This post was last updated 8 years 10 months 1 day ago, some of the information contained here may no longer be actual and any referenced software versions may have been updated!

Having spend the last few months working on a major Magento upgrade I thought I would share the modules that I would recommend as Must Have magento backend modules for anyone building a new Magento store.

1.  Fooman Speedster

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/speedster-advanced-by-fooman.html

This one has been around for a few years, but its a must have for improving your javascript and css optimisation. Magento now gives you the option of combining CSS and JS files to improve optimisation, Fooman assists this process. Note that you still might benefit from compressing your source CSS files yourself.

2. MAGENTO CRON SCHEDULER

http://fbrnc.net/blog/2011/03/magento-cron-scheduler

Magento has its own internal cron system used to schedule tasks such as sending emails. The cron tasks and configurations are all in the Magento database which makes it difficult to look at them, to find out for example if they are running correctly or when they last ran. The Magento Cron Scheduler gives you a great admin interface to let you see all the cron tasks and configurations. It also lets you manually run a task which is really useful when you are debugging orders and want to force Magento to send a new order email straight away.

3. OP Cache Admin

https://github.com/SchumacherFM/Magento-OpCache

OP Cacheing for PHP is a must have for Magento, make sure it is enabled and use this admin interface to view stats and settings.

4. SIMPLE FULL PAGE CACHE

https://github.com/GordonLesti/Lesti_Fpc

Making Magento load fast is really important. A lot of the recommended caching options require some major redesigning of your Magento deployment. For a really simple full page cache solution try this out. It will work straight out of the box and you will be very surprised at how quickly pages load. A word of warning though, you need to test this thoroughly on your DEV site to make sure it will work for you. If you do custom layered navigation you need to tweek the config to tell the system which queries it should and shouldn’t cache. If you are rendering different front end data for different customer groups then my recommendation is to modify the module to only full page cache sessions that are not logged in.

5. TIER PRICING

http://connect20.magentocommerce.com/community/Spranks_ConfigurableTierPrices

Looking to implement multiple tier prices, this module works perfectly out of the box to implement correct tier pricing for configurable products with multiple options.