheet into ExpressionEngine. – link