If you're creating a Joomla extension and want to display the extension description when installing your extension, this tutorial will show you how.

Joomla uses the <description> tag from the main manifest file (i.e. the extension-name.xml file in the root of the zip file) of the extension. Let's use an example.

Displaying the Extension Description

Here is the <description> tag within our mod_pwebcontact.xml file of ShackForms.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<extension type="module" version="3.7" client="site" method="upgrade">
<name>MOD_PWEBCONTACT</name>
<creationDate>December 17 2018</creationDate>
<author>Joomlashack</author>
<copyright>Copyright (C) 2018 Joomlashack. All rights reserved.</copyright>
<license>GNU General Public Licence https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html</license>
<authorUrl>https://www.joomlashack.com</authorUrl>
<version>4.0.13</version>
<description>MOD_PWEBCONTACT_XML_DESCRIPTION</description>

And here's how it displays:

Extension Description Language String

As you can use, we use a language constant for it: MOD_PWEBCONTACT_XML_DESCRIPTION

That way, anyone can override the description and translate it.

The constant and language pair should be defined in your en-GB.(name-of-extension).sys.ini. For example, ours is in language/en-GB/en-GB.mod_pwebcontact.sys.ini with:

MOD_PWEBCONTACT_XML_DESCRIPTION = "Ajax popup form with upload feature displayed as Slide in Box from page edge, Lightbox window or standard module."

For a component, it would be in the admin folder. For example, admin/language/en-GB/en-GB.com_pixanalytic.sys.ini

Troubleshooting When the Extension Description Doesn't Show

When installing the extension, if the only thing showing up is the constant (without the value), make sure you have it in the sys.ini file, rather than the regular .ini file.

Also, you can put it in the regular .ini file too, just in case. There appear to be some edge cases in some extensions when it might be pulled from there too. But, you should for sure have it in the sys.ini file as well.

If it's still not showing up, double check that your text exactly matches and that you don't have any typos.

About the author

Nick is the Director of Support at Joomlashack and you can find him in almost every area of the site, from answering support requests and account questions to creating tutorials and software.