Joomla 1.5 Plugin and Module Installation

To install plugins or modules for Joomla is simple. For Joomla! 1.5x, each type of extension, plugin or module, installs the exact same way. This tutorial will take you through the process.

Note: In Joomla 1.0x, plugin are called mambots, although installation menu structures are different, but the same concept still applies.

Installation:

Joomla provides installers to install extensions. Yiou should always use installer to install our scripts.

• First, we need to login to the Joomla site as an administrator. You can access the Joomla! administrator by typing the following into your web browser (Please replace "website" with your own domain). You will be presented with a login page, and you need to login with the admin user name ans password created when installing Joomla on your website.

  http://www.website.com/administrator

• We are now in the Joomla! administrative console. You will notice Extensions menu on the top navigation bar. When you hover your cursor over this menu item, a dropdown menu will appear. Choose Install/Uninstall.
  When you select the Install/Uninstall menu item, you will come across the installer page. The installation page is the same for all components, modules, plugins, languages and templates.
  
  
• The next step is to tell the installer to upload the plugin or modules file you have received. You can use the browse button to locate the file. Usually, these files comes with zip, gz or tar extension. Sometimes, you can tell the type of the extension by looking at the name of the file. Usually, but not always, comp_ prefix indicates a component, mod_ prefix indicates a module and bot_ prefix indicates a plugin.
• Once you locate the file, click on Upload File & Install button to install the extension. The installer automatically uploads the file, creates necessary databases entries in Joomla. Once an extension is installed, you will see an introduction page for the extension.
  
  The extension is now installed.

Hoto use plugin:

Once a plugin is installed, you need to configure the plugin to use it. Each plugin has its own configuration options. We will explain on a high level how plugin works.

Plugins, or mambots, are a piece of code that you insert into your article, IN PLAIN TEXT, to tell Joomla to render the code into something else. For example, Easy Paypal plugin tells Joomla to replace "{easypaypal}" text with a Paypal Button. (Please note, the text is purposely in bold, so that it won't be interpreted by Joomla. When using the plugin, the text needs to be a PLAIN text, with no formatting)

To use a plugin, you have to install the plugin and enable it. When enabling the plugin, you have the options to configure the plugin to meet you needs.

• First, you need to select Plugin Manager menu from Extensions menu
• You will be presented with all the plugin installed on your web site. Select the plugin to and click on Edit button to configure it.
• You need to enable the plugin before you can use it in an article.
• Don't forget to include the appropiate text in the article to use the plugin.

How to use module:

Once a modules is installed, you need to configure the module to use it. Each module has its own configuration options. We will explain on a high level how module works.

In Joomla!, Modules are used to display content and/or media around the main content. For example, you can have a "Most popular article' module that displays the title of the most pouplar article on your web site.

To have a module appear on your web site, you need install it, enable it, configure its options and decide where and when to display them:

• First, you need to select Module Manager to start the configuration process.
• You will be presented with all the modules available on your web site. Select the module you want to configure and click on Edit button.
• You need to enable the module to have it displayed
• You can configure where and when the modules appear with the Position and Access Level parameters. In addition, you can also specify which menus are associated the module. Please check Joomla Documentations for more information.