Joomla Introduction | Understanding And Managing Extensions | Umais Blogs About Joomla #10

This is last part for this series. Things we'll be learning today are

Understanding extensions
The five types of extensions
Finding and Installing extensions

Understanding Extensions

Joomla often provides every functionality you will need to build basic site but sometime to give your site additional functionality you will be needing extensions. They extend the functionality of the Joomla. There are thousands of of these extensions, some are free and some are paid. You can also create your own plugin if you know how to do it.

The Five Types Of Extensions

There are various types of extension that do different type of work but main categories are 5

Components

Think of components as applications. They provide complex functionality and example includes

Image Gallery
Online Shop
Membership Sign Up

Joomla comes with core components and you find these in their own menu in back end because they have multiple functions. Because the way one component works differs from the way other components work as such you will need to read the documentation given by the component developer.

Modules

I have already explained modules in previous parts. They are managed by the module manager. You can think of modules as secondary content that is all the content displays around the primary content, this includes navigation menus, additional texts or a search box. Modules can appear on all pages or just the ones you specify.

Plugins

As the name suggests, it adds content to the page or content items. There are two types of plugins.

First type works at the back end of the website, they can add additional codes such as Google Analytics tracking code but some plugins maybe activated in article or module for example a plugin that can add commenting to a article.

Templates

They are also discussed in previous parts. They are manged by template manager page. They give your website look.

Languages

There are two aspects which you may need to consider when making you website multilingual. First is default text that Joomla outputs in certain places. The language manager page in back end allows you to add or install new language pack to your website and also change the default language of your website however this only changes Joomla content not the content in articles or modules so second aspect you must consider is if you want to create multilingual website you must create different versions of each content items and set them up to really help the user, this is an advanced topic and is not covered in this post.

Finding and Installing extensions

Most of the extensions are located in extensions directory at "extensions.joomla.org". You can find many different types of extensions there. You can either search up the extension you want or use the categories to locate them.

There are few things that you will need to consider when choosing an extension.

Check if the plugin is compatible with your version of Joomla.
Check the reviews to see if it really works or not.

To install an extension got to extension manager in the back end of your website.

Like I installed template in previous part you can install other extensions too..

Note Their are two types of extensions, free and commercial. Free means that plugin is completely free or their is a free version and commercial means that developer charges a fee.

Hope you have learned something new in this part, stay tuned for the next one. Remember if you have any confusion state them in comments. I'll be more than happy to help.

Cya! Next Time

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