Joomla Jumpstart

If you do a minimum Joomla! install, many of the common extensions will not be activated (Who's Online, Syndicate, etc.) or listed in the various managers (Module Manager, Plugin Manager, etc.). To install them manually, you need to modify the XML descriptor files. Here I'll show you how.

Although the extensions are not listed in the managers, they are still part of the install image and can be founded in their various folders (i.e. /modules/mod_syndicate). However, the XML descriptor files are incomplete, so they can't be just compressed and installed.

The descriptor files are lacking references to all but the central extension files. To create a installable version of the file, you will need to add these references to the file. For example, the XML descriptor for Syndicate would need the following extra entries that are listed in red:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<install type="module" version="1.5.0">
    <name>Syndicate</name>
    <author>Joomla! Project</author>
    <creationDate>May 2006</creationDate>
    <copyright>(C) 2005 - 2007 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved.</copyright>
    <license>http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html GNU/GPL</license>
    <authorEmail>
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 </authorEmail>
    <authorUrl>www.joomla.org</authorUrl>
    <version>1.5.0</version>
    <description>Smart Syndication module that creates syndicated feed for the page where the module is displayed</description>
    <files>
        <filename module="mod_syndicate">mod_syndicate.php</filename>
        <filename>helper.php</filename>
        <filename>index.html</filename>
        <filename>tmpl/default.php</filename>
        <filename>tmpl/index.html</filename>
    </files>
    <params>
        <param name="cache" type="list" default="0" label="Caching" description="Select whether to cache the content of this module">
            <option value="0">Never</option>
        </param>
        <param name="@spacer" type="spacer" default="" label="" description="" />
        <param name="text" type="text" default="Feed Entries" label="Text" description="PARAMTEXT" />
        <param name="format" type="list" default="rss" label="Format" description="PARAMFEEDFORMAT">
            <option value="rss">RSS 2.0</option>
            <option value="atom">Atom 1.0</option>
        </param>
        <param name="moduleclass_sfx" type="text" default="" label="Module Class Suffix" description="PARAMMODULECLASSSUFFIX" />
    </params>
</install>

After you've added these entries, you can create a Zip or Tar archive for installation into the system. First, however, be sure to rename or delete the current extension directory or the installation will fail with the system stating that there is already a folder by that name.