Content tab

The Content tab controls which articles enter the module pool.

Category selection

• Categories: choose the Joomla article categories to pull from
• Include Child Categories: include nested categories under the selected ones
• Exclude Categories: remove specific categories from the pool
• Exclude Article IDs: hide individual articles by ID (comma-separated)
• Exclude Current Article: hide the article being viewed (useful on article pages)

Filters and ordering

• Author IDs: optional comma-separated user IDs
• Include Tags / Exclude Tags: tag IDs, names, or titles
• Force Itemid: optional menu item used when building article links
• Filter by Current Language: limit to the active site language
• Featured Articles: Show, Hide, or Only featured
• Ordering: Newest, Oldest, Title, Most hits, Featured first, Ordering, Random
• Hits period: when Ordering is Most hits: All time, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, or Last year (limits by publish date, then sorts by total hits)
• Count: how many articles per page / per Ajax load (1–100)
• Start Offset: skip the first N articles (useful for a second module on the same pool)

Link routing notice

• Show link routing notice: Yes (default) shows a green or yellow helper under Categories. No hides it completely.

When shown, the notice explains whether Joomla can build short links for the selected categories. Joomla shortens an article URL only where a published Articles menu item covers the article category or one of its parents. Where none exists, Joomla falls back to a long /component/content/article/... URL. The message stays generic: it does not list menu titles or aliases.

To fix missing coverage, add one Articles menu item of type Category Blog or Category List for the parent category, and set Display in Menu to No if you do not want it in navigation.

Article requirements

• Published, within access level, matching language rules
• Publish up and publish down dates are respected