Slightly OT: Programming with Modules

[Mark Thurman <met1204@charter.net>]

I'm a young programmer (just finishing high school) who has done a fair
amount of programming with PHP, MySQL, and other web technologies.
However, being self trained, I was wondering if the members could help
me with some questions.  I am looking at projects such as PHPNuke,
Wikipedia, phpBB2, etc and they all have modules, extensions etc.  

How does one go about designing a program so it can be extended later
with plugins, apis, and modules?

For example, in Wikipedia, to add a "Special" page, you include that
page's source code in the main file, and then voila, it appears in
lists, links, and adds its own functions and links to the code?  How
does one think and design a program so that functionality is possible?

I've tried reading source code from some of these projects and I never
can just follow along myself.  Therefore, if anyone has some simple code
they'd be willing to share, links to only books or howtos, or just
personal experiences, please reply on or off list.  If I haven't made
myself clear, please ask for clarification.

Thanks for your help,
Mark


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