extension developer secrets - how to make money with joomla
DESCRIPTION
Presented at JoomlaDay Sydney 2014 on October 11th, Tim Plummer shares some of his experience of running a third party Joomla extension business, and offers some tips to other developers looking to start a similar business. Tim also talks about AWF (Akeeba Web Framework), which is a new muliplatform way of writing Joomla Components, WordPress Plugins, and stand alone PHP applications.TRANSCRIPT
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Extension Developer Secrets – How to make money from Joomla
Tim Plummer
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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
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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)
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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)
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JED Stats
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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)
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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
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Joomla
• JED lists both commercial and non-commercial extensions
• No limitations on business model• Must be GPL to be listed on JED
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JED is a good traffic source
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Like Google, top extension in JED category gets more hits
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Ratings and reviews get you to top
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What makes a great extension
• Good quality software• Documentation• Support
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Pricing
• Most expensive base price is $499 USD• Most expensive pro version is $1,495 USD• Average price is around $29-59 per year
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What you need
• Web hosting
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What you need
• Akeeba Tickets (also includes Akeeba Release System and Akeeba DocImport)
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What you need
• So we are only talking about $180 - $420 per year. That’s not much!
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Write documentation in docbook XML format
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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 "" --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>
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Now you have PDF documentation
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Akeeba DocImport then makes it web enabled
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Web based documentation
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Support – Akeeba Ticket System
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Support – Akeeba Ticket System
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Use Akeeba Subscriptions to sell your software
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Akeeba Subscriptions
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Akeeba Subscriptions
• Some features include:– Integrates with Akeeba Release System– Add/remove users from groups– Coupon codes– Automatic PDF invoice sent to customer
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Akeeba Release System
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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
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Now let’s take a look at a new toy
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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.
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Why would you want do this?
• Opening your software to another community of site builders
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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+
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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
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Stand alone installation
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Stand alone installation
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Configuration file
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User table
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User log in
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Cpanel view in AWF
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List view in AWF
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Form view in AWF
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How does AWF work with Joomla?
• AWF will be installable library like F0F
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How does it work with Joomla?
• Need to add some of the standard Joomla files such as XML mainfest, access.xml, config.xml
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How does it work (WordPress)?
• App folder contains AWF, and files for plugin
• Helper files provide wrapper to bootstrap the application
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AWF is currently in public beta. There are no documentation or examples
written just yet.
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Each theme club has it’s own framework to support both Joomla & WordPress
Let’s not make the same mistake with plugins
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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!
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Where do I get AWF?
• http://akeebabackup.com/download.html• https://github.com/akeeba/awf
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Questions?
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Where can I get AWF?
• https://www.akeebabackup.com/download.html
• https://github.com/akeeba/awfTim Plummerwww.timplummer.com.au
@bfsurvey