Alter Glossary

In Joomla!, a Menu is a set of menu items. Each menu item defines an URL to a page on your site, and settings that control the contents and style of that page. Additionally, each menu item has an alias that will be used to create human-readable URLs when Search Engine Friendly URLs are on. Menu items can have any number of subitems.

Joomla makes extensive use of the Model-View-Controller design pattern.

When Joomla is started to process a request from a user, such as a GET for a particular page, or a POST containing form data, one of the first things that Joomla does is to analyse the URL to determine which component will be responsible for processing the request, and hand control over to that component.

Modules are lightweight and flexible extensions used for page rendering. These modules are often "boxes" arranged around a component on a typical page. A well-known example is the login module. Modules are assigned per menu item, so you can decide to show or hide (for example) the login module depending on which page (menu item) the user is currently on. Some modules are linked to components: the "latest news" module, for example, links to the content component (com_content) and displays links to the newest content items. However, modules do not need to be linked to components; they don't even need to be linked to anything and can be just static HTML or text.

Modules are managed in the Administrator by the Module Manager.

Module chrome allows template designers to have a certain amount of control over the way the output from a Module is displayed in their template. Essentially, it consists of a small amount of predefined HTML which is inserted before, after, or around the output from each module, and which can then be styled using CSS. Module chrome is commonly used to provide borders around modules, especially with rounded corners, but it can be used for much more than that.

Module Class Suffix is a parameter in Joomla! modules. It is set Module: [Edit] screen under Advanced Parameters. Setting this parameter causes Joomla! to either add a new CSS class or modify the existing CSS class for the div element for this specific module.

Module positions are placeholders in a template. They identify positions within the template and tell the Joomla! application where to place output from modules assigned to a particular position. The template designer has complete control over module positions, creating variations between templates and the respective Joomla! default positions assigned to modules in the installation sample data.

Page Class Suffix is a parameter in Joomla! content Menu Items. It is set in the Menu Item: [Edit] screen under the "Parameters (Advanced)" section. This will cause Joomla! to either add a new CSS class or modify the existing CSS class for elements in this specific Menu Item layout.

The term patch file is used for two different file types. The term patch file is sometimes used to refer to archive files that allow you to upgrade from one Joomla! version to another (for example, from version 1.0.0 to version 1.0.7). These upgrade files are also referred to as upgrade packages.

A plugin is a kind of Joomla! extension. Plugins provide functions which are associated with trigger events. Joomla provides a set of core plugin events, but any extension can fire (custom) events. When a particular event occurs, all plugin functions of the type associated with the event are executed in sequence. This is a powerful way of extending the functionality of the Joomla! Framework. It also offers extension developers a way to allow other extensions to respond to their actions, making extensions extensible.

In Joomla! versions up to and including , a Section is a collection of Categories. It is the top level in the hierarchy Sections -> Categories -> Articles. For example, a website might have Sections called "Animals" and "Plants". Within the "Animals" Section, the website might have Categories such as "Birds" and "Mammals".