Mitch Pirtle explains how making extensions for our favorite CMS isn't as hard as everyone would like you to believe. In fact with some basic concepts you're armed and dangerous, and the rich API provided in the 1.5 release gives you all the tools you need to build feature-rich, sophisticated applications quickly. Let Joomla co-founder Mitch Pirtle show how it is done, as well as explain best practices and common pitfall

1. Developing Joomla! 1.5
Extensions, Explained
Mitch Pirtle
Joomla!Day New England, 2009
Marlboro College Graduate Center

2. So what is this all about?
You want to learn more about customizing and
extending Joomla!
You are a developer, looking to learn how to take
advantage of Joomla! as a platform
You snuck in when they were not looking and were
hoping for free cookies or coffee

3. For Joomla! End Users
We will look at code. Prepare to be frightened, bored,
or both
To learn how to use Joomla! and how to add cool new
stuff to it, you really should have gone to the session for
non-developers

4. For Developers
Time to get your $ide on
Dispay your pocket protector with pride
$ideas++

5. For Everyone Else
Coffee was out front, how did you miss that?
I ate all the cookies, you should have been here earlier

6. Who am I?
Joomla founder
Former VP at KickApps
NYCJUG founder
Hardcore bassist
Skate punk
Soccer coach

7. In the beginning...
There was Joomla! And life was good.

8. Joomla! is great for nerds
Provides framework and CMS
MVC framework
Objects!
Easy to skin
Legendary administrative interface
Easy to extend with...

9. Joomla! Extensions

10. What are Joomla!
extensions?
(oversimplified answer)
Plugins - provide additional functionality (login sources,
WYSIWYG editors, and such)
Templates - provide the overall skinning to a website
Modules - additional functionality as an addition to the
main content of a page
Components - replaces content with something else

11. Plugins
Authentication - Joomla, GMail, LDAP, OpenID
Content - rating, email cloaking, pagebreaks
Editor - TinyMCE, JCE, none (my favorite)
Search - content, contacts, weblinks
System - SEF, debug, cache
XML-RPC - Joomla, Blogger API

12. Templates
Consistent look and feel to entire website
Can be assigned to different areas
Parameters provide simple way to customize layout

13. Modules
The swiss army knife of Joomla
Can reference functionality in many libraries
Easy to extend and customize
Easy to copy and duplicate
Powerful cache features

14. Components
Powerful, rich API available
Public and Admin versions
Loads of examples to learn from and play with

15. J!1.5 Notes
MVC framework
glue framework, not stack or scaffold
somewhat opinionated
atomic MVC (yep, I made that up.)
extension installer is a snap to use

16. A look at a plugin
The example content plugin

17. A look at a template
The JoomlArt Purity template

18. A look at a module
The most-read module

19. A look at a component
The search component

20. Developer Resources

21. Joomla! Documentation
Reference wiki

22. Developer Documentation
Excellent starting point

23. API Reference
Generated from source, phpDocumentor FTW!

24. Joomla Community Forum
An absolutely massive resource

25. Joomla Extension Directory
Thousands of extensions to choose from, a great
source of inspiration and examples (good & bad)

26. JoomlaCode.org
SourceForge for Joomloids

27. Great books, too.

28. Joe LeBlanc
Great intro to J!1.5
development,
downloadable code
examples and more

29. Barrie North
Special coverage on
SEO

30. Andy Hunt
Learn how to get the
most out of your
brain, great for self
assessment

31. So what am I up to now?

32. Leaving the RDBMS behind.

33. Project Voldemort
Key-Value storage with wicked scale and speed

34. How does it work?
Keeps the client as
simple as possible
(opposite of
memcache)
Failover and sharding
designed as part of the
core

35. Ways it can be used
Routing can be on the
frontend, the backend,
or both

36. How failover works
Consistent hashing
When a node fails, load
is distributed across
the rest
Same for when a node
is added

37. Neat, but sometimes I need
indexes and aggregate
views...

38. mongoDB
Best of both worlds - speed and scale of key-
value, indexes and lists of RDBMS

39. Zeus Technologies
Freaky fast, ultra scalable, tons of buzzwords -
and earning and owning every bit of them.

40. Cool new schtuff links
Project Voldemort:
http://project-voldemort.com
MongoDB, by 10gen:
http://www.mongodb.org
Zeus Technologies:
http://www.zeus.com

41. Time for my favorite game
Stump the Geek™

42. Thanks!
http://www.mitchitized.com
http://twitter.com/mitchitized