The new all-in-one Articles module for Joomla 5.2

A new module in Joomla 5.2 provides a flexible approach to article positioning.

Use one module to display latest, most read, specific or archived articles, from select categories - with filters, tags and more...

From Content -> Site Modules, create a new module of type 'Articles'.

Lets take it for a spin on this site. After all, thats one of the reasons this site exists, to try out Joomla features.

TL:DR – The arrival of a new site module in Joomla is cause for celebration. Nice work Joomla team! It was dead easy to replace my 'Most Read Posts' module with a 'Most read articles' module and took only a few minutes.

Replacing the Joomla Articles - Most Read module with the new Articles module

This module has been a staple of Joomla since it began. And its getting retired. You don't need to retire it but the functionality is in the new all-in-one Articles module for Joomla 5.2 so over time I'd imagine the older module will be deprecated so that there is less code to manage. If that is the plan it will take a long time, but we like to be cutting edge here so lets try it out!

Articles - Most Read Joomla site module settings

The existing module settings are simple really:

Configuration Settings

Tab	Parameter	Setting
Module	Title	Most Read Posts
	Category	Articles
	Featured Articles	Show
	Date Filtering	Off: Most Read Posts
Advanced settings	Header Class	h3 card-header
	Module Style	card

 

How it looked before retirement is shown in the screenshot and the setting from the Joomla Administrator menu.

All-in-one Articles module Joomla site module settings

I decided not to title case or adjust the heading class in the module title and renamed 'Posts' to 'articles'. Otherwise I tried the settings from the Joomla documentation site. It looks pretty nice. The content is identical as expected.

Configuration Settings

Tab	Parameter	Setting
Module	Title	Most read articles
Display Options	Title Only (lists)	Yes
Ordering Options	Article Field to Order By	Hits
Ordering Options	Ordering Direction	Descending

To use the new module is straightforward.

• Choose Select System > Manage Panel > Site Modules from the Administrator menu
• Select the New button from the Toolbar
• Select the Articles module.

Here are the settings from the Administrator menu.

 

Replacing the Joomla Articles - Latest module with the new Articles module

Again it is just a question of adding the new articles module and then setting its conguration.

Articles - Latest Joomla site module settings

These are very simple examples of a very powerful new Joomla module. Now to go and update all my other relevant article modules as this new module can replace five previous article modules ( Articles - Archived, Articles - Category, Articles - Latest, Articles - Most Read, Articles - Newsflash)