Joomla is an absolutely fantastic content management system right out of the box.
As you've seen, it has all kinds of functionality, and capability behind
the scenes, and it's great for putting together a Web site like the one we
have looked at here.
But as soon as you say that, somebody immediately wants to say, well, what
about e-commerce? What about a calendar? What about changing out the editor?
What about backing things up? And so on, and so forth.
There are just tons of things that people might want to add to their Joomla
Web site that don't come with Joomla's core. Joomla,
however, was built to have additional functionality added to it via its extensions.
And we've already worked with extensions at some level.
There are three main kinds of extensions.
Those are components, modules, and plug-ins, and we've worked with all three of
these at this point.
Remember that components are the ones that occupy the main part of the Web page,
modules are the supporting elements that go around the edges of the Web page, and
plug-ins are little behind the scenes functionality that we can turn on or off.
Here is the Joomla!
Extensions Directory.
This is at extensions.joomla.org,
and this is the official repository for Joomla
extensions, where you can go and do research, and find additional extensions to
help supplement your Web site, and make it do whatever it is that you want it to do.
As you can see here in the corner, as of today, there are 10,017 extensions
available for you to work with.
I was just commenting that
two years ago when I recorded this course for Joomla! 1.6,
we were only at 5,400, so Joomla
is growing exponentially, and we're adding new extensions to the directory here all the time.
So, I wanted to give you a few tips for how you can go about picking out a great extension.
To do this, I'm going to start by looking at one of my favorite extensions of
all time, which is called Akeeba Backup.
We can find that just by searching up here in the top corner.
I'm going to type in the name akeeba backup.
If you need to find an extension, of course, you can browse through the
Categories, here on the side or type keywords in the Search box to see what you
can find for matches for certain kinds of Joomla extensions,
but Akeeba Backup is very well known in the community, and extremely well respected.
So these are my search results;
Akeeba Backup comes right up.
I'm going to go ahead and click on the title here, and this will go to the full
listing here for Akeeba Backup.
So this, I think, is one of the finest extensions that's available for Joomla.
It's universally admired by the Joomla community.
The developer, Nicholas, is admired as a developer, and well respected for his
coding abilities, and for his contributions to the community.
And without a doubt, more or less, every Joomla
developer I've ever talked with who has had any level of seriousness about Joomla
recommends using Akeeba Backup as an important addition to your Joomla Web site.
So, if we consider this the gold standard, this is a great listing to look at as
what a really great extension will look like here inside of the Joomla!
Extensions Directory.
So, first of all, you'll see that we have some social media buttons across the
top. That indicates, of course, who has been talking about this extension on
Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and on LinkedIn.
And as you can see, there has been a fair amount of sharing about this extension.
Also at the top here, you'll notice that we have some icons that appear
across the top here.
One is the Editor's Pick.
At this point, I just checked, there's only three Editor's Picks.
This number may vary from time to time.
But this is something that the editors that put together the Joomla!
Extensions Directory, when they feel like there's a really exceptional extension
that you should be including on your Web site, they flag it as an Editor's Pick,
and so Akeeba Backup is an example of that.
Popular indicates it gets a certain number of page views each particular day.
I believe that number is about 180 page views a day, so a lot of people are
looking at this page; a lot of people are considering Akeeba Backup.
These three icons here, C, M, and P, indicate whether it's a component, a
module, or a plug-in.
And in the case of this particular extension, it's mostly a component, but
you will also find that there is a module that will remind you to back up
your Web site, and there is a plug-in also behind the scenes that can automate
the backup process.
So that's why it says C, M, P.
It will indicate what the most recent version of this extension is.
This is one of the most important things you can look at when evaluating an extension.
So this is version 3.6.8, and you see that it was last updated on October 20th, 2012.
Today is November 1st,
so it was last updated about 12 days ago.
That always indicates to me that the developer of this particular extension is
engaged, and involved; that they are actively developing this extension.
In terms of getting a listing in the Joomla!
Extensions Directory, there are some basic sort of requirements that you have to
meet. For example, the extension actually installs in Joomla,
but beyond those fundamental requirements, an extension can sit in the Joomla!
Extensions Directory for a very long time.
So it's possible that a college student, for example, might have had an
assignment to build a Joomla
extension, they post it in the Joomla!
Extensions Directory, and then they forget about it.
It can sit there for a few years with no updates at all.
You wouldn't necessarily want to trust your Web site with an extension that's not
actively being developed.
So I like to look at the Version, and the last updated as an indication of how
involved this particular developer is with the Joomla
community, and how actively they are developing a given extension.
The Rating, of course, is also very important.
The Rating for this extension is 4.9 out of 5, out of 297 users.
Just recently, the Joomla!
Extensions Directory purged a bunch of old extension reviews, and old voting from
many, many, many years ago, because so many of these extensions have evolved
through the years, and I believe they are only looking at the last two years now
of extensions and votes.
So these 297 users have used Akeeba Backup at least over the last two years, and
they are giving it 4.9 out of 5.
That's a pretty good indication that this is a great extension, because the
ranking is so high, and yet so many people have voted it.
You'll also see that this has gotten a wide number of views; over 1 million page views.
And so that's another indication that people think this is a great extension,
and a lot of people are looking at it, and considering it.
You'll also see the Date Added.
So, this was added back in 2007.
So the extension has some longevity behind it.
It wasn't brand new, fresh release, with a developer who doesn't have a track record.
This developer, Nicholas here, has a very long track record in the Joomla
community, and as I said, he is very well respected.
You can read the description about the extension down here, and then as you
continue to scroll down, there's a few images.
If you click on these, it will show you a few screenshots for the interface for
this particular type of extension.
You can flip through these, and consider if this is going to work for you based
on a handful of screenshots.
Then finally, down here at the bottom are the Reviews.
You see that Nicholas actually has 771 reviews for this particular extension.
That's because those have accumulated over the whole life of this
extension being listed.
But we're only considering 297 for calculating the voting total at this point in time.
You can go through and read these.
What I like to do is take a look at the reviews, and see what is happening most recently.
So, these last two reviews were posted in the last month.
It looks like these are very happy people.
As you scroll on down the page here, I think with Nicholas, you are just going to
find a bunch of five star reviews.
But if you do wind up seeing a review that is not a good review; one star,
two star type of review, what you want to look for is the developer has responded to that.
A developer can always respond to a bad review.
They can also respond to a positive review.
And they can make a comment about what happened with this particular user, or why
they might be giving a bad review, or certainly provide technical support as to
why the extension might not be working.
If you see a lot of bad reviews, and you don't see the developer commenting on
those, that's probably an indication that that's an extension you don't want to use.
All right.
So now that I've showed you some of the high points to consider when looking at
this extension here in the Extensions Directory, feel free, of course, to run out
to Google, and Google for the extension, and see what other people are saying
about it. Ask your friends.
If you're a member of your local Joomla
user group, be sure to ask at your user group, and find out if other people have
used the extension, and what their experience was with it.
For the most part, Joomla
is a word of mouth community, and talking to your fellow developers is the best
way to figure out what the good extensions are, and what is safe and sound to
include inside of your Joomla
site, as opposed to what would be something that you might include, but may not
have as strong a track record as something like Akeeba Backup.