Joomla!® For Dummies®

Chapter 12. Extending Joomla

In This Chapter

• Knowing how modules, components, and plug-ins differ

• Using the Joomla extensions site

• Selecting and downloading the right extension

• Installing an extension

One of the best features of Joomla is the fact that it can be extended. Joomla is very powerful out of the box, of course, but a terrific Joomla community specializes in creating extensions for the software, which is built to be easily extended. Thousands of extensions are available, including new editors, games that can be displayed in Web pages, site-map generators, and shopping carts.

This chapter looks at extensions in depth. We cover many aspects of Joomla extensions in Chapters 7, 8, and 9, but this chapter focuses on them explicitly — especially on the extensions that the Joomla community has created.

Taking a Look at Plug-Ins, Components, and Modules

Joomla extensions fall into three categories: modules, components, and plug-ins.

New Joomla users are considerably confused about the differences, which is understandable; there is considerable overlap among categories of extensions, especially in the Joomla developer community. Complicating matters even further, Joomla extensions can contain any mix of modules, components, and plug-ins.

In the following sections, we help you get the differences down.

Making a splash with modules

The differences between modules and components aren't totally clear-cut. Some developers handle a task such as displaying a site map with a component; others use ...