Joomla beginner

Question

Hi, I am a very beginner to Joomla 1.5 ... I have read abt the sructure and how to build Module, Component and plugin... But i don't know when to built those and when to use those...

anyone can shed light?

Answer 1

Components are sort of web applications developed using the joomla framework. They are displayed in the main content area of a joomla site (just as articles, which are displayed by the content component). The component usually has its own administration backend accessed through the "Components" menu.

Modules are rendered as little blocks of html which can be shown in different module positions (usually in the sidebar). On stackoverflow the "upgrade your career today" widget on the right is a good aproximation of what a module is in Joomla. In a standard installation of joomla a login box is an example of a module, so is the menu.

A plugin is used to do some internal work behind the scenes. It is basically an event observer, which is activated when some event is raised inside the core joomla framework. A good example is an email cloak plugin from the core of Joomla which is invoked when the article is rendered and substitutes email addresses inside an article with some javascript to help protect them from spammers.

Content plugins are just one example. Recently I developed a plugin which logs every successful login attempt in a database. It was done by handling the event raised when a user logs in to the site.