Joomla 4 & 5 · free · GPLv2+ · bilingual backend

JNofollow – rel & target control for external links in Joomla

One content plugin, one job: it manages the rel and target attributes of every external link in your Joomla 4 & 5 content. Enforce rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" site-wide with a single toggle – and keep precise exceptions where you want them. By the makers of JStats.

What the plugin does

JNofollow automatically adds rel values (nofollow, noopener, noreferrer) and optionally target="_blank" to external links in your articles – internal links are never touched. The strategy is yours: keep existing rel values and extend them, or overwrite them entirely for uniform conditions. Around that core sits a control triad: a whitelist that treats selected partner domains as internal (subdomains included automatically), a blacklist that always forces nofollow for specific domains and overrides every exception – and optional per-link bypasses: links that already carry noopener, noreferrer, ugc or sponsored (without nofollow) stay follow, as do links with a chosen CSS class such as follow or with data-follow="1"; on request the plugin even removes an existing nofollow when a bypass rule matches.

Article switches

Sometimes an exception is bigger than one link. Two curly-brace tokens in the article text switch processing off and on: {nofollow=off} excludes the entire article (or, paired with {nofollow=on}, just a section) – and content migrated from the classic era keeps working thanks to the backward-compatible {mnf=off} … {mnf=on}. The demo page shows all of this with before/after code.

Quick examples

1. Enforce site-wide: a plain link to example.com becomes rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank".
2. Keep a single link follow (bypass enabled): a link already carrying rel="noopener" stays without nofollow.
3. Whitelist: add partner.tld – links to that domain are treated as internal and remain follow.

System requirements

JNofollow runs on Joomla 4 (PHP 8.0 or newer, tested up to 8.4) and Joomla 5 (PHP 8.1 or newer, tested up to 8.4). Joomla 3 and older are not supported. Updates arrive through the built-in Joomla Update System.

Why these defaults

The default set combines an SEO hint with real security: nofollow tells search engines you do not vouch for the target – valuable for comment sections, user-generated content and link collections. noopener closes the reverse-tabnabbing hole that target="_blank" otherwise opens, and noreferrer keeps your URLs out of foreign analytics. Honesty included: search engines treat nofollow as a hint, not a command – and hand-picked follow links to strong sources remain a quality signal, which is exactly what whitelist, bypasses and article switches are for. Enforce the safe default, keep deliberate exceptions.

License, warranty & honesty

JNofollow is released under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later: free to use, study, modify and share. It is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind. And the promise we put in writing on every plugin site: there are no hidden backlinks to SEO NW or anywhere else – verifiable in the open source code, details in the FAQ.

Support & ecosystem

Questions, bug reports and feature ideas are welcome on the support page or directly at 301@seo-manager.info. Sister plugin: JStats brings Matomo or Google Analytics to your Joomla site the same lightweight way. And if your Joomla site still needs a fast home: our agency offers Joomla hosting on German servers – a clearly marked in-house recommendation, never a requirement. And beyond the plugin, the knowledge area answers the link questions we get asked most.

Current version: 6.2.8 · Last updated: July 2026 · Changelog · About the project