One of the most? frequently asked questions on the Joomla forums is "What is the Itemid and what does it do?". Its something that frustrates even experienced developers ... witness the post called " Damn you, infernal item IDs!!! " on WhyJoomla.com . I thought a quick tutorial would be useful and along the way we can break down other aspects of Joomla URLs. An Example Joomla URL and Itemid Let's use a news item called "Joomla Weekly News Magazine Issue 10" written by Brian Teeman. If you navigate to this news item via Joomla.org, you can see this URL in the browser bar: http://www.joomla.org/content/view/2985/33/ You see this because inside the administrator section of Joomla.org, Search Engine Friendly URLs have been turned on (Site => Global Configuration => SEO => Search Engine Friendly URLs = Yes) . Its a shorter version of the real URL produced by Joomla: http://joomla.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2985&Itemid