Adding a paywall to your extension download

Joomla! supports commercial developers and provides some features to make it easier to set up a business developing extensions for Joomla!. One of the latest additions to the core is the support for download keys when requesting updates.

Download keys are usually an alphanumeric string format and permit you to download updates of your extensions. This is very convenient for users as they can use the live update feature for the extensions. Regarding developers, they can control who can download their extensions.

These download keys must be added to the extension live update download link so that when a user requests the download, it will be granted if the key is valid and denied otherwise.

The way to consider download keys in your Joomla! extension is by adding a new section to your manifest XML. So, let’s edit the src/package/pkg_spm.xml file and add the following tag:

<dlid prefix="spm_key=" suffix="...