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I struggled with the necessity of this first article in an extension development series for a while, and finally decided that it was indeed a worthwhile post. It is important to make sure you build a proper foundation and there are several aspects of writing a Joomla! 3.0 component that should be planned right from the very first day. This is the first in a series of articles about extension development, which would not be complete without taking time to discuss the initial steps involved in planning and structuring the extension correctly. Here are those steps I have found to be most effective in beginning a successful Joomla! extension.

These days almost all Joomla! developers have a demo site to display their component for testing. It really doesn’t matter if you give your component away or if you are offering it for purchase; most users expect to be able to test the functionality and “see it in action” before they purchase or waste their time downloading and installing on their own site. This means as a component developer you have to keep a demo site up and running at all times with the latest version of your component.

“I looked up that Joomla! CMS that you said you were using for my project. I saw that I can download it for free. How can you charge me $XXXX? Joomla! is free, right? I just want you to install Joomla! and make it look good for me.”