Joomla
Connect Joomla to Citeca and publish articles automatically.
Connect Joomla and Citeca publishes finished articles straight into it — live, or as drafts for you to review first.
Setup time
About 3 minutes
Access needed
Admin on the site or store
What we touch
Blog posts only
Note
This connection can only read and publish blog posts. Your theme, products and settings are never modified.
What you need#
- A site on Joomla 4 or 5 (Joomla 3 has no API, so it can’t be connected)
- Your login for your Joomla administrator
- Nothing to install: Citeca uses the API that comes with Joomla
One token, nothing to install
Joomla 4 and 5 have their own API built in. With your API token, Citeca adds your articles to the category you pick, updates them when you republish and sets them back to unpublished when you take one down. It never touches your template, menus, modules or other articles.
Connecting Joomla#
Open Settings → Publishing, find Joomla and press Connect. The wizard walks you through the steps below.
- 1
How Joomla works with Citeca
One token to copy, one category to pick, then it runs by itself.
- Confirm: I’m logged in to my Joomla administrator
- Your Joomla site — Your site’s address, not the /administrator page.
Note
Citeca publishes through Joomla’s own API (Joomla 4 or 5), so there’s nothing to install. Your articles appear on your site in your template’s fonts and colours.
- 2
Copy your API token
From your user in Joomla.
- Click your name in the list.
- Open the Joomla API Token tab.
- It says “You do not have a token yet”? Click Save at the top, then open the tab again.
- Click Copy next to the token and paste it below.
- API token — A long code. The Copy button gets all of it.
Note
No Joomla API Token tab? Open Plugins, search “token” and enable “User - Joomla API Token” and “API Authentication - Web Services Joomla Token”.
- 3
Choose where articles go
Citeca checks your token and lists your categories.
- Citeca lists the article categories on your site.
- One that looks like your blog (called Blog or News, for example) is picked for you and marked Looks like your blog. Pick another if your articles belong somewhere else.
- No category listed? In Joomla open Content → Categories, create one called Blog, then try again.
- 4
Last details
How your articles appear.
- Author name (optional) — Shown as the article’s author. Leave blank to use your business name.
- Publish automatically — Articles go live on your site as soon as they’re ready.
- Save as unpublished — Articles wait in Joomla as unpublished, so you can review and publish them yourself.
Joomla is connected
Each article now publishes to your Joomla site by itself, in the category you picked. Citeca opens it on your site to check it’s live.
What happens after you connect#
- Each finished article is published into the category you picked, under the author name you chose (or your business name).
- It keeps its design: headings, images, FAQ and structured data, in your template’s fonts and colours.
- The cover image sits at the top of the article and is also set as its Intro Image, so your blog and category pages show it.
- Citeca opens the article on your site to check it’s live, then shows Live in Citeca with the link.
- With Save as unpublished, articles wait in Content → Articles as unpublished until you publish them in Joomla.
- Publishing an article again from Citeca updates the same Joomla article, at the same address. It never makes a copy.
- Taking an article down in Citeca (Unpublish) sets it back to unpublished in Joomla. Nothing is deleted, and publishing again puts it back at the same address.
Check it worked#
Verify it’s working
3 checks
- The Joomla card shows Connected.
- Your first article is in Content → Articles in your Joomla administrator, in the category you picked, with its cover image.
- It opens on your site in your template’s fonts and colours, and in Citeca it shows Live with a link to it.
To test without waiting for a scheduled article, open any finished article in Blog content and press Publish. You get a result per destination immediately, including the exact error if something is wrong.
Managing the connection#
Once connected, the Joomla card shows a green Connected dot and a Manage button. Everything about the connection is changed from there — there are three controls.
- Test connection — checks the credentials against Joomla right now. If they fail you get the platform’s own response, not a generic message.
- Reconnect — walks through the setup again. This is how you paste a rotated token, publish somewhere else, or change whether articles go live or wait as drafts. It replaces what is stored rather than adding a second connection.
- Disconnect — deletes the stored credentials and stops publishing. Articles already published stay on your site untouched, and your drafts and schedule in Citeca are kept.
Note
When something fails you get a plain explanation and the steps to fix it. The platform’s own response — status code, endpoint and response body — is folded away under Details for support; “Copy error report” puts all of it in one paste for a support message.
TroubleshootingQuestions#
There’s no “Joomla API Token” tab on my user.
Two plugins that come with Joomla are switched off. In your Joomla administrator open System → Plugins, search “token” and enable User - Joomla API Token and API Authentication - Web Services Joomla Token. Then open your user again and the tab is there.
The tab says “You do not have a token yet”.
Joomla makes the token when your user is saved. Click Save at the top of your user, open the Joomla API Token tab again and click Copy.
Citeca says Joomla’s articles API is switched off.
Joomla answered, but the part of its API that handles articles is off. Open System → Plugins, search “Web Services - Content”, enable it, then press Try again in Citeca.
My token is rejected.
In Joomla open Users, click your name and open the Joomla API Token tab. Check Active is set to Yes (click Save if you change it). Then click Copy and paste the token again: the Copy button gets all of it, while selecting it by hand often cuts it short.
Why is there a number in my article address?
Joomla puts the article number in each address by default, like /blog/329-my-article. In Citeca open Settings, then Publishing, click Manage on Joomla and press Use clean addresses: your articles get addresses like /blog/my-article, and Citeca redirects each older address to its new one, so no link or Google ranking is lost. To do it by hand instead, in Joomla open Content, then Articles, click Options, open the Integration tab and set Remove IDs from URLs to Yes.
Does it have to be a Super User?
Yes, unless you change it. Joomla only gives API tokens to Super Users by default, so use a Super User’s token. A site administrator can allow other user groups in the User - Joomla API Token plugin’s settings, but that user must also be allowed to create and publish articles.
Can I connect a Joomla 3 site?
No. Joomla 3 has no API for outside apps to publish through, so Citeca can’t reach it. Joomla 4 and 5 have one built in, and updating also gets you Joomla’s security fixes (Joomla 3 stopped getting them in 2023).
Which address do I paste, my site or the /administrator page?
Your site’s address, like https://yourdomain.com. If you paste the /administrator page, Citeca removes that part for you. If Joomla runs in a folder, include the folder: https://yourdomain.com/folder. If Citeca says Joomla’s API didn’t answer, check the address is the one visitors use and that the site runs Joomla 4 or 5.
Where do I find my articles in Joomla?
In your Joomla administrator under Content → Articles. Filter by the category you picked to see just Citeca’s. Each one has a note starting with “citeca:”, which is how Citeca finds it again when you republish.
Why does my article’s link start with index.php?
Joomla builds short addresses from your menu. When a menu item shows the category you picked (a Category Blog menu item called Blog, for example), articles get an address under it, like /blog/my-article. Without one, Citeca links to Joomla’s plain address, which always works. To get the short one, add that menu item in Menus, then publish the article again.
Joomla says another article already has the same alias.
Another article in that category already uses the same web address. Rename or delete that article in Joomla, then publish again.
Can I edit an article after it’s published?
Yes. Edit it in Citeca and publish again: Citeca updates the same Joomla article at the same address, keeping its original date. Edits made inside Joomla are overwritten the next time Citeca republishes that article.
I reset my token in Joomla.
The old token stops working straight away, so publishing fails until you paste the new one. In Joomla click Copy in the Joomla API Token tab, then in Citeca press Manage on the Joomla card, Reconnect and paste it.
Where do I change whether articles go live or stay as drafts?
Press Manage on the connection’s card in Settings → Publishing, then Reconnect, and answer the live-or-draft step differently. It applies to that connection only, so your other destinations are unaffected.
Can I disconnect without losing published articles?
Yes. Disconnecting only deletes the credentials we stored. Everything already published stays exactly where it is, because those are posts in your own CMS.
Will publishing the same article twice create a duplicate?
No. Articles are matched on their slug, so republishing updates the existing post rather than adding a second one.
Something missing or wrong here? Tell us and we will fix it.