Hi,

I’ve been a CodeIgniter user for a year and I more than interested in the upcoming EE 2.0. A robust, flexible and extensible CMS on top of CI.

So far when it comes to CMS based sites I’ve used Textpattern (which together with MODx and other handful of CMSs share, up to some some point, some of the flexibility concepts of EE… “Custom content types”, Content tags…) due to its support for multiligual content publishing (via the MLP extension, not a core functionality though) and localisation of templates.

Handling multilingual websites is a requirement for the vast majority of our clients, as we live in a region that 3 different languages are commonly spoken. So we need seamless core support for multilingual content management. No hacks or workarounds.

How will be the EE 2.0 support like for this?

Thanks for your help!

janogarcia, all information about EE 2.0 can be found at the Sneak Preview page.

There is no additional information known at this time.

Honestly, I’d expected a more elaborate answer than just pointing me to a brief FAQ where nothing is mentioned about what I requested.

Perhaps multilingual content management is not a top priority for EllisLab. A couple of months ago I searched this forum for the same topic and people where suggested to check the EE Showcase multilingual category. But nothing seems to have improved in this direction from what I read.

How is the worfkflow like for the end user (content publisher) for a site with an undefined number of languages?

We need to offer simple and unrestricted solutions, and I still don’t know if EE fits our needs. Don’t know either what are the plans of EllisLab for enabling core functionality on this regard.

Thanks,
Jano.

Jano, the honest answer is that I just plain don’t know any more than what has been mentioned in the FAQ.

As the release date for EE 2.0 comes closer, I’m sure we’ll hear more.

Hi Jano,

We don’t go into details about solutions that people can’t actually test for themselves. There is very little value in doing so.

Suppose I said that 2.0 did Multi-lingual this, that, and the other thing. You couldn’t test it, verify it, or have any way of knowing whether or not what I said would actually meet your needs.

Right now EE 1.x has strong support for multi-lingual sites and 2.0 certainly isn’t going to change that. We don’t have any specific multi-lingual features because for the most part, our customers have been able to implement strong multi-lingual sites with the default feature set which is why we have a category for them in our Showcase.

The work-flow for the end user is largely determined by the developer in how the EE site is setup and depends on just what exactly the needs of the site are.

If there are specific things you need to do with a multi-lingual site, please share them and we can help evaluate whether you can accomplish them with the default feature set or not.

I would assume that there would be a pull-down menu for switching the language; this would switch the language of the menus. 
If the content is available in the specified language, then that would be displayed; otherwise the original or default language
would be displayed.  (I vaguely recall that Apache has such a language fallback mechanism).

KeithW - 25 July 2008 04:23 PM

I would assume that there would be a pull-down menu for switching the language; this would switch the language of the menus. 
If the content is available in the specified language, then that would be displayed; otherwise the original or default language
would be displayed.  (I vaguely recall that Apache has such a language fallback mechanism).

What you describe is already possible with 1.x’s default feature set. A pull down menu is just HTML. You can setup a pull down menu that pulls up the appropriate language template, alters a variable, or does some other trick to trigger a change in language. It all depends on what you prefer.

The ExpressionEngine Wiki has a Multi Language Site article that is a good starting point. Its not the only way to accomplish it. Again, it really depends on the needs of the project. Since EE lets you create Custom Fields it gives a whole lot of flexibility and then it becomes a matter of what the front-end requirements are for displaying it.

Hi Leslie,

Thank you.

I’ve been checking again the Multilingual sites featured at the EE Showcase. There is a couple of examples that represent the kind of front-end multilingual implementation that I’d like to reproduce, especially the one from Veja blog

· Language code in the first URI segment.
· Direct switch between different renditions of the same content (That is, the language switching mechanism is context/content sensitive, it just doesn’t send you to the index page of the new selected language)

As for the back-end implementation and end-user workflow, I’ll have to review the Wiki link you posted plus several other forum posts.

Would it be enough with the free Core version for multilingual testing purposes?

If I am not mistaken the Veja blog uses the alternative method mentioned in the wiki.

(I can remember helping out setting things up, but please correct me if I’m wrong)

Thank you Cocoaholic for the hint.

Cocoaholic - 26 July 2008 05:50 AM

If I am not mistaken the Veja blog uses the alternative method mentioned in the wiki.

(I can remember helping out setting things up, but please correct me if I’m wrong)

You remember correctly Cocoaholic!! You help me so much, you saved my life
So janogarcia, if I can help you a little, don’t hesitate!

Thank you Simon for the offering, and congratulations on your work for the Veja blog!