What is Joomla?
Joomla! is the Web
With millions of Joomla! installations powering an astounding almost 3% of the entire internet across the globe, Joomla! has become a standard for publishing information, content, media, news, and more across the web.
Joomla! is Open Source
Joomla! embraces Open Source ideals where innovation, and creativity are limited only by the imagination. By remaining Open Source, freely distributed, freely used, and freely modified, Joomla! encourages people to dream, create, develop, and contribute. And by keeping these ideals throughout its community, Joomla! allows anyone, anywhere to adapt Joomla!, or its extensions to build amazing things.
If you are unfamiliar with the concept of "open Source", or if you have any questions about the suitability of Joomla! to support your web presence, please do not hesitate to contact me for further advice or just a chat.
The home of Project Joomla! - the Organisation. News, Views, Support, Future "Road Maps" and all the debate are all available here: Joomla!
BROADLEAF will always strive to keep up to date with the latest developments in the Joomla World so that we can bring you the benefits that are most relevant to you and your project. If you find any information that you are unsure of or would like the "Broadleaf" view on, please don't hesitate to get in touch...
Defining and Extending the Joomla Framework
BROADLEAF is focused on providing world-class support and development of web portals using Joomla! CMS platform. Often there is confusion about how Joomla is structured and the elements used to make this such a powerful tool suite for delivering web content and building relationships with your customers or communities. This article will try to help explain the many extendable elements of Joomla.
Joomla! CMS is a feature-rich content management system with a growing collection of over 10,000 extensions. However, since every project is unique, many times if you're building a website with Joomla!, you may need additional functionality to achieve the goals of your website or communications portal project. Fortunately, Joomla is built with this need for extensibility in mind.
There are several areas within the Joomla CMS platform that allow you to add virtually unlimited functionality. There are five types of extensions for Joomla!: Components, Modules, Plugins, Templates, and Languages. Each of these types of extensions handles specific functionality unique to the Joomla CMS framework. (Note: Many built-in features of Joomla! are implemented using extensions.)
Below are definitions as per the Joomla.org wiki and other sources on the web:
Components
Components are the largest and most complex extensions of them all; they can be seen as mini-applications. Most components have two parts: a site part and an administrator part. Every time a Joomla page loads, one component is called to render the main page body. For example, Content (com_content) is the component which handles the display of content; users can view it at the front end of your site and, as an administrator, you can edit the content. Components are the major portion of your page because a component is driven by a menu item and every menu item runs a component.
Examples: Content (com_content), Banners (com_banners), Contact (com_contact), News Feeds (com_newsfeeds) and Web Links (com_weblinks)
Management feature: Admin head menu > "Components" ("Content" for com_content)
Modules
Modules are more lightweight and flexible extensions used for page rendering. These modules are mostly known as the "boxes" that are arranged around a component, for example the login module. The footer is a module. Modules are assigned per menu item. So, you can decide to show or hide the login module depending on which menu item the user is viewing. Sometimes modules are linked to components such as the "latest news" module which links to the com_content and displays links to the newest content items. However, modules do not need to be linked to components, as a matter of fact, they don't even need to be linked to anything and can be just static HTML or text.
Examples: Banners (mod_banners), Menus (mod_menu), Who's Online (mod_whosonline)
Management feature: Admin head menu > "Extensions" > "Module Manager"
Plugins
Plugins are more advanced extensions and are in essence event handlers. In the execution of any part of Joomla, be it the core, a module or a component, an event can be triggered. When an event is triggered, plugins that are registered with the application to handle that event execute. For example, a plugin could be used to intercept user-submitted articles and filter out bad words. Plugins were known in Joomla! 1.0 as mambots.
Examples: content.search bot, TinyMCE
Management feature: Admin head menu > "Extensions" > "Plugin Manager"
Templates
A template is basically the design of your Joomla! powered website. With a template, you can change the look and feel of your website. Templates have certain fields in which the component (just one) and modules (as many as you like) will be shown. Templates are easy to build or customize and they provide maximum flexibility in how you style your site.
Management feature: Admin head menu > "Extensions" > "Template Manager"
Languages
Probably the most basic extensions are languages. Languages can be packaged in two ways, either as a core package or as an extension package. In essence, these files consist of key/value pairs, these pairs provide the translation of static text strings which are assigned within the Joomla! source code. These language packs will affect both the front and administrator sides. Note: these language packs also include an XML meta file which describes the language and font information to use for PDF content generation.
Management feature: Admin head menu > "Extensions" > "Language Manager"
Want to find out how Joomla can specifically help your organization, or have additional questions? Why not get in contact? I would be happy to talk through what you have in mind, perhaps review your project and provide you with a free assessment and a view of your options...