The Joomlashack Blog

How can I link to a content item without first creating a menu link?

Written by TJ Baker TJ Baker
Published: 18 May 2007 18 May 2007

Ever wonered how to link to a content item without first creating a menu item? Read on if you want to find out the shortcut.

Joomla! content item urls are always in the same format:

Section Blog Layout

https://www.yoursite.com/index.php?
option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=XX&Itemid=YY

where:
XX = the ID of the content SECTION
and
YY = the ID of the MENU ITEM

Section Table Layout

https://www.yoursite.com/index.php?
option=com_content&task=section&id=XX&Itemid=YY

where:
XX = the ID of the content SECTION
and
YY = the ID of the MENU ITEM

Categroy Blog Layout

https://www.yoursite.com/index.php?
option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=XX&Itemid=YY

where:
XX = the ID of the content CATEGORY
and
YY = the ID of the MENU ITEM

Categroy Table Layout

https://www.yoursite.com/index.php?
option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=WW&id=XX&Itemid=YY

where:
WW = the ID of the content SECTION
,
XX = the ID of the content CATEGORY
and
YY = the ID of the MENU ITEM

Individual Item Layout

https://www.yoursite.com/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=XX&Itemid=YY

where:
XX = the ID of the content ITEM
and
YY = the ID of the MENU ITEM

Menu Item? What menu item?

Wasn't this post supposed to be about linking to a content item with first creating a menu item? You're absolutely right, this post is all about linking to a Joomla content item without first having to create a menu item.
I'm going to show you a Joomla shorcut that you're unlikely to find anywhere else, probably because it's essentially cheating :) We're tricking Joomla into thinking it's doing something that in reality it isn't.

The first thing you need to do when creating a dummy "link" is to find out the ID number of the section, category and/or content item you want to link to and decide which of the above page layouts you want to acheive.
Say for example we wanted to create a link for a content ITEM, these are the steps we would follow:

  1. Go to the content item and find its ID
  2. Replace XX with the ID number for the content item we're linking to.
  3. Replace YY with the ID number for the dummy "menu item"
    *Tip... By using the menu item number from an existing page we can copy it's module structure. If we want to create a page with no modules the we have to use the menu item ID for a similar page with no modules assigned to it.
  4. link to the content item with the following url: https://www.yoursite.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=XX&Itemid=YY