Joomla plugins are processed one by one. The order in which they are processed is indicated in the Order column (in Joomla 1.5) or Ordering column (in Joomla 1.6) of the Plugin Manager.

To change the order of the plugins, you can click the up or down arrow to the left of the order number. Or, you can type in the desired order number and click the "Save Order" icon (the disc icon) at the top of the order column.

The rules for the processing orders are as follows:

1. The plugins are processed from smaller numbers to bigger numbers. This means that the plugin with order number 1 will be processed first, followed by order number 2, then 3, and so on.
2. The order numbers need not be in sequence. For example, you can order the plugins in orders of 10, e.g. 10, 20, 30, 40. I do this sometimes so that I can later insert some plugins in between the plugins.
3. You can have plugins with the same order number e.g. 3 plugins with order 1. However, in this case, Joomla might process these plugins in random orders.
4. You will also see a lot of default plugins (which comes with the default Joomla installation) with order number 0. 0 is before 1. So all these plugins with order number 0 will be the first batch of plugins to be processed. However, as pointed out in (3) above, these plugins might be processed in random orders. So if you have 2 plugins with order number 0, and you want to ensure that plugin A is processed before plugin B, you have to change the order of plugin A to say 10, and then plugin B to 11 or some larger numbers.

Resolving the Email Cloaking Issue

The "Content - Email Cloaking" plugin comes with the default Joomla installation. This plugin converts emails that you embed in your Joomla content into Javascript that should foil the majority of email harvesting spam bots. However it also causes many problems with other plugins.

To resolve this, you can order the plugins such that the "Content - Email Cloaking" plugin comes last in the order of processing (e.g. you can give it an order number of 99).

For more details, please refer to the following article: Using email addresses with DirectPHP

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