Extension Developer Secrets – How to make money from Joomla

Tim Plummer

Who is Tim Plummer?

Coordinator of JoomlaDay SydneyOct 10th-12th 2014 @ UTS HaymarketSydney.joomladay.org.au

Convenor of Sydney JUG

Author of Learning Joomla! 3 Extension Development

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)

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)

JED Stats

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)

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

Joomla

• JED lists both commercial and non-commercial extensions

• No limitations on business model• Must be GPL to be listed on JED

JED is a good traffic source

Like Google, top extension in JED category gets more hits

Ratings and reviews get you to top

What makes a great extension

• Good quality software• Documentation• Support

Pricing

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

What you need

• Web hosting

What you need

• Akeeba Tickets (also includes Akeeba Release System and Akeeba DocImport)

What you need

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

Write documentation in docbook XML format

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>

Now you have PDF documentation

Akeeba DocImport then makes it web enabled

Web based documentation

Support – Akeeba Ticket System

Support – Akeeba Ticket System

Use Akeeba Subscriptions to sell your software

Akeeba Subscriptions

Akeeba Subscriptions

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

Akeeba Release System

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

Now let’s take a look at a new toy

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.

Why would you want do this?

• Opening your software to another community of site builders

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+

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

Stand alone installation

Stand alone installation

Configuration file

User table

User log in

Cpanel view in AWF

List view in AWF

Form view in AWF

How does AWF work with Joomla?

• AWF will be installable library like F0F

How does it work with Joomla?

• Need to add some of the standard Joomla files such as XML mainfest, access.xml, config.xml

How does it work (WordPress)?

• App folder contains AWF, and files for plugin

• Helper files provide wrapper to bootstrap the application

AWF is currently in public beta. There are no documentation or examples

written just yet.

Each theme club has it’s own framework to support both Joomla & WordPress

Let’s not make the same mistake with plugins

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!

Where do I get AWF?

• http://akeebabackup.com/download.html• https://github.com/akeeba/awf

Questions?

Where can I get AWF?

• https://www.akeebabackup.com/download.html

• https://github.com/akeeba/awfTim Plummerwww.timplummer.com.au

@bfsurvey