Chapter 2. Getting Started with Plugin Development
By now, I'm sure you are itching to get your hands dirty and start playing with some code. If you skipped the first chapter, don't worry, you can come back to the theory later. Most development books will start out with a "hello world" example, but that's been done before and is really boring, so we are going to skip that and start out by creating a simple plugin that actually does something useful. By the end of this chapter, you will have made your first Joomla! plugin. You will learn the following things in this chapter:
An overview of the various types of Joomla! plugins
How to create a content plugin
How to package your plugin so you can share it with others
How to make your plugin more flexible by adding parameters
How to create language files for your plugin
The power of language overrides