Difference between revisions of "Plugins"

Latest revision as of 05:58, 25 November 2020

Description

The Plugin Manager allows you to enable and disable Joomla! plugins and to edit a plugin's details and options. It is also useful for quickly enabling/disabling multiple plugins at once.

How to Access

• Select System → Manage panel → Plugins from the Administrator menu. or...
• Select Home Dashboard → Site panel → Plugins from the Administrator menu.

Screenshot

Column Headers

• Checkbox: Check this box to select one or more items. To select all items, check the box in the column heading. After one or more boxes are checked, click a toolbar button to take an action on the selected item or items. Many toolbar actions, such as Publish and Unpublish, can work with multiple items. Others, such as Edit, only work on one item at a time. If multiple items are checked and you press Edit, the first item will be opened for editing.

• Ordering. You can change the order of an item within a list as follows:
  • If the list Filter Options include a Position filter select the desired Position. This will limit the list to items that are assigned to that Position.
  • Select the Ordering icon in the Table heading to make it the active ordering item. The ordering icons in each row will change from light grey to dark grey and the pointer will change to a drag arrow on hover.
  • Select one of the Ordering icons and drag it up or down to change the position of that row in the list. The items will display in the new order within the Position.

• Status. A green tick or a red X showing whether the use of the component is enabled/disabled. Click the icon to toggle the item between enabled and disabled.

• Plugin Name. The name of the plugin.
• Type. The Type of the plug-in. Some possible types are: authentication, content, editors, editors-xtd, search, system, and user. These are also the names of the website sub-directories where the plugin files are located. For example, plugins with a type of 'authentication' are located in the website directory 'plugins/authentication'.
• Element. The plug-in directory name which contains the plugin's files. This directory will be located in the directory which corresponds to its type. For example, the 'Authentication - Joomla' plugin is of type 'Authentication' and element 'joomla'. So the website directory it is located in is 'plugins/authentication/joomla'
• Access. Which user 'access levels' have access to this item. You can change an item's Access Level by clicking on its name to open it up for editing. The default user 'access levels' which come preconfigured with Joomla! are:
  • Public: Everyone has access including website visitors who have not logged in
  • Registered: Only users with registered status or higher will have access
  • Special: Only users with author status or higher have access

• ID. This is a unique identification number for this item assigned automatically by Joomla!. It is used to identify the item internally, and you cannot change this number. When creating a new item, this field displays 0 until you save the new entry, at which point a new ID is assigned to it.

List Filters

Search bar. This is a common feature of most Lists. The layout is as shown below.

• Search by Text. Enter part of the search term and click the Search icon. The search may be of one or more fields. Hover to see a Tooltip indicating which fields will be searched. In some cases a different format is required. For Example, to Search by ID enter "id:xx", where "xx" is the item ID number (for example, "id:9").
• Filter Options. Click to display or hide the additional filters.
• Clear. Click to clear the Filter field and restore the list to its unfiltered state.
• Ordering. Shows the current table ordering field. Select from the drop down list to change the order or click a column heading. Ordering may be in ascending or descending order. The column heading toggles between ascending and descending order.
• Number to Display. Shows the number of items in a list. The default for a site is 20 but this may be changed in the global configuration. Select from the drop-down list to change the number displayed. If you select too many complex items they will be slow to deliver and display.

The list of plugins which appears on this screen may be very large. You can use one of the available filters or any combination of them to limit the number of plug-ins displayed to just the plug-ins which match your filter parameters.

Filter Options

• Select Status. Select a status (Enabled or Disabled) from the drop-down list box to show only plugins with the selected status.
• Select Type. Select a Type from the drop-down list box to show only plugins of the selected Type.
• Select Element. A long list of elements, allowing a precise selection.
• Select Access. Select the 'Access Level' from the drop-down list box to only show plugins accessible by uses of the selected 'Access Level'

Toolbar

At the top of the page you will see the toolbar shown in the Screenshot above. The functions are:

• Edit. Opens the editing screen for the selected plugin. If more than one plugin is selected (where applicable), only the first plugin will be opened. The editing screen can also be opened by clicking on the Name of the plugin.

• Enable. Makes the selected item available for use on your website. You may also toggle between Enabled and Disabled by clicking on the icon in the 'Enabled' column.

• Disable. Makes the selected plugins unavailable for use on your website. You may also toggle between Enabled and Disabled by clicking on the icon in the 'Enabled' column.

• Check-In. Checks-in the selected plugins. Works with one or multiple plugins selected.

• Options. Opens the Options window where settings such as default parameters can be edited.

• Help. Opens this help screen.

Quick Tips

• To enable or disable a group of Plugins, check the check box for each desired Plugin and then click the Enable or Disable toolbar button.
• Starting with Joomla! 1.6, configurable plugin settings are referred to as 'options'. In previous versions of Joomla! these configurable settings were referred to as 'parameters'. You may see the terms 'options' and 'parameters' used interchangeably in help documentation and tutorials you encounter.

Related Information

• To change the Details or Options for a Plugin: Plugin Manager - Edit
• To install Plugins: Extension Manager - Install
• To uninstall Plugins: Extension Manager - Manage