Joomla article not showing on the site: what to check

The article is saved, the list says Published, and you can read it fine. A visitor cannot. That last part is the clue: Joomla applies different rules to you than to a guest, so the first job is to see the site the way a guest does.

Test it as a visitor first

Anyone with edit rights on an article gets past the status and date checks on the front end. If you are logged in on the site, your test proves nothing. Open a private browser window, find the number in the ID column of the Article Manager, and load the article directly:

https://example.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=123

This one test splits the problem in half. Menus, blog layouts and modules play no part in that URL, so the result tells you where to look:

• A 404 means something on the article or its category keeps it offline.
• A 403 or a login page means an access level is in the way.
• If the article opens, it is fine and the problem is the list that should show it.

If you get a 404

Status

The status has to be Published or Archived. The Article Manager hides trashed articles by default, so an article you cannot find may be sitting in the trash. Set the Status filter to All. An archived article does open by its URL but drops out of normal blog pages, which is easy to mistake for a deleted one.

Publishing dates

Look at Start Publishing and Finish Publishing on the Publishing tab. A start date in the future or a finish date in the past gives a guest a 404, while the status still reads Published. A wrong time zone setting can push the start date a few hours ahead. Scheduling articles in Joomla explains how those dates are stored.

Category

Open Content > Categories and check the category the article lives in. An unpublished or trashed category takes every article in it offline, and nothing in the article form warns you. This is the usual cause when a whole batch of articles disappears at once.

Language

Once the System - Language Filter plugin is on, Joomla only serves articles set to the current language or to All. An article set to Dutch gives a 404 on the English side of the site. On a single-language site with the plugin off, this field does nothing.

If you get a 403 or a login page

Check the Access field. An article set to Registered is closed to guests. It also vanishes from lists, because blog pages leave out anything the visitor may not read unless Unauthorised Links is set to Yes. The access level of the category filters lists in the same way, so check that one too. User groups and access levels covers how these settings work together.

If it opens, but no list shows it

Subcategories

A blog menu item pointed at a parent category shows only that category. Include Subcategories defaults to None, so articles one level down are left out. Set it to All or to the number of levels you use, on the Blog Layout tab of the menu item.

The article count and the order

# Leading Articles, # Intro Articles and # Links add up to the number of articles per page, 9 by default. An article with an old date can end up on page two. If pagination is switched off, it has no page at all. Check the sort order on the same tab before you assume it is missing.

Featured

Many home pages use a Featured Articles menu item, and that shows only articles with Featured set to Yes. Start Featured and Finish Featured can end that without touching the article itself. A category blog can also filter on this: if its Featured Articles option says Hide, featured articles stay off that page.

Modules

A list in a sidebar or on the home page is often a module with its own settings for category, count and featured articles. Editing the menu item changes nothing there, so open the module.

Cache

If the list is simply out of date, add ?x=1 to the URL. When the article appears with that, clear the cache under System > Clear Cache. If that does not help, purge the cache at your host or CDN as well, because Joomla cannot clear those for you.