In 2011, Monotype Imaging approached us to build an extension to deliver fonts from their font service, Fonts.com, and Google Web Fonts. The idea was that a web designer could easily integrate fonts from a variety of sources seamlessly into their website design using an interface that accepted CSS selectors. We built it and they were so happy with the result, that they hired us to rewrite the PHP service class that connects to their API. Since then, over 30,000 people have downloaded and used the extension we built.

Recently, I helped an associate with a Wordpress shopping cart. They were running into problems because of how the developers had coded the plugin. On the front end it looked fine, but it was so oddly designed on the backend that they couldn't manage it.

Unfortunately, many site owners run into similar problems.

They choose an extension because they are impressed by the way that it looks, but once it is installed, the interface is so complicated that they find themselves unable to make it work for them. That’s not a big deal if you plan to have an outside development company manage your site. But for many businesses, that isn’t a reasonable option.

When developing or choosing a Joomla extension, its appearance is only half of the picture. The other half – and arguably the more important – is the end user.