How to Add Reviews to Joomla: It Goes in a Module

Joomla thinks about page furniture differently from almost every other system, and that is why generic embed instructions never quite match what you see on screen. There is no drag it onto the page step, because in Joomla a reviews section is not page content at all. It is a module, and a module appears in a position that your template defines. You create it once, assign it to a position, and tell Joomla which menu items should show it. Two things will get in the way before you reach that point: the editor will quietly eat your embed code, and the position list you were told to use will not exist on your template. Both have clean fixes, and neither needs an extension.

In Joomla, the Widget Is a Module

Go to Content and then Site Modules, create a new module, and choose the Custom type. Paste the widget embed into its body, give it a title or hide the title, and save. That module is now a reusable object in your site, independent of any article.

This is the conceptual jump. On most platforms you place a widget on a page. In Joomla you create a thing and then tell the site where things of that kind belong, which is more indirection up front and considerably less work when you want the same reviews block in three places.

It also means the reviews block is not sitting inside an article where an editor will delete it while rewriting a paragraph. Modules are administered separately from content, which on a site with several authors is a real structural advantage.

You can put an embed inside an article instead, and there are cases where that is right, such as reviews that belong in the middle of one specific page. It is the exception rather than the default, and the filtering section below applies to it just as much.

Why the Editor Ate Your Code

Joomla filters what you paste, in two independent places, and both have to be dealt with. The WYSIWYG editor cleans markup it considers invalid as you work, and Joomla applies text filters per user group on save. An iframe or a script can be removed by either one.

The editor fix is to stop using an editor for this. In your user profile, set Editor to None, then paste the embed into the plain textarea and save. Switch it back afterwards if you prefer editing articles in TinyMCE. This alone resolves most cases.

The filter fix is in Global Configuration under Text Filters, where each user group has a filtering level. Setting your administrator group to No Filtering allows the markup through on save. Treat that as a permission decision: it should apply to administrators, not to every authenticated user, for the same reason Drupal restricts Full HTML.

The symptom that tells you which one you are hitting: if the code vanishes as soon as you click away in the editor, it is the editor. If it survives your editing session and disappears on save, it is the text filter.

Where Does a Module Actually Appear?

In the template position you assign it to, and the positions available are defined by your template rather than by Joomla. A module with no position assigned is saved and invisible, which is the second most common way this goes wrong.

This is why instructions that tell you to use a position by name are so often useless. Cassiopeia, the default template on Joomla 4 and 5, exposes one set; Protostar on Joomla 3 exposes another; a commercial template exposes its own. Nothing is standard across them.

To see what you actually have, append ?tp=1 to a front-end URL with template preview enabled, and Joomla outlines and labels every position on the page. That takes thirty seconds and replaces all the guessing.

Choose the position by where it sits visually rather than by its name, and be aware that positions are template-scoped: switching templates later leaves modules assigned to positions that no longer exist, and they simply stop appearing.

Choosing Which Pages the Module Shows On

The Menu Assignment tab on the module is Joomla's visibility control. The options are all pages, no pages, only the pages selected, or all except the pages selected, and you tick individual menu items from the list.

Default to selected pages rather than all pages. Reviews on every page of the site including the privacy policy and the login screen is the outcome nobody wants, and it is what the default gives you.

The useful assignment for most sites is the home page plus whichever menu items lead to an enquiry or a booking. That puts the proof where a decision is being made and keeps it out of the pages where it is noise.

One caveat worth knowing: menu assignment works on menu items, so a page reached without a menu item, such as a direct article link, may not match any assignment. If a module refuses to appear on a particular URL, that is usually why.

How Do You Build the Widget?

Paste your Google, Trustpilot or Facebook profile URL, preview your real reviews and rating, then pick from over 100 layout styles across slider, marquee, grid, list, masonry and badge families. Colours and fonts adjust so the module matches your template rather than looking bolted on.

The rating comes from the profile's own aggregate rather than from the cards on screen, so the figure on the page matches what a visitor finds if they check. Free plan, unlimited widget views.

The output is one line of HTML that goes into the Custom module body. There is no extension to install, which means nothing to vet in the Joomla Extensions Directory and nothing to keep compatible through the next Joomla release.

Joomla 3, 4 and 5, and Where to Put It

All three work the same way: Custom HTML module, template position, menu assignment. What changes is the administrative furniture. Joomla 3 uses Extensions and Modules, while 4 and 5 use Content and Site Modules, and the default template moved from Protostar to Cassiopeia with an entirely different set of positions.

Because the mechanism is markup in a module rather than an extension, a Joomla upgrade does not break it. That is worth weighing against the extension route, since an extension waiting on compatibility is a common reason Joomla sites sit on an old major version longer than they should.

For placement, favour a position inside the main content column near the enquiry or contact route over a sidebar position that runs on every page. A module in a sidebar is easy to assign and easy for visitors to ignore.