I just did purchase Sparkle after “playing” a few weeks.
I am now trying to build a multi-language website but I am running into a problem.
I create for example 3 pages in the main language A and also in language B.
When I go to page 1 of language A and do more > menu I get the menu in language A.
I have 2 options now; 1. Show on this page only or 2. show on all pages.
When I do option 2 it also does show language A in the section of language B.
So it looks like I need to build the menu using the option “show on this page only” and then copy it to all the pages of the specific language? If so I really start to worry because what will happen if I create a new page and I want to add it in the menu every week. Does it mean I need to re-build my menu every week for all the pages?
Create sections for each language, then you can display the related language menu for just that section in the arrange tab (with ticking visible/hidden eye on the menu, see screenshots).
what I noticed when I built my multilingual menu with PopUps (Modal/Lightboxes):
If you subordinate the individual pages for the different languages to sections, you must never let the files be placed in a folder (such as: E for English …) when exporting. More than two pop-ups only seem to work correctly on mobiles if all pages are on the top level. I have organised my menus with individual buttons.
Unfortunately, this does not give the nice folder structure on the server. What works is that within the sections, for the individual languages, you can define the behaviour for the buttons and menus only for these areas.
Either it’s a bug or I’ve misunderstood about creating folders. The finished pages can be seen under eight.limited.
Personally, I would use the easy option for multilingual sites. Create you primary language site first. Save it and then create a copy of the site for the second language. Do the translations and then save the new site. You now have two identical sites except for the language differences. You would then edit each site in turn and create a language link at the top of each page of both sites. The link would point to the same page in the opposite language version. You do this by uploading your primary language site to the root of your domain (usually public.html) and upload the second language version of the site to a language-specific folder (eg. mysite.co/de - it it was German). The language links on your primary site would then point to the same page name in your secondary language folder (e.g. https://mysite.co/de/about.html). Likewise, the language links on the pages of your secondary language site would point to the same page in the root of your domain.
This option allows you to edit each language version of your site independently of the other language and keeps your file size smaller.
I am currently looking at converting our website to multilingual. Your approach is interesting – I hadn’t thought of it. One drawback I see is that if you make a change to one file, you then have to make it to all files, e.g. a footer/header, or a change a font in a style.
A side note: I mentioned the idea of a multilingual site to a friend and the first thing that came out of his mouth was “Make sure there is an option to revert to the English version.” I’ve seen sites with language switchers where you see a U.S./British flag along with flags for other nations. The trouble I’m having is that our site is over 350 pages, and they sure as heck won’t be translated at once! It’s going to be a nightmare to have a language switcher for some pages but not others.
Clearly, there must be a unique link of some sort on every page of the site in order to switch between language versions of the page. For example, the index.htm page of your primary language site would switch to the index.html page of the opposite language version of the site. Of course, you could simply have a standard link on all pages of the site that simply points to the home page of the opposite language version. However, this is very inconvenient for users as they would end up on a home page every time they switched language regardless of which page hey were on when they invoke a change of language. Therefore, the language switching link should be simply considered “unique Page Content” just like other elements of the page.
There is a simple javascript option to do the language switching. This basically means you add the same language switcher (usually a language drop-down button with the language choices) on every page to keep things simple. For each page added, you put a very small piece of script code into the page. The url of the opposite language page is placed inside this piece of code. Because it’s added as part of the page being made it shouldn’t be a problem to include this code .
I know that the developers of Sparkle don’t really like the discussion of coded options in the community, so if you need the solution, it would be best to PM me. I can also give you the code to automatically detect the visitor’s system language and have them directed to the appropriate language version automatically. This, of course can be overridden if the site visitor prefers to see the other language version. Just let me know via PM if you need assistance with this.
Thanks. I’ll evaluate my options carefully (from a site visitor perspective, mainly). I think that the UI can be simplified a little if we make the assumption, hopefully valid, that a user will switch only to English. E.g. how likely is a website visitor from Japan going to want to see the German translation? If he or she doesn’t want the Japanese page, odds are extremely high that she’ll want the English one instead and only the English one.
everything works fine in Preview but not if you export the site. I can send you an file of the “not working version” with the language pages tobe exported in separate folders. Just send me a PM.
