The publishers that are started when Diffusion starts must be defined in the configuration file etc/Publishers.xml. Publishers that do not start with Diffusion can also be defined in the etc/Publishers.xml and these can be started later using Java Management Extensions (JMX).

The publishers must be present on the classpath of the Diffusion server. The recommended way to do this is to compile the publisher source code with the diffusion.jar they run with on the classpath. Package the publisher class files into a JAR file. This JAR file must be deployed to the ext/ directory of the Diffusion installation. The Diffusion server will search the ext/ directory and load all the JAR files it finds.