My favourite components: JCE

JCE (Joomla Content Editor) is one of the most popular components used in Joomla websites, and basically it’s the visual editor used to add content to your website.

Joomla comes standard with the (also popular) TinyMCE editor which does a fair job of giving you what you need to add your content, but it does lack a few features that means it’s often replaced by JCE.

Apart from needing to use TinyMCE during the Joomla Certification exam I haven’t used it in 10 years, and while there have been improvements in that time there are still features that are lacking.

Here are a list of features that make JCE a much better option:

1. Page linking – being able to link a piece of text to another page in your website is important, and needs to be easy. In JCE you can do this in a couple of clicks and they even provide a good search option too.

2. Image uploading – JCE provides the ability to upload, resize and insert an image into your articles in one go.

3. File linking – as with images you can upload and link to files quickly and simply.

4. Styles – it easily reads the text styles used in your site so you can preview and select them easily.

5. Image popups – easily add nice lightbox style image popups.

6. Profiles – if you have several people managing your site you can give different users different features, or you can have a profile for frontend or mobile editing.

7. Search / Replace – simple search and replace text in your article.

Some of these features are only in the Pro version of JCE, but it’s a small cost and well worth the cost. Hey also provide great support and it’s very actively developed with updates and enhancements released often.