User Documentation Plugins are one of Joomla's extension types, running quietly in the background and reacting to events elsewhere in the system rather than appearing as pages or modules of their own. Joomla ships with roughly 160 core plugins across 20-odd types, but most are only lightly documented here; this section introduces how plugins work in general and covers the Joomla Update Notification plugin as a worked example.
- About Plugins – What a plugin is, the types Joomla organises them into, and how the roughly 160 core plugins respond to trigger events elsewhere in the site.
- Joomla! Update Notification – How the Quick Icon and Task plugins that make up this plugin work together to flag new Joomla releases and email Super Users when one is available.