Using Joomla

Chapter 8. Components

Components are typically the biggest and most powerful of the five types of extensions. Located in the main body of the page, a component is a mini application that runs within your Joomla website. One of the most used components is com_content, which manages and displays the articles that you add to your site.

Extending Joomla with Extensions and Compatibility

Extensions are one of the parts of Joomla that truly make it a powerful content management system. Extensions allow you to literally “extend” the core functionality to perform other tasks. For example, Joomla doesn’t have a calendar extension out of the box, but you could install one to add that feature.

In Chapter 2, we learned that there are five different types of extensions: components, modules, plug-ins, templates, and languages. This chapter focuses on components, but you can extend Joomla using any of these five types.

Ideally, you want to install extensions that run natively under Joomla 1.5. That means they rely solely on the Joomla 1.5 framework to run. If you have an extension that used to run on Joomla 1.0, it may work on Joomla 1.5 in what is called legacy mode. In order to use Joomla 1.0 extensions in Joomla 1.5, you need to have the System-Legacy plug-in enabled in the Plugin Manager.

Note

To search for Joomla extensions, visit the Joomla Extensions Directory at http://extensions.joomla.org.