Navigate to the Plugin Manager. Click on the Plugin's Name or click on the Plugin's checkbox and press the Edit button in the toolbar.
Description
This screen allows you to edit the details and options for plugins. Some plugins have several configurable options, while others may not have any.
Screenshot
Details
The Details section is the same for all plugins and has the following fields:
Name. The name of the plugin.
Enabled. Whether or not the item is enabled. A green circle with a white check mark in it means it is enabled. A red circle with a white dot in it means it is disabled.
Access. Which user 'access levels' have access to this item. You can change an item's Access Level by clicking on its name to open it up for editing. The default user 'access levels' which come preconfigured with Joomla! are:
Public: Everyone has access including website visitors who have not logged in
Registered: Only users with registered status or higher will have access
Special: Only users with author status or higher have access
Ordering. A drop-down list of plugins of the same Type. The list of plugins is arranged by their current order. You can change this plugin's order in relation to the other plugins by selecting the plugin in the drop-down list that you want this plugin to be ordered below.
Plugin Type. The Type of the Plugin. This value cannot be changed.
Plugin File. The name of the Plugin file. Each Plugin has two files with this name. One has the file extension '.php' and the other has the file extension '.xml'.
ID. This is a unique identification number for this item assigned automatically by Joomla!. It is used to identify the item internally, and you cannot change this number. When creating a new item, this field displays 0 until you save the new entry, at which point a new ID is assigned to it.
Description. The description of what this Plugin does. This cannot be changed. The developer of the plugin specifies this. This may be blank if the developer did not specify a description for the plugin.
Options
If the plugin has configurable options they will appear to the right of the details section. Usually you will see Basic Options which are general options which need to be configured for the basic operation of the plugin. You may also see Advanced Options which are additional configurable options available for the plugin which allows further customization of the plugin. Finally you may see Language Options which are options related to the language functions of your Joomla! installation.
Toolbar
At the top you will see the toolbar:
The functions are:
Save: Saves the plugin and stays in the current screen.
Save & Close. Saves the plugin and closes the current screen.
Cancel. Closes the current screen and returns to the previous screen without saving any modifications you may have made.
Help. Opens this help screen.
Plugin Descriptions and Options
When Joomla! is installed, many plugins are included in the installation. These are described below, along with any options for the plugin.
Authentication - Joomla!
This plugin processes the default User Authentication method in Joomla. It has no options.
Authentication - GMail
This plugin processes User Authentication using GMail accounts. It has the following options:
Apply Username Suffix. This options allows you to automatically apply a suffix to the username a person enters when they log into your Joomla! installation. The suffix is the portion of the email address after the @ symbol.
Username Suffix. This is the suffix portion of the GMail email addresses which will be used to log into your site. This is the portion of the mail address after the @ symbol. Usually you will set this to gmail.com for regular GMail accounts. This option is present to allow you to use other GMail accounts that don't end in the typical gmail.com suffix. This would be the case with Google Apps for Domains email accounts.
Verify Peer. When your Joomla! installation attempts to verify the entered Gmail username it does so over an SSL connection. This option configures whether or not your Joomla! installation will check to ensure the CA certificate of the SSL connection is valid before proceeding with verification of the entered username/password. In some situations certificate verification fails in which case you can try setting this option to No to try to fix this.
User Blacklist. A comma separated list of usernames not allowed to log into your Joomla! installation.
To use the GMail plugin:
Create a Joomla! user account with the same username as a GMail account user. For example if the GMail email address of the person you want to add is bob1234@gmail.com you would create the Joomla! user account with the username bob1234.
Enable the GMail Plugin.
Logout of Joomla.
Login using the GMail username (without "@gmail.com") and the GMail password.
NOTE: Google may block these sign in attempts due to recently increased security checks[1] by Google. To resolve this issue, the user may need to go to Allow less secure apps and choose "Allow".
Authentication - LDAP
This plugin processes User Authentication against an LDAP server. It has the following options:
Host. The host URL. For example, "openldap.mycompany.org".
Port. The port number. The default is 389.
LDAP V3. Whether or not this host uses LDAP version 3. The default is LDAP v2.
Negotiate TLS. Whether or not to use TLS encryption with this host. If set to "Yes", all traffic to and from this server must be encrypted.
Follow Referrals. Whether to set the LDAP_OPT_REFERRALS flag to Yes or No. For Windows 2003 hosts this must be set to No.
Authorization Method. "Bind Directly as User" or "Bind and Search".
Base DN. The Base DN of your LDAP server.
Search String. A query string used to search for a given User. The [search] keyword is replaced by the login typed by the User. For example: "uid=[search]". More than one Search String can be entered. Separate each by a semi-colon ";" character. This is only used when searching.
User's DN. The [username] keyword is dynamically replaced by the username typed by the User. An example string is: "uid=[username], dc=[my-domain], dc=[com]". More than one string can be entered. Separate each with a semi-colon ";" character. This is only used if the Authorization Method above is set to "Bind Directly as User".
Connect Username and Connect Password. These define connection parameters for the DN lookup phase. For anonymous lookup, leave both of these fields blank. For an Administrative Connection, the "Connect Username" is the username of an administrative account (for example, "Administrator"). In this case, the "Connect password" is the actual password to this administrative account.
Map: Full Name. The LDAP attribute that contains the User's full name.
Map: E-mail. The LDAP attribute that contains the User's e-mail address.
Map: User ID. The LDAP attribute that contains the User's login ID. For Active Directory, this is "sAMAccountName".
Authentication - OpenID
This Plugin processes user authentication with an OpenID. It has the following options:
Convert Old Usernames. Convert old usernames to the proper OpenID format. Set this to Yes if you upgraded your Joomla! installation from one that was already using OpenID authentication.
Require Policy phishing-resistant. Requires the OpenID Provider to be configured with the OpenID Provider Authentication Policy Extension Phishing-Resistant Authentication policy.
Require Policy multi-factor. Requires the OpenID Provider to be configured with the OpenID Provider Authentication Policy Extension Multi-Factor Authentication policy.
Require Policy multi-factor-physical. Requires the OpenID Provider to be configured with the OpenID Provider Authentication Policy Extension Physical Multi-Factor Authentication policy.
Captcha - ReCaptcha
This CAPTCHA plugin uses the reCAPTCHA service to prevent spammers while it helps to digitize books, newspapers and old radio shows. The fields "Site key" and "Secret key" must be filled in before activating.
This plugin has following options:
Version. Version of reCaptcha. It is recommended to all new site to use version 2.0 as version 1.0 has no longer supported by Google.
Site key. Used in the JavaScript code that is served to your users.
Secret key. Used in the communication between your server and the reCaptha server. Be sure to keep it a secret.
Theme. Defines which theme to use for reCaptcha.
Size. Size of reCaptcha view. You can choose either 'Normal' or 'Compact' size to fit in your template.
Content - Email Cloaking
This plugin cloaks all e-mails in content from spambots using JavaScript. This helps prevent e-mails contained in articles from being added to spam e-mail lists. You can disable Email Cloaking inside an article by inserting {emailcloak=off} anywhere in the text of the article. In this case, no e-mail addresses in the article will be cloaked by this plugin.
Email Cloaking has the following options:
Mode. How the e-mails will be displayed. Options are "As linkable mailto address" or as "Non-linkable text".
Content - Code Highlighter (GeSHi)
This plugin displays formatted code in Articles based on the GeSHi highlighting engine.
NOTE: The Geshi plugin was removed from Joomla! standard distribution per 3.1 release it is no longer available by default (bug tracker #28574)
Syntax highlighting per default joomla install supports: css diff html4strict ini mysql php php-brief xml. It has a single option to turn on line numbers
The folder /geshi/geshi in the archive GeSHi-1.0.8.11.zip offers a large number of "highlighters" is available, copy the desired ones to \plugins\content\geshi\geshi\geshi on you server and use the file name as name for the syntax highlighting
Content - Load Modules
This plugin allows you to place a Module inside an Article with the syntax: {loadposition xx}, where "xx" is a user-defined position code. For example, if you create a Module with the Position value of "myposition1", then typing the text "{loadposition myposition1}" inside an Article will cause that Module to show at that point in the Article.
This plugin has the following option:
Style. The Style for the loaded Module.
Content - Pagebreak
This plugin adds table of contents functionality to a paginated Article. This is done automatically through the use of the Pagebreak button added to the lower part of the text panel in an Article. The HTML code is included here as a reference of what is available. The Pagebreak will itself display in the text window as a simple horizontal line.
Syntax: Usage: <hr class="system-pagebreak" />
<hr class="system-pagebreak" title="The page title" /> or
<hr class="system-pagebreak" alt="The first page" /> or
<hr class="system-pagebreak" title="The page title" alt="The first page" /> or
<hr class="system-pagebreak" alt="The first page" title="The page title" />
This plugin has the following options:
Show Site Title. Whether or not the title and heading attributes from the plug-in will be added to the Site Title tag.
Table of Contents. Whether to Hide or Show a table of contents for multi-page Articles.
Show all. Whether or not to give Users the option to show all pages of an Article.
Content - Page Navigation
This plugin allows you to add Next & Previous navigation links to Articles, for example when using a blog or list layout. This feature can be controlled with the following Joomla! parameters:
Note that, if the Page Navigation plug-in is disabled in this screen, no Page Navigation will show and the parameter settings above will have no effect.
This plugin has the following option:
Position. Position of the navigation link. Options are "Above" the Article or "Below" the Article.
Content - Vote
This plugin adds the Voting functionality to Articles. It has no options.
Editor - CodeMirror
This plugin loads the CodeMirror editor. CodeMirror is a code editor which provides an editor more suited for source code. It provides code syntax highlighting for many programming languages. It can show you mismatched tags and also helps you maintain consistent indenting of your code. It has the following options:
List numbers. Display line numbers in the editor.
Tab mode. Causes tab to adjust the indentation of the selection or current line using the current parser's rules
Editor - None
This plugin loads a basic text editor. This option can be used when you are pasting HTML code from another source and you don't want the HTML to be altered by a WYSIWYG editor. This plugin has no options.
Editor - TinyMCE
This plugin loads the TinyMCE editor. This is the default editor in Joomla!.
This plugin has the following options:
Functionality. Select "Extended", "Advanced" or "Simple" functionality. With "Simple" selected, the User has only 9 toolbar buttons: Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Undo, Re-do, Clean up messy code, Bullets, and Numbering. With "Advanced" selected, the User has all of the TinyMCE toolbar buttons. "Advanced" is the default setting.
Skin. Choose the skin which will be applied to the TinyMCE editor when displayed in your website.
Compressed version. Whether or not to use the compressed version of TinyMCE. Note that this does not work reliably with Windows IE, so "Off" is the recommended setting and is the default.
'Clean code on load. Whether or not to automatically clean up the HTML code when the editor first loads. Default value is "Off".
Clean code on save. Whether to run HTML code cleanup when a file is saved. Options are "Never", "Front Only", and "Always". The default setting is "Always".
Entity Encoding.
Automatic Language Selection. Whether or not to match the selected UI language. Do not set to "Yes" unless the appropriate editor languages are installed. Default is "No".
Language Code. Editor UI language code. This must be entered if Automatic Language Selection is "Off". Default is "en" for British English.
Text Direction. Whether the language reads "Left to Right" or "Right to Left" (for example, like Arabic). Default is "Left to Right".
Template CSS classes. Whether or not to load the "editor.css" file. If no such file is found for the default template, the "editor.css" file from the system template is used. Default is "Yes".
Custom CSS Classes. Optional full URL path to a custom CSS file. If entered, this overrides the Template CSS classes setting.
URLs. Whether to use Relative or Absolute URLs for links. The default is "Relative".
New Lines. Whether to interpret new lines as "P Elements" or "BR Elements". Default is "P Elements".
Prohibited Elements. The elements that will be cleaned from the text. Default is "applet", which will remove applet elements from the text.
Extended Valid Elements. Optional list of valid HTML elements to add to the existing rule set.
This plug-in has the following advanced options:
Toolbar. Whether to show the toolbar above or below the editor window.
Toolbar align.
HTML Height. The height, in pixels, of the HTML mode pop-up window.
HTML Width. The width, in pixels, of the HTML mode pop-up window.
Element Path. If set to "On", show the 'Set Classes' button for the marked text.
The following options only apply if the editor is in Extended Mode.
Fonts. Hide or Show the 'Font' button.
Paste. Hide or Show the 'Paste' button.
Search-Replace. Hide or Show the 'Search and Replace' button.
Insert Date. Hide or Show the 'Insert Date' button.
Date Format. The Date format to use for Insert Date.
Insert Time. Hide or Show the 'Insert Time' button.
Time Format. The Time format to use for Insert Time.
Colors. Hide or Show the 'Colors' control buttons.
Table. Hide or Show the Table buttons.
Smilies. Hide or Show the 'Smilies' button.
Media. Hide or Show the 'Media' button.
Horizontal Rule. Hide or Show the 'Horizontal Rule' button.
Directionality. Hide or Show the 'Directionality' button.
Fullscreen. Hide or Show the 'Fullscreen' button.
Style. Hide or Show the 'CSS Style' button.
Layer. Hide or Show the Layer buttons.
XHTMLxtras. Hide or Show the additional XHTML features.
Visualchars. Show invisible characters, specifically non-breaking spaces.
Nonbreaking. Insert non-breaking space entities.
Template. Hide or Show the 'Template' button.
Blockquote. Turn on/off block quotes.
Wordcount. Turn on/off word count.
Advanced image. Turn on/off a more advanced image dialog box.
Advanced link. Turn on/off a more advanced link dialog box.
Advanced List. Turn on/off the ability to set number formats and bullet types in ordered and unordered lists.
Save Warning. Whether or not to give a warning if the User cancels without saving the file. The default value is "Off".
Context menu. Turn on/off the context menu.
Inline popups. Turn on/off dialogs opening as floating DIV layers instead of popup windows. This option is useful to allow getting around popup blockers.
Custom plugin. Add custom TinyMCE plug-ins to the editor by specifying them here.
Custom button. Add custom TinyMCE buttons to the editor by specifying them here.
Button - Article
This plugin displays the Article button below the editor box when you are using a Joomla! editor (for example, when writing an Article). It allows you to insert an Article link into an Article. This plugin has no options.
Button - Image
This plugin displays the Image button below the editor box when you are using a Joomla! editor (for example, when writing an Article). It allows you to insert an image into an Article. This plugin has no options.
Button - Pagebreak
This plugin displays the Pagebreak button below the editor box when you are using a Joomla! editor (for example, when writing an Article). It inserts a page break in the Article. This plugin has no options.
Button - Readmore
This plugin displays the "Read more..." button below the editor box when you are using a Joomla! editor (for example, when writing an Article). It inserts a "Read more..." break in the Article that allows you to display just the first portion of an Article on a page. This plugin has no options.
Extension - Joomla
This plugin manages the update sites for extensions. This plugin has no options.
Search - Categories
This plugin enables searching for Category information. It has the following options:
Search Limit. The maximum number of search results to return after a search is done.
Search Published. Whether or not to include published items in the search results.
Search Archived. Whether or not to include archived items in the search results.
Search - Contacts
This plugin enables searching for Contacts. It has the following options:
Search Limit. The maximum number of search results to return after a search is done.
Search Published. Whether or not to include published items in the search results.
Search Archived. Whether or not to include archived items in the search results.
Search - Content
This plugin enables searching for Articles. It has the following options:
Search Limit. The maximum number of search results to return after a search is done.
Articles. Whether or not to enable searching of all articles.
Archived Articles. Whether or not to include archived articles in the search results.
Search - Newsfeeds
This plugin enables searching for News Feeds. It has the following options:
Search Limit. The maximum number of search results to return after a search is done.
Search Published. Whether or not to include published items in the search results.
Search Archived. Whether or not to include archived items in the search results.
Search - Weblinks
This plugin enables searching for Web Links. It has the following options:
Search Limit. The maximum number of search results to return after a search is done.
Search Published. Whether or not to include published items in the search results.
Search Archived. Whether or not to include archived items in the search results.
System - Language Filter
This plugin filters the displayed content depending on language. It should only be enabled when the Language Switcher module is published. If this plugin is activated, it is recommended to also publish the Administrator multilingual status module.
This plugin has the following options:
Language Selection for new Visitors. Whether to choose site default language or detect browser settings automatically.
Automatic Language Change. This option will automatically change the content language used in the Frontend when a user site language is changed.
Item Associations. Allows item association when switching from one language to another.
Add Alternate Meta Tags. Add alternative meta tags for menu items with associated menu items in other languages.
Add x-default Meta Tag. Add x-default meta tag to improve SEO.
x-default Language. Choose your x-default language.
Remove URL Language Code. Whether to remove or not the defined URL Language Code (eg. your_domain_name/en) of your Content Language that corresponds to the default site language when SEF URL is set to "Yes".
Cookie Lifetime. Language cookies can be set to expire at the end of the "Session" or after a "Year".
System - Cache
This plugin enables page caching. Page caching allows the web server to save snapshots of pages and use them when serving web pages. This improves the performance of your web site and reduces the workload of the server. This plugin has the following options:
Use Browser Caching. Whether or not to use the mechanism for storing a page cache in the local browser. Default is "No".
System - Debug
This plugin provides debugging information. The report is shown below the main screen of the front and backend interfaces of your Joomla! installation. It has the following options:
Allowed Groups. User groups that will see the debug information when enabled.
Show Profiling Whether or not to display the profiling waypoints information.
Show Queries. Whether or not to include the SQL query log in the debug information.
Show Memory Usage. Whether or not to include memory usage data in the debug information.
Language Debug Options:
Show errors when parsing language files. Whether or not to display a list of language files with errors due to their not being in compliance with the Joomla! language file specification.
Show Language Files. Whether or not to display the language files that have been loaded to generate the page.
Show Language String. Whether or not to include undefined language strings in the debug information.
Strip First Word. Whether or not to always strip the first word in multi-word strings.
Strip From Start. Strips the specified words from the beginning of the language string. For multiple words separate each word with the pipe ( | ) character like so: word1|word2
Strip From End. Strips the specified words from the end of the language string. For multiple words separate each word with the pipe ( | ) character like so: word1|word2
Logging Debug options:
System - Log
This plugin enables system logging. A log is a file that contains information about the web site activity. It can be used to see a history of activity and to troubleshoot problems on the site. This plugin has no options.
System - Redirect
This plugin enables the Joomla Redirect system to catch missing pages and redirect users. It has the following options:
Collect URLs.
System - Remember Me
This plugin provides "Remember Me" functionality. This allows the website to "remember" your username and password so that you can automatically be logged in when you return to the site. This plugin has no options.
System - SEF
This plugin adds SEF support to links in the document. It operates directly on the HTML and does not require a special tag. It has the following options:
Site Domain.
User - Profile
This plugin adds user profile capability to your website. Website users will be able to fill out profile fields that you enable in the options section of this plugin. You can control what profile fields are shown in the new user registration form and/or each user's editable profile screen. To control what fields are shown in the new user registration form, set the field options in the section labeled User profile information required at registration. For profile fields shown in the user's profile screen which it editable after login, set the field option in the options section labeled Required user profile information. For each field you have the following options:
Required. The field is visible in user profiles and users are required to fill it out.
Optional. The field is visible in user profiles but is optional and users do not need to fill it out.
Disabled. The field is disabled and not visible in user profiles.
All fields are text fields with the exception of the Terms of Service field. The Terms of Service field is a radio button that the user can click on to signify their agreement with the website's terms of service.
User - Contact Creator
This plugin automatically creates contact information for new users. It has the following options:
Automatic Webpage. A formatted string to automatically generate a contact's web page. [name] is replaced with the name, [username] is replaced with the username, [userid] is replaced with the user ID and [email] is replaced with the email.
Category. Category to assign contacts to by default.
Autopublish the contact. Optionally have the automatically created contact set to the published state and visible to your website visitors.
User - Joomla!
This plugin handles the default user synchronization. It has the following options:
Auto-create Users. Whether or not to automatically create registered Joomla! users where possible. Default is "Yes".
Quick Tips
If you are using the TinyMCE editor, you can control which options appear on the editor's toolbar by setting the parameters in the "Editor - TinyMCE" plugin.
Starting with Joomla! 1.6, configurable plug-in settings are referred to as 'options'. In previous versions of Joomla! these configurable settings were referred to as 'parameters'. You may see the terms 'options' and 'parameters' used interchangeably in help documentation and tutorials you encounter.
