What is a Joomla Plug-in?

Joomla is very flexible and a key part of that flexibility are Plug-in's.
below is a list of the plug-in types used in Joomla.

Plug-in types
authentication: hooks into the ACL for logins. can setup other login system thru this Plug-in.
content: works with the article system but can used with other content examples:  page navigation,Vote, geshi and loadmodule.
editors:  place where the default editors go.
editors-xtd: editor extensions buttons or components example: image button on the footer of the article editors, read more etc.
search: enables searching of components content.
system: hooks into the system core framework if needed like adding legacy mode templates etc.
user: works with the ACL system and User management etc.
xmlrpc: hooks into Joomla to add remote content management etc.

Below is a cut out of the Joomla Plug-in Manager.


I'm not going to cover all the plug-in types it could be a book onto itself.
But plug-in's are one of the work horses for Joomla. Invisible most of the time but key.
Now from a template designers point of view the ones to focus on.

• Content
• Editors/xtd
• Search

You can get a little fancy and add special CSS style sheets for the editor both for content mark up and inner layout control.
It needs to be supported by the editor and its not always a good idea. Because some Joomla users my not have the same editor installed
plus if you like to used the content for other purposes its going to look for the styles and make a mess.


Some Plug-in's have Parameters that have extra settings.


Some of these settings have special CSS.
Well for the core ones you don't have to worry about it we have you covered with the CSS style parts.