Need Some Joomla Tips

I'm pretty experienced with developing sites with Drupal, but my newest project is using Joomla, so I could use a few tips...

What are the best ways/modules for:

1. Setting up my Joomla site to work with Google Analytics.
2. Setting up a sitemap on my site that can be used with Google Webmaster Tools
3. Verifying my site using Google Webmaster Tools (META or file method, either one is fine with me).
4. Integrating Google adsense.
5. Integrating Google search.
6. Building custom data entry/form pages (or will I need to hand-code these?)
7. Setting up a category-based taxonomy.
8. Setting up a forum. Is integrating with PHPbb the best way to go?
9. Allowing users to post reviews/ratings of content (i.e. post comments that also have a rating value like 3 stars or "4 out of 10" or whatever)
10. Minor SEO things like setting page title to content title, title-based URLs, per-page-configurable META tags, etc.

Feel free to point out if any of these things are automatic/built-in. They're things I had to set up manually in Drupal.

If you know of any must-use extensions or must-read tutorials, please let me know.

Thanks!

 

OK lets see here


1. you want to put the analytics code in the footer....it is in the includes folder...you have to make sure whatever template you use is including the footer
2. never done this
3. upload the .html file they have to your root and it works like a charm or just go into you template and add it into your meta
4. i wrote a nice adsense module at www.simplyjoomla.com
5. go to the module admin, create a module , paste code
6. easy to handcode...just did one at www.bostondiamondexchange.com
7. it is like that out of the box
8. look for fireboard extension
9. look in joomla extension there are several commenting modules
10. download the Joomlaatwork seo patch

 

Thanks! You've been a great help in getting me started. +rep on the way.

 

I found the (modified) google adsense mambot to be very useful.

I've tried others but they seemed to disappear at certain times of the day and reappear again later.

Just my thoughts. Hope that helps.

Respectfully,

Lhlalyam - PC Habitat.com

 

just wanted to check in on ya to make sure all went well