Using Joomla

Appendix C. Developing for Joomla

If you’re reading this appendix, we’ll assume that you know a little something about programming. Your knowledge may not be in PHP, but we’ll assume you understand basic programming methodologies. Even if you have a minimum of programming experience, we hope this appendix helps.

We also hope that while reading this book and seeing what a great content management system (CMS) Joomla is, that you’ll use it and eventually take the next step and contribute to the project in some way. If programming is your niche, there are plenty of places where we would be glad for you to help out.

First, we want to give you some examples of the power behind the Joomla Framework as well as some resources to help you on your developing journey.

Joomla Framework

Most people would say that Joomla is a CMS. We like to think of Joomla as two separate parts. Yes, there is the CMS part. More important, however, Joomla is a framework.

When Joomla moved from version 1.0.x to 1.5.x, a big shift was made at the heart of the codebase. Joomla 1.0.x was a couple of class files and one really big joomla.php file that contained a lot of functions and classes you could call. It seemed like spaghetti to us.

Along came Joomla 1.5.x and things took a different direction. Classes were broken out into self-contained objects that together make up the Joomla Framework. In theory, with a little effort you could take the Joomla Framework out of the Joomla CMS and build your own CMS on top ...