In this article I will give you a short overview of the “Articles – Most Read” Module. This module is part of Joomla! Core, so you can use it out of the box, and you don’t need to install any extension to use it.

In the backend-view is a good description for what this module is used for: “This module shows a list of the published Articles which have the highest number of page views.” So, you get a list of the articles with the most views.

How to use modules in Joomla? The easiest way to manage your modules is in the backend of your Joomla website. When you are logged in, you will see the backend like in Figure 1. If you click on one of the green marked buttons, you will come to the overview page where you can choose which module you want to add. If you click to the buttons next to the green marked buttons, you will enter the list view, where all added modules are shown.

In Figure 2 you can see a part of the available modules. In this case we select the green boxed module that leads us to the Details page where you can configure all the settings for your module. When you see all the possible settings for the module you are configuring, you will think that there are really many options possible. But it is in most ways organized like the option and content when you are editing a simple article.

In Figure 3 you can see the module configuration view. There are 4 areas marked. The green boxes show the content section of your module. The red boxes mark the Basic configuration for modules. They are really well described by Viviana Menzel in her article Explore the Core! A look into the advanced parameters from modules. That is a great source of information if you want to know more about this configuration.

In the area you find some form fields. With these form fields you can manage what is shown in your module. I will give you a short overview:
Title (mandatory): Write the title of your module here. It will show above your module in the frontend if the option is activated, and it is the name of your module in the module overview list in the backend
Category: Here you can select one or multiple categories. If you don’t select any category the list in the frontend will show the most read articles from all categories. If one or more categories are selected the module will only show the articles in the selected categories.
Articles to Display: Define how many articles will be listed in the module. I recommend choosing something between 3 and 8 articles for the list.
Featured Articles: You can exclude the featured articles from your module.
Date filtering: If you have many articles in your Joomla! site, you can enclose which articles are shown in the list. For example, if your website is 5-6 years old, it is normal that the articles you wrote 5 years ago were more often clicked by the users, than an article you wrote a month ago.

In the frontend the output of your module will be shown a list like in figure 4 is shown. You can change the style for example by using Custom CSS and layout overrides, but this would be going beyond the purpose of this article which will give you only a short overview to this module.

I hope I gave you a short overview about this nice core feature. I think now it is your turn to log into your Joomla! website and find out all that’s possible with this feature.