Two of these must have toolbox items are Russ Winter's Joomla! Tools Suite and Joomla! Health, Installation, Security Audit. They're around for quite a while, but unfortunately aren't as known, as they deserved to be.

But let's see, basically what are these two pieces of software, the Joomla! Tools Suite (JTS) and Joomla! Health, Installation, Security Audit (HISA)?

Deploying a secure Joomla! site isn't a trivial job, you need to master a very complex software suite, with many possible misconfigurations, points of attack and other possible security problems. The old school approach to check all these "by hand" isn't working anymore at this scale, you need a software solution to help audit your site. And this is the area, where these two tools are excelling.

Joomla! Tools Suite (JTS) and Joomla! Health, Installation, Security Audit (HISA) have been developed with the sole purpose of providing Joomla! end-users with a Self-Help Advice and Information system to help webmasters quickly and efficiently resolve these issues in the fastest time possible with the least amount of effort.

The main areas where these can help you are:

1. Pre-Joomla! Installation Server Environment Audit
Before you install Joomla! you should check if your server is likely to support it fully or if your environment may need some modification. You will receive tips on what to do in this case and you can re-check your server to be sure that the modifications are fixed your problems.
2. Post-Joomla! Installation Server Environment Audit
Following the installation of Joomla! you should keep your installation functioning and optimal with a variety of maintenance tools
3. Trouble-Shooting and Problem Resolution: yep, you need to have also this one in place, but if you are done the first two steps you may not need to see what can these tools do for you in this area
You can also obtain additional diagnostic and configuration information to aid or speed up the process of problem resolution.

If you don't use these tools yet, and you use Joomla!, check them out. They're amazingly easy to use and effective! Click here:

• to download Joomla! HISA
• to download Joomla! Tools Suite

No Joomla! webmaster should run a site without them. And I have good news for you: recently, Russ announced that he started to work on creating a Joomla! component which can be used to continuously monitor your system health and security issues.

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