---
title: "Using fieldsets to separate plugin paramenters in Joomla 2.5"
description: "Joomla 2.5 has reached its end of life as for 12/31/2014. Please be advised this may be a security risk to your website. You can view more information about the end of life here. When working with..."
url: https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/joomla/joomla-2-5/fieldset-names/
date: 2012-06-21
modified: 2021-06-04
author: "Brad Markle"
categories: ["Joomla", "Joomla 2.5"]
tags: ["Joomla v2.5"]
type: post
lang: en
---

# Using fieldsets to separate plugin paramenters in Joomla 2.5

Joomla 2.5 has reached its end of life as for 12/31/2014. Please be advised this may be a security risk to your website. You can view more information about the end of life [here](https://docs.joomla.org/Joomla!_CMS_versions).

When working with Joomla 2.5 plugins, you may have noticed that some of the parameters are divided into separate parameter types, such as **Basic Options** and **Advanced Options**. If you’re writing your own Joomla 2.5 plugin, you can do this separation by adding parameters to different fieldsets.

## Fieldset Names

Here is our helloworld’s xml file thus far:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<extension version="2.5" type="plugin" group="content">
<name>Hello World</name>
<author>Brad Markle</author>
<creationDate>June 18th, 2012</creationDate>
<copyright>InMotion Hosting</copyright>
<license>GNU General Public License</license>
<authorEmail>bradm@inmotionhosting.com</authorEmail>
<authorUrl>https://www.inmotionhosting.com</authorUrl>
<version>1.0</version>
<description>This is my very first plugin! Simple Hello World Plugin that prints "Hello World" at the beginning of every article.</description>
<files>
<filename plugin="helloworld">helloworld.php</filename>
<filename>index.html</filename>
</files>
<config>
<fields name="params">
**<fieldset name="basic">**
<field name="alt-text" type="text" default="" label="Alternative Text" description="Besides Hello World, you can specify other text here to print to the screen instead." />
</fieldset>
**<fieldset name="more">**
<field name="color" type="radio" default="black" description="Which color should the message be displayed in?" label="Color">
<option value="black">black</option>
<option value="red">red</option>
<option value="blue">blue</option>
</field>
<field name="font-size" type="list" default="12" description="What size font should the message use?" label="Font size">
<option value="8">8px</option>
<option value="12">12px</option>
<option value="16">16px</option>
</field>
</fieldset>
</fields>
</config>
</extension>
As you can see in the code we have two fieldsets, one named **basic** and one named **more**. You can see in the screenshot below how this separates the parameters:

[![fieldset-names](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/edu_joomla25_create-plugin-tutorial_fieldset-names.gif)](/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/edu_joomla25_create-plugin-tutorial_fieldset-names.gif)

## Fieldset Language definitions

You may have noticed from the screenshot that even though we set the second fieldset with a name of “more”, it shows as COM_PLUGINS_more_FIELDSET_LABEL. This is because by default there are only a certain set of names that you can use for fieldsets. These names are defined in the following file:

administrator/language/en-GB/en-GB.com_plugins.ini

When looking at en-GB.com_plugins.ini, you can see the following fieldset names are defined:

COM_PLUGINS_ADVANCED_FIELDSET_LABEL=”**Advanced Options**”

COM_PLUGINS_BASIC_FIELDSET_LABEL=”**Basic Options**“

If you want to label either of your fieldsets as “Basic Options” or “Advanced Options”, you must set the fieldset name to either basic or advanced.