JCE Editor Strips Away IFrame Code

If you’re using JCE (which is, by far, the best rich text editor in Joomla) you might have run into an issue where, when you insert an iframe into the body of the article and then you click on “Save”, the iframe disappears.

In fact, this is default behavior so nearly everyone who’s using JCE and who has tried to insert an iframe ran into the above issue. This issue became even more problematic ever since YouTube changed their default embed code from flash to HTML5 (which uses an iframe). So, to address the YouTube embed problem with JCE, people use the old embed method instead, which means that their YouTube videos will not work on iPhones. Not a good option!

Now, what many people don’t know is that there is a setting in JCE that explicitly tells the editor to strip away all iframe tags for security reasons. So, in order to allow iframes in your JCE editor, you will need to do the following:

  • Login to the Joomla backend of your website.
  • Go to Components -> JCE Editor -> Profiles.
  • Click on Default (just above “Default profile for all users” – we are assuming that you are using the default profile).
  • Click on the Plugin Parameter tab.
  • Click on Media Support on the right panel.
  • Under Standard Parameters, choose “Yes” for Allow IFrames.
  • Click on Save on the top right.
  • Click on the Features & Layout tab.
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and ensure that the checkbox next to Media Support under Additional Features is checked. If it’s not checked, then check it and then click on Save at the top right. Usually it’s checked by default, but you never know.
  • That’s it!.

You should now be able to freely add an iframe tag in JCE editor. Now, if you’re still having issues, then it might be that there is another problem elsewhere:

  • While still in Joomla’s backend, go to Site -> Global Configuration.
  • Click on Text Filters tab.
  • Ensure that the user that has a problem with the iframe has its user group’s Filter Type set to No Filtering. For example, if the user belongs to the Manager user group, then you need to set his Filter Type to No Filtering.
  • Click on Save on the top.

If that still didn’t solve the problem, then you will need to ask for Joomla professional help. Just contact us and we’ll solve the problem for you in as little time and as little cost as possible.

2 Responses to “JCE Editor Strips Away IFrame Code”
  1. Comment by Babi — July 11, 2017 @ 11:33 pm

    Thank you so much for writing this article, so far this is the best and clearest solution for enabling iframe in JCE.

  2. Comment by Stephen — January 23, 2019 @ 9:39 am

    Also want to thank you for this article!! I searched for over an hour on Google until I found this. For whatever reason, it’s more difficult to find solutions to issues with Joomla. PHP, Angular, and another programming language I used to use called Lasso (it’s even proprietary!) were all easier to find solutions or the right people to answer questions. The community and support is very lacking with Joomla (I’ve been using Joomla for over a year and a half now).

    Thanks again!

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