What is transferred and what is not

ConfigPort transfers settings. Joomla keeps the settings of an extension in a column named params, and ConfigPort reads and writes that column only.

What is transferred

• Component options: the values on the Options screen of a component.
• Plugin settings.
• Module settings, one entry for each module.
• Template style settings, one entry for each style.

This holds for core and third-party extensions alike, as long as the extension keeps its settings in params.

What is not transferred

• Content: articles, categories, menus, menu items, users, media files and so on.
• Modules and template styles themselves. The target site must already have the module or the style. ConfigPort writes its settings, never a new module or style.
• A module's title, position, content, published state, access level, language, ordering and menu assignment. A template style's title, default flag and menu assignment. The file holds the title and position of each module as a label only.
• Whether an extension is enabled or installed. ConfigPort installs nothing.
• Permissions. ConfigPort never exports the rules key and refuses a file that holds one.
• Settings an extension keeps in its own database tables, such as the payment methods of a shop extension.
• The settings Joomla keeps in configuration.php: the site name, database, mail, cache, session, SEF and server settings of the Global Configuration. The Global Configuration's text filters are kept in params (the Configuration component, com_config), so they are transferred, but only a Super User can import them.
• Values that look secret, unless you include them. See Why some values are left out.
• Row ids, table names, user ids and the address of the site. ConfigPort adds none of these to the file. A setting that holds a web address keeps it, and the export marks it.

How the file names each item

The file names each item by what it is, never by its id on the site:

• a component by its element, for example com_content;
• a plugin by its group and element, for example system and cache;
• a module by its module type and client (site or administrator);
• a template style by its template and client.

Two modules of the same type on the same client have the same name in the file. Their titles and positions tell them apart, and you choose the target on import. See Choosing the target of a module or template style.

What an import changes

An import changes the params column of the items you confirm, and nothing else. Plugins that act when an extension is saved run, as when you click Save. ConfigPort then cleans the Joomla cache of the changed items. See Applying an import.

Old settings in INI format

Very old sites can hold settings as INI text instead of JSON. ConfigPort reads that text the way Joomla does and writes JSON to the file. Numbers stay numbers.

What the file records

The file records the Joomla version it came from, the ConfigPort version that wrote it and the time of the export in UTC. It is a JSON file in the ConfigPort format, schema version 1.0.