The plugin structure for Joomla! 1.5, 2.5 and 3.x was very flexible and powerful. Not only can plugins be used to handle events triggered by the core application and extensions, but plugins can also be used to make third party extensions extensible and powerful. In Joomla 4.x we have rewritten a lot of the dispatcher system behind this to increase the flexibility further when you modify the parameters passed as events whilst simultaneously increasing the performance of plugins.
This How-To should provide you with the basics of what you need to know to develop your own plugin. Most plugins consist of just a single code file but to correctly install the plugin code it must be packaged into an installation file which can be processed by the Joomla installer.
