How to use a Joomla Component - Flash and Joomla News from Eyezberg

Apr 18 2006

How to use a Joomla Component

(7 votes)

Written by Administrator

A Joomla component is destined to be either

displayed as a pages main content (examples: Joomlaboard forum, Gig Calendar...), or
just as a backend configuration interface for functionality such as SEF Advanced or AkoComments.

Components add lots of different functionality to the Joomla Core. Most are pretty simple to use in just a few steps:

Download the generally zipped component installer file.
In most cases, I would advise you to unzip the file locally to check if

a readme file is included, if yes, obviously read it for instructions!
the initial zip does not contain more than just the component, some developpers pack the component, module(s), bot(s) etc into one package you have to unpack first!

Once you're confident you have to correct zip file (commonly named "com_componentname.zip"), log into your site's administration interface, access Installers => Component and browse to the file, hit upload to install.
Most components will supply a short success notice once installation is successfull.
Configure the various settings as you see fit from the Components => Componentname (=> submenus). Ready for usage!
Now you need to provide user access to the component. This is really quite simple.
Create a new menu item to it!
Click the menu name you want to add the link to, click the "New" toolbar button, and on the next screen, click the Component option. The following screen lets you select the component from a list of all those available. Just click the name of the one you just installed, and set a name for the menu item.
Two things you may want to do here:

set the access to this new link as special, so you (as superadmin) will be the only one able to access it once logged into the frontend, so you can test without anyone else knowing.
instead of saving the new menu item right away, click Apply first, and after the screen refreshes, check if any parameters are now available. If so, configure to your liking.Example: Run-Digitals sitemap.

keep current with component updates, in case new features get added or security issues get fixed!
some components cannot be updated, they might requiere an uninstall/reinstall process.
In this case, be carefull to backup your data / settings by dumping the relevant database tables, because some components will drop all their tables on uninstall!
if an install fails, and after uninstalling some components, you may get left-over folders from the previous install. These folders can make it impossible later to reinstall the component.

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