1.
Extension Developer Secrets –
How to make money from Joomla
Tim Plummer

2.
Who is Tim Plummer?
Coordinator of JoomlaDay Sydney
Oct 10th-12th 2014
@ UTS Haymarket
Sydney.joomladay.org.au
Convenor of Sydney JUG
Author of Learning
Joomla! 3 Extension
Development

3.
Why Develop Software for Joomla?
• Established market of site builders who are
looking for a paid solution
• Very easy to customise
– View overrides
– Media overrides (if using F0F)
• Object oriented
• MVC
• Access control (in core)

4.
Joomla Extension Directory (JED) Stats
• Unique visitors per month range from 600K to
4 Million.
• Summer months tend to be lower, winter
months higher (northern hemisphere)

5.
JED Stats

6.
JED Stats
• Approximately 1700 Joomla Extension
Developers on the JED
• There are hundreds of one extension
developers and some with 60 extensions
• Average number of extensions per developer
is four.
• 8498 listings (as of 10th October 2014)

7.
JED Stats
• Average of 5 submissions a day
• There’s always roughly 160 pending
extensions that were submitted with errors
and awaiting fixes
• 3441 support tickets processed in the last year

8.
Joomla
• JED lists both commercial and non-commercial
extensions
• No limitations on business model
• Must be GPL to be listed on JED

9.
JED is a good traffic source

10.
Like Google, top extension in JED
category gets more hits

11.
Ratings and reviews get you to top

12.
What makes a great extension
• Good quality software
• Documentation
• Support

13.
Pricing
• Most expensive base price is $499 USD
• Most expensive pro version is $1,495 USD
• Average price is around $29-59 per year

14.
What you need
• Web hosting

15.
What you need
• Akeeba Tickets (also includes Akeeba Release
System and Akeeba DocImport)

16.
What you need
• So we are only talking about $180 - $420 per
year. That’s not much!

17.
Write documentation in docbook XML
format

18.
Phing script then converts this to PDF
using xsltproc and FOP
<echo>About to create PDF of documentation...</echo>
<exec command="xsltproc --nonet --xinclude --novalid --stringparam img.src.path
http://localhost/joomla_development/bfsurvey/userguide/ --stringparam body.start.indent 0 --
stringparam variablelist.term.break.after 1 --stringparam variablelist.term.separator &quot;&quot; --
stringparam variablelist.max.termlength 12 --stringparam section.autolabel 1 --stringparam
toc.section.depth 5 --stringparam fop1.extensions 1 --output ${project.basedir}/../bfsurvey-guide.fo
${dirs.bin.dbxsl}/fo/docbook.xsl ${dirs.documentation}/bfsurvey-guide.xml" dir="${project.basedir}"
logoutput="true" />
<echo>Now running FOP...</echo>
<exec command="fop -fo ${project.basedir}/../bfsurvey-guide.fo -pdf ${project.basedir}/../bfsurvey-guide.
pdf" logoutput="true" />
<echo>Deleiting fo file...</echo>
<delete file="${project.basedir}/../bfsurvey-guide.fo" quiet="yes" />
<echo>PDF of documetation complete...</echo>

19.
Now you have PDF documentation

20.
Akeeba DocImport then makes it web
enabled

21.
Web based documentation

22.
Support – Akeeba Ticket System

23.
Support – Akeeba Ticket System

24.
Use Akeeba Subscriptions to sell your software

25.
Akeeba Subscriptions

26.
Akeeba Subscriptions
• Some features include:
– Integrates with Akeeba Release System
– Add/remove users from groups
– Coupon codes
– Automatic PDF invoice sent to customer

27.
Akeeba Release System

28.
Phing is your friend
• I use Phing to:
– Copy files to dev site(s)
– Create installable zip package
– Create PDF documentation
• Can also do fancy stuff like:
– Find and replace text in files
– Move/copy/delete files & folders

29.
Now let’s take a look at a new toy

30.
What if I told you that you could
write a Joomla Component that
can also be used as a standalone
PHP application, or WordPress
plugin using the same codebase.

31.
Why would you want do this?
• Opening your software to another community
of site builders

32.
Introducing AWF
(Akeeba Web Framework)
A web application framework for single source
standalone web applications, Joomla!
components and WordPress plugins.
• GPL
• Requires PHP 5.3+

33.
Who wrote AWF?
• Written by Nicholas Dionysopoulos from
akeebabackup.com who also has a WordPress
blog http://www.dionysopoulos.me/
• September 2014 – public release of AWF

34.
Stand alone installation

35.
Stand alone installation

36.
Configuration file

37.
User table

38.
User log in

39.
Cpanel view in AWF

40.
List view in AWF

41.
Form view in AWF

42.
How does AWF work with Joomla?
• AWF will be installable
library like F0F

43.
How does it work with Joomla?
• Need to add some of the standard
Joomla files such as XML mainfest,
access.xml, config.xml

44.
How does it work (WordPress)?
• App folder contains AWF,
and files for plugin
• Helper files provide
wrapper to bootstrap the
application

45.
AWF is currently in public beta. There
are no documentation or examples
written just yet.

46.
Each theme club has it’s own framework to
support both Joomla & WordPress
Let’s not make the same mistake with plugins

47.
AWF could be the standard
We can share:
• Documentation
• Bug fixes
• Unit tests
• Examples and tutorials
Joomla and WordPress developers can work
together for mutual benefit!

48.
Where do I get AWF?
• http://akeebabackup.com/download.html
• https://github.com/akeeba/awf

49.
Questions?

50.
Where can I get AWF?
• https://www.akeebabackup.com/download.ht
ml
Tim Plummer
• https://github.com/akeeba/awf
www.timplummer.com.au
@bfsurvey