The {modal} tags are not being converted

The Modals plugin is not published

Check if the Modals plugin is published. Go to Extensions >> Plugin manager and search for the system plugin System - Regular Labs - Modals. Then publish it.

There is markup on the {modal} tags

If you have copy/pasted code directly into your editor, you might also have copied along hidden HTML tags. So this will also cause the {modal} tags to break:

{<span>modal</span> ...}

Remove the extra styling or other html tags around and in the {modal} tags that might cause problems.

The modal does not have the correct styling

Modals uses the sub-template component by default (which you can change in the Modals plugin settings).

This means that Modals will tell Joomla to show the page using the component template view from your template.
If your template does not provide a component view, it will use the component file from the system template.

Ask your template developer how add this component sub-template or how to customize it to add the styling you need.

If you want to use a different sub-template, to keep the component sub-template intact, you can make a copy of it and give it whatever name you want. Then change the setting in the Modals system plugin settings to use that sub-template instead.

The page in the modal window won't load

This could have a few reasons:

  • The url is not correct. Double check if the url loads the page when placed directly in your browser.
  • You are linking to an external site that doesn't allow you to open it inside your site. Some (usually larger) sites have a protection script that prevents it from being opened inside iframes in other sites. Sites like Google, Youtube, Facebook. Usually you will see an error in the browser console, stating that the connection is refused because of something concerning the 'X-Frame-Options'.
    There is no way to open these URLs inside a modal (or iframe). See if they offer an 'embed' url for the page you are trying to link to.
  • You are trying to open a non-SSL url in an SSL site. If you are running your page in HTTPS mode (SSL), you cannot open any HTTP (non-SSL) pages with Modals. This is a protection on browser level.