Cannot find featured articles on Joomla Backend

Question

I'm new at this, any help is appreciated!

I cannot find the main page content on the backend of Joomla. I went into Edit Menu Items learned the menu type is Featured Articles, but when I search through Featured Articles on the Admin panel only one article comes up and it is not the content on the home/main page that I desperately need to edit. Also learned the link is index.php?option=com_content&view=featured

Any chance this is a module inside an article? Learning about that is on my to-do list.

Template is plethora, using Joomla 3.6.5

Thanks, Jessie

Answer 1

There are many templates that provide an option to hide component's output on the home page, and only display content from modules instead.

In the majority of these cases, the home menu item remains the featured articles type - but these are not being displayed - either by the menu item settings, or by the template's code/design.

Menu Item - Module Assignment

One way to identify modules that are assigned on a specific menu item, is to go to that menu item's Module Assignment tab. There you can hide not-assigned and unpublished modules - just to make your life a bit easier when reviewing the modules.

What you will find there, will be all modules that technically are assigned to that menu item (e.g. modules that are assigned to all pages, or on selected pages, or assigned on an excluded pages list).

Go through that list of modules, click to edit each one to see what it does or if it's the content you see on your homepage.

Useful to note that although many modules may seem to be assigned on a menu item, some of them may still not be displayed on that page, usually if their module position isn't available for that page.

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Module Manager - Filter by Page

Similarly, you could do your search within the Module Manager by filtering by assignments (pages/menu items).

Filter by your home menu item and see what modules are assigned to it. Click each module to see what it does or its content.

Answer 2

Typically, the best way is to check the template and see how it works. In your case, what might be happening is that the menu item is pointed to "Featured Articles" just because this is how it is by default. The content of your homepage is likely coming from modules - or, in some rare scenarios, it might be hardcoded in your template.

Go to Extensions => Templates => Templates, and then click on the name of your template, and finally click on "index.php" on the left, and you should be able to know how the homepage is getting its information, and the placement of each module on your website.

Alternatively, if you have access to phpMyAdmin, then you can just search for a string that exists on the homepage, to find out where it is in the database.