What is Joomla Extension?
Now a days Joomla is very popular in web development. Based on your needs you can use Joomla for different purposes. Joomla can be used for a blog, a website, a large or small scale classified or even for any type of custom solutions. There are different types of Joomla extension to support different types of needs. That’s why it’s very easy to use Joomla and Joomla extensions. Joomla extension make everything easy for web master, we developer, entrepreneur, business, education , social networking, emailing etc.
Types of Joomla Extension
There are 2 types of Joomla extensions based on payment method and they are paid and free. But based on functionality there are five common extensions of Joomla and they are components, modules, plugins, templates, Languages. There are 3 others without this 5 common types and they are packages, files and libraries. Each extensions has separate functionality and they are independent. In the next section we will discuss about each of them separately…
Components:
Component is the most complex, largest and important extension of Joomla. Components act like a mini system of Joomla. A component is developed by Joomla developer and using PHP, CSS, HTML, images and database table. Each component has 2 parts. One is site part and another one is administrator part. When a Joomla page is loading it’s content is generating by component. Component is driven by a menu item and every menu item runs by a component. In next articles we can see how we installed a component and use them in front-end even back-end. Example of some built in component are banners(com_banners), privacy(com_privacy), fields(com_fields) etc.
At admin panel you will see a menu item “components” under main menu. You can see the list of installed component here.
Modules:
Modules is the specific position around a component. You can assign the position(where it will show) of module from admin panel. Based on user activity or the site behaviour you can easily hide/show them at the front-end. Sometimes module can be linked with a component, or any specific task of component/template. Some built in modules are mod_banner, mod_footer. At admin panel, If you click on “System” you can see the list of used modules. You will also see an option here to add new modules.
Plugins:
Plugins are event handler of Joomla. During any execution of Joomla like execution of component, module or triggered any event, plugin handles all of the event. Built in plugins of Joomla are Action Log – Joomla, API Authentication – Web Services Basic Auth, Authentication – Joomla, Authentication – Cookie etc.
At admin Panel, Under “System” menu , you will get a section named “manage” which contains the menu “plugins”. You can control all of the plugins from here.
Templates:
Template is the front-end design of a Joomla project. Template is responsible how the front-end will looks like. Most of the template has a lot of design option for front-end and you can easily controlled the feature from the admin panel. Template contains many positions for module. At Joomla extension directory , many templates are available. Some of them are free and some of them are paid.
Languages:
Language is a mandatory extension of Joomla. It comes with Joomla or Sometimes as an extra package. By this language component Joomla support multiple language. Even you can use one language at front-end and another language at admin panel. Language provide the translation of static string of Joomla site.
Files:
Files extension is less used in Joomla. File extension is used to install individual files into Joomla into a custom directory.
Packages:
Packages extension is used for a specific purpose. It’s may be the combination of few extensions which is serve the specific purpose. Specially for a complete type of project.
Libraries:
Libraries are package of code. There are some packages with core Joomla. Sometimes there are some external framework, script may be used as a package in Joomla. Packages provide a related group of functions.
We will discuss and learn about everything of Joomla. If you follow our Joomla article, you can easily build a project by using Joomla CMS. In the next article we will learn how to install different types of Joomla extensions and How we will use them at front-end and back-end. You can easily find out all of the joomla resources at https://docs.joomla.org/ . Stay with learnbyread.com to learn about different technology of web development and Freelancing.