Extension Manager

The Extension Manager lists every installed extension — components, modules, plugins, templates, languages and libraries — and enables or disables them. It also installs a hub's own extensions from a git repository, and reports problems with the server's PHP configuration.

Select Extensions → Extension Manager, or go to /administrator/index.php?option=com_installer.

Most managers never need this screen. The extensions a hub runs on arrive with the code and are already switched on. Three things bring you here: a component your hub does not use is cluttering the administrator menu and you want it gone; someone has written a component or plugin for your hub and it lives in a git repository; or mail attachments and image handling have stopped working and you want to see what the server thinks of its own PHP configuration.

What this screen is not

It is not an installer for extensions from elsewhere. There is no upload form, no install-from-URL, and nothing that will take a downloaded package. The only route for a hub's own code is a git repository, through Custom Extensions, and it puts that code under app/.

It is not an update screen either. Updating the platform is a deployment task, done outside the administrator interface; what this screen offers is Refresh Cache, which re-reads manifests, and the migration runner.

The screen has three tabs:

Tab	Controller	What it holds
Hubzero Core	manage	Every extension shipped with the platform
Custom Extensions	customexts	Extensions this hub installed from git
Warnings	warnings	Checks on the server's PHP settings

Hubzero Core

This tab lists the platform's own extensions. They can be disabled and re-enabled, but never installed or removed from here — they come and go with the codebase. A core extension can be overridden by putting a replacement of the same name under app/.

Columns: Name, Location (Site or Administrator), Status, Type, Version, Date, Author, Folder (plugins only) and ID. The Name, Location, Status, Type, Folder and ID columns sort.

Filters: a search box and drop-downs for location, status (Enabled / Disabled / Protected), type and folder.

Toolbar

Button	Effect
Enable / Disable	Changes the state of the selected extensions.
Refresh Cache	Re-reads the selected extensions' XML manifests. Useful after editing one.
Options	Component settings and permissions.
Help	Opens the built-in help screen.

There is no Uninstall button; it is commented out in the view. Names in this list are not links — there is nothing to edit. Extensions marked protected are highlighted but can still be disabled; the only thing the component refuses to disable is the default template.

To enable or disable a core extension:

1. Go to Extensions → Extension Manager.
2. Stay on Hubzero Core, and find the extension with the search box or the Type filter.
3. Tick it and select Enable or Disable.

Disabling is otherwise reversible and reasonably safe to try: nothing is deleted, no data is touched, and re-enabling puts everything back. What it does do is take a feature away from everybody using the hub at that moment, without warning them.

Core Migrations

A second navigation strip inside this tab leads to Core Migrations, which lists the platform's database migration files and their status. Its toolbar offers Run pending migrations, and, per selected file, Force run UP on selected migrations and Force run DOWN on selected migrations.

Custom Extensions

A custom extension is code this hub adds to app/, installed and updated by cloning a git repository. The repository must lay its files out the way the platform expects for the chosen extension type; the non-standard type drops the repository's contents into app/ as they are.

This is how a hub gets something the platform does not ship: a component written for one research group, a plugin that talks to a local instrument, a template of the hub's own. It is also how that code is kept up to date afterwards, which is the part worth planning for. The update button merges new commits into the running hub's filesystem — there is no staging copy, no test run, and no undo on this screen. Whoever maintains the repository is in effect deploying to production every time you press it, so agree with them how a change gets tested before it is tagged.

Columns: Name, Status, Location, Type, Folder, Modified on, Modified by and ID.

Toolbar

Button	Effect
New	Opens an empty extension record.
Edit	Opens the selected record.
Delete	Removes the record, after a confirmation.
Enable / Disable	Changes the state of the selected extensions.
Update Selected Custom Extensions	Fetches from git and offers to merge.
Help	Opens the built-in help screen.

The form

Field	Notes
GIT HTTPS URL	Required. The full HTTPS clone URL, ending in .git.
Name	Required. A title for the extension.
Alias	Required. The directory name to create, including any com_ or mod_ prefix.
Type	Required. One of component, language, library, module, plugin, template, non-standard.
Folder (Plugins Only)	The plugin group to install into, for plugin extensions.
Description	Free text.
GIT Personal Access Token	Needed only for a private repository.
GIT Branch	The branch to install, in the form origin/main. Blank uses the repository's default branch.
Location (Legacy)	Site or Administrator. Only relevant to very old extensions.

To add one:

1. Go to Extensions → Extension Manager → Custom Extensions.
2. Select New.
3. Fill in the form.
4. Select Save & Close.

Editing works the same way: tick the row, select Edit, change the form, Save & Close. Enabling and disabling work as they do on the Hubzero Core tab.

Installing and updating the code

Saving a record does not fetch anything. The code is pulled by the update button.

1. Tick the extension on the Custom Extensions tab.

2. Select Update Selected Custom Extensions.

   

3. Hubzero clones the repository if it has not been cloned, or fetches it if it has, and lists the incoming commits. Select Merge Code to apply them.

   

4. A confirmation screen reports what was merged.

   

Warnings

This tab is the first place to look when uploads fail, images do not appear, or a file that is obviously small is rejected as too large. It reports on the server rather than on the hub, so nothing here is something you fix from the administrator interface — each item is a change to PHP's configuration or to what is installed on the machine, for whoever has that access.

It runs a set of checks against the PHP configuration and lists anything it does not like, each as an expandable panel. It checks that:

• file uploads are enabled;
• upload_tmp_dir is set and writable;
• the hub's temporary path is set and writable;
• memory_limit is at least 16 MB;
• post_max_size is not smaller than upload_max_filesize;
• post_max_size and upload_max_filesize are each at least 4 MB;
• the Imagick extension is loaded;
• /usr/bin/unzip exists.

If nothing is wrong the tab says so.

Options

Options holds a cache timeout for the extension list and the name of the system user that runs git operations, plus a permissions tab. See the generated reference.

Composer packages

The component also carries two screens for installing PHP packages with Composer — a package list and a repository list. Neither is linked from the Extension Manager's navigation, and both need an app/composer.json before they will do anything. They are also incomplete: their language strings are missing, so they render raw keys such as COM_INSTALLER_TITLE_PACKAGES instead of labels. Treat them as unfinished.