On several Joomla related forums you will often see people suggesting ‘check with JED?’ ‘ Have you tried JED?’ as the answer to a query. Just who is this JED character and how did he become a Joomla oracle?
Sad to say JED is not a person that has amassed a great store of Joomla related knowledge. The term relates to the magnificent Joomla Extensions Directory. This is a database maintained by the Joomla developers of all components, plugins and modules available for use with the Joomla platform.
I will cover the differences between components, modules and plugins in another article but for now these are the little (and not so little) pieces of extra coding that you can bolt onto a base Joomla installation to give added functionality to your projects. If you need it then chances are that someone has already coded a solution. A few of the better known joomla extensions are Community Builder, Jom Social, JCE and Virtuemart, but this year we have seen some interesting developments in the form of new content extensions (content construction kits) such as K2 and FlexiContent which are proving to be very popular and amassing a strong supporter base.
Currently the JED has 3829 extensions available, which are broken into various categories such as:
• Access & Security »
• Administration »
• Ads & Affiliates »
• Bridges »
• Calendars & Events »
• Clients »
• Communication »
• Communities & Groupware »
• Contacts & Feedback »
• Content Sharing »
• Core Enhancements »
• Directory & Documentation »
• e-Commerce »
• Editing »
• Extension Specific »
• External Contents »
There are 32 main categories to look through or you can simply use the search option at the top of the JED screen.
As an example if we were to be looking for a Twitter component, to display your recent tweets we would either enter twitter into the top search box, or search through External Contents/Social Blogging to see a list of all possible components.
There are 79 extensions that relate to twitter on the JED and our very own jTweet comes in at 6th in the search results.
Lets look at the JED entries in a little more detail.
For each item in the JED there will be: a summary description, rating, tally of votes, access to reviews, Date of last update, Type commercial /non-commercial,The symbol M/C/P.
The ability to download from the summary page can be a great time saver when you are confident you have found the item you are looking for otherwise click on the component name for greater detail.
The detail page provides a link through to the developer, indicates if this is a commercial (ie an extension you will have to pay to use) or free license, a summary of the main functionality of the extension and a full list of reviews and ratings by end users. Some developers also respond to comments here although the JED is not to be used for support purposes.
You are provided with links to the developers page, within the JED, the developers website, support page, extension documentation and a demo of the module. Loads of information to allow you to select the right extension for your need.
Make a note of the compatibility of the extension as not all older extensions will work with Joomla 1.5 and some of the newer ones will not support Joomla 1.0. If the term Legacy appears in the compatibility section you will need to have legacy mode switched on for the extension to work.
M/C/P refers to the type of extension Module, Component or Plugin.
To access an extension simply click on the download link, in the case of jtweet you are taken to the joomlabamboo download page for the module.
I hope this has helped your understanding on the JED and wish your many fruitful hours of browsing among the extensions – there are some real gems out there!
