Chapter 1. Joomla! Extension Development: An Overview

You have developed dynamic websites in the past, but a friend of yours told you about Joomla!, so you decide to give it a try. You want to start a simple website about restaurants after being inspired by the attractive celebrity chefs on the Food Network. The installation goes smoothly and more quickly than attempting to build a content management system from scratch. After finding a delicious template, adding some menus, and banging out a couple of reviews, you begin to think of some of the features that will draw in more visitors and even some cash. Within minutes, you install a shopping cart for selling books, a forum for gathering suggestions of places to review, and some advertising affiliate programs for the sidebars.

However, as you glance through the home page, you feel that something is missing. Then suddenly a brilliant idea hits you for something entirely new. Once it is executed, you know others will want to use it for their sites as well. You look around Joomla!'s source files and start looking for a way of building code that will slide right into place.