You do not need a single extension to run a blog on Joomla. Core ships everything the job requires: categories, articles with an intro and a read more break, a menu item type called Category Blog that lays them out, tags, author bylines, pagination, and an RSS feed. The only thing genuinely missing is comments, and that is one decision at the end rather than a reason to install a blogging component.
Everything below applies to Joomla 6.1.3 and to the maintained Joomla 5.4.8 line; the menu paths are identical in both. If you have not set up the site yet, start with our guide on how to create a Joomla website and come back once you have an administrator login.
What core actually gives you
Joomla’s article system was built for structured content, which is why it feels heavier than a dedicated blogging tool at first and then pays off later. An article belongs to exactly one category, can carry any number of tags, has separate intro and full text, and has its own publishing dates, access level, and metadata. The Category Blog menu item type is what turns a category into a reverse chronological listing.
The one core concept worth understanding before you start is the split between intro text and full text. Everything above the Read More break is the intro; it is what appears in the listing and in feeds. Everything below is the body, shown only on the article page. Getting this right is what makes a Joomla blog listing look deliberate instead of like a wall of full articles stacked on top of each other.
Step 1: Create the blog category
Go to Content, then Categories, then New. Give it a title such as Blog and leave the parent as Root. Two fields on the right matter: Access, which controls who can see anything in the category, and Language, which matters only on multilingual sites.
Open the Options tab while you are there. The Alternative Layout, Image, and Note fields are optional, but the category description is not: it renders above the listing on the blog page, so it is your chance to say what the blog covers. Save and close.
Step 2: Write articles with a proper intro
Content, then Articles, then New. Set the Category field on the right to Blog. Write the first paragraph or two, then place the cursor at the end of it and click the Read More button below the editor. That inserts the break Joomla uses to split intro from full text.
Set the Publishing tab fields deliberately. Start Publishing controls the date shown and the ordering when you sort by publish date. Meta Description feeds the search result snippet. The Images and Links tab holds the Intro Image, which appears in the listing, and the Full Article Image, which appears on the article page; they can be the same file or different crops.
Article structure in Joomla core
Title
├── Intro text -> shown in the blog listing, feeds, search results
│ [Read More break]
└── Full text -> shown only on the article page
Category = one, structural
Tags = many, topical
Featured = flag that promotes it to the Featured Articles viewStep 3: The Category Blog menu item
This is the step that creates the blog. Go to Menus, then the menu you want it in, then Add New Menu Item. Set the title, then click Select next to Menu Item Type, expand Articles, and choose Category Blog. Pick your Blog category in the field that appears.
The Blog Layout tab is where the page takes shape. These four numbers control the whole grid.
| Setting | What it does | Sensible starting value |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Articles | Full width items at the top of the page | 1 |
| Intro Articles | Items shown below the leading ones, in columns | 6 |
| Columns | How many columns the intro articles form | 2 |
| Linked Titles | Extra items shown as a plain list of titles | 4 |
| Include Subcategories | Pulls posts from child categories too | None, unless you nested them |
Leading plus Intro plus Linked Titles equals the number of posts on page one. Everything beyond that goes to page two, and Joomla renders the pagination automatically. If pagination does not appear, check the Pagination setting on the Options tab of the same menu item.
Step 4: Ordering, featured posts, and what shows on each item
Still on the Blog Layout tab, set Article Order to Most Recent First for a conventional blog. The Category Order field above it should be No Order when you are pulling from a single category, otherwise Joomla groups by category before sorting by date, which produces a confusing sequence.
The Options tab controls what each item displays: Author, Create Date, Category, Tags, Hits, and the Read More button text. Turn off what you do not want globally here rather than per article, and remember that Joomla resolves these settings in a chain. A menu item setting beats the category setting, which beats the article setting, which beats the global default under Content, Articles, Options. When a field refuses to hide, you are almost certainly overriding it at a level you forgot about.
Featured is a separate mechanism. Toggling the star on an article adds it to the Featured Articles view, which is a different menu item type. That view is the natural choice for a home page that highlights a handful of posts while the Category Blog item remains the full archive.
Step 5: Tags, author pages, and the RSS feed
Add tags in the article edit screen’s Tags field; typing a new value creates the tag. Joomla then generates a listing for each tag automatically, reachable through a Tagged Items menu item type or directly by URL. Adding a Tagged Items menu item for your handful of main topics gives those pages clean URLs and lets you write a description for each.
The feed is on the menu item’s Integration tab. Set Show Feed Link to Show and pick RSS 2.0 or Atom as the format. Joomla then adds the discovery link to the page head, and the feed itself is available by appending the format parameter to the blog URL.
# Feed for a blog menu item at /blog
https://example.com/blog?format=feed&type=rss
# Feed for a tag listing
https://example.com/component/tags/tag/joomla?format=feed&type=rss
# Turn on clean URLs first:
# System > Global Configuration > Site
# Search Engine Friendly URLs: Yes
# Use URL Rewriting: Yes (rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess)The Integration tab also has For Each Feed Item, which chooses whether the feed carries the intro text or the full article. Intro text is the better default: it keeps the feed light and gives readers a reason to click through.
Comments, the one thing core does not do
Joomla has never shipped article comments, and no combination of core settings adds them. You have three honest options. Leave comments off entirely, which is increasingly common and removes a moderation burden. Embed a hosted commenting service through a custom HTML module or a template override, which costs you nothing in Joomla complexity. Or install a comments extension from the Joomla Extensions Directory, which is the only route that keeps the data on your own server.
Troubleshooting
The blog page shows nothing. The articles are saved but not published, or their Start Publishing date is in the future, or they are assigned to a different category than the menu item points at. Filter the Articles list by category and status to confirm.
Full articles appear instead of intros. There is no Read More break in those articles. Open each one and insert it. This is per article and there is no bulk tool for it in core.
Posts appear in the wrong order. Category Order is set to something other than No Order, so Joomla sorts by category first. Set it to No Order and leave Article Order as Most Recent First.
Author or date will not hide. The setting is being overridden further down the chain. Check the menu item Options tab, then the category Options tab, then the individual article’s Options tab. Values set to Use Global inherit; anything explicitly set wins.
URLs contain index.php and long query strings. Search Engine Friendly URLs is off, or URL rewriting is on but the server rules are missing. Rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess on Apache, or add the equivalent rewrite block on nginx.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Joomla blog worse for SEO than a dedicated platform?
No. Core gives you per article metadata, canonical URLs when SEF is configured, clean tag and category listings, and automatic feeds. The common problems are self inflicted: duplicate routes to the same article through multiple menu items, and leaving search engines able to index print and feed variants.
Should I use categories or tags for topics?
Categories are structural and an article belongs to exactly one, so use them for the big divisions such as Blog versus News. Tags are many to one and reorganizable at any time, so use them for topics. Deep category trees are the main cause of Joomla sites that become impossible to restructure later.
Can I show a blog on the home page?
Yes, in two ways. Either set your Category Blog menu item as the site default with the home star, or use a Featured Articles menu item and flag the posts you want promoted. The Featured route is better when the home page should be curated rather than simply chronological.
How do I change how the listing looks?
Use a template override rather than editing core files. Copy the layout files from components/com_content/tmpl/category/ into templates/yourtemplate/html/com_content/category/ and edit the copies. Joomla loads the override automatically and your changes survive updates.
What about multiple authors?
Assign the Author field per article under the Publishing tab, and give each writer a Joomla account in a group with Author or Publisher permissions. Core has no author archive menu item type, so a per author listing needs either a tag convention or a small override.
Wrapping up
A Joomla blog is a category, articles with Read More breaks, and one Category Blog menu item. Everything else on this page is refinement: how many posts on the grid, which fields show, how the feed behaves, and whether you want comments at all.
Build it with core first and only reach for an extension when you have a concrete need core cannot meet. The harder part of a blog is publishing consistently, which is a planning problem rather than a Joomla one; our guide on building a content calendar for consistent publishing is a reasonable next read. Keep the CMS current from the official Joomla downloads page, and read the menu item type documentation when you want to see every layout option the blog view exposes.
