Dear JED Listers,
We are pleased to announce that with Joomla 3.2, there is now an Install from Web plugin that allows site builders to find, and install extensions from within Joomla directly through the Joomla backend interface. This means that if your extensions are marked on the JED as Joomla 3.x compatible, then they will be shown and searchable in this extension. This feature will hopefully be a great asset to the Joomla community, and will help to get more people access to the extensions listed on the JED, since many that install Joomla are not aware of the JED site.
You can preview the feature by installing Joomla 3.2.0 and going to Joomla Extension Manager. Also, the following video shows a preview of the feature:
Currently, without updating your JED entry, all that will happen is that users see for your entry a “Download” or, if commercial, “Purchase and Download” button. The button will redirect the user to your site to download the extension using your current “Download” JED link. Then the user needs to download your extension and upload it to his site the usual way.
However, with the new “Install from Web” feature, a new, simpler process is possible if you fill in two new fields that have been added to all JED extension listings edits. The user can then directly see an “Install” or “Register and Install” or “Purchase and Install” button, which allows the user to avoid the search for file, download and upload processes.
For JED listers who have published free extensions which don't require registration, filling in these fields is enough for users to directly install your extension from their backend, leading to a much more simplified “one click” workflow for users.
For JED listers of extensions which require registration, if you want to also require the registration while allowing direct installation after registration or login on your site, you will need to install an additional plugin on your site to gain the same functionality. Such an example plugin can be found at https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms-install-from-web-plugins and can be installed on a 2.5 or 3.x website. Documentation on this plugin can be found at https://docs.joomla.org/Install_From_Web_For_Developers to guide you through the process of setting this up, or developing your own plugin.
Users with commercial extensions will also need the above mentioned plugin and will further need to add in their own access checks to make sure users have the permissions to download (i.e. having made a purchase of the extension). Example implementations are provided in branches of the above sample plugin github repository. Feel free to Pull-Request additional improvements and supports to the example implementation.
Please note, choosing not to use the Install from Web feature is entirely optional and will not affect your listing on JED in any way nor will it stop users being able to use the usual methods of downloading an extension via the Install from Web tab.
If you have any questions about using the plugin, you can post it to the Joomla General Development mailing list:
If you’d like to help with the development, you can post to the JCMS mailing list:
Also, the documentation at https://docs.joomla.org/Install_From_Web_For_Developers is open for editing to anyone, so please register for a free account and start improving the documentation. A cheat-sheet for wiki formatting can be found at https://docs.joomla.org/Help:Cheatsheet.
We hope that you will also like this new simpler and faster way for users to find your extensions, and that it will help you to get a wider user-base for your extensions.
Thanks for listing your extensions on the JED! Also, a special thanks goes out to the Install from Web working group, JED Team, Community Leadership Team (CLT), Open Source Matters (OSM), and the Joomla community for their contributions and feedback.
Sincerely,
Nick Savov
