Additional Languages

[lewey]

Is it possible to add an additional language version of a bluepark website, similar to how many European websites will offer the option of clicking on a flag to get the French, German, Spanish etc language version?

Are there any examples of bluepark websites with this done if so?

I know that I can make a copy of the language under language editor, and for example change everything in the copy to French, but not sure if, and how, I could then offer both the existing English and a French version of my site.

Also, how would it work for the products?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Dave]

I am no expert and do not use multi language but have just had a quick play around in bluepark and wow is this software bloody good!

Go in language manager and create another language ie french and make it selectable. Then click on french and countries and change the country flag to french and select the applicable french speaking countries.

You will then notice next to the Bluepark Logo (top of screen) you can select the language. Select french and then look at a product and you will see you can enter a title and description in french (it even has the little french flag next to it)

Same applies to the page content within page manager.

Not sure about selecting the country but reading the online help I think if a user from france visits your site bluepark detects it and automatically displays the french version.

I assume when you have the french version selected and you view the site it will display the french version.

Only wish we sold abroad now :)

Have a play its brilliant!

[Rich]

Edit: I started writing this half an hour ago (due to distractions) so Dave's replied since!

I'm not sure if there are any examples of existing sites doing this, but it is most certainly possible. You can create another language, assign it its own country flag and make it selectable. The actual selection can be done using the Local Settings block in the Block Manager.

When you have two or more selectable languages, a drop-down will appear on the blue header of the Admin Console. This will control which language is being edited on each of the site's pages (for example, the product pages). Flag icons indicate when you're editing a non-default language.

The easiest way to see it in action is to have a go. Keep your existing language selected as the default, simply add a new language and assign a different flag. The country designations for each language can determine which language is selected by default when a user connects for the first time.

[lewey]

Thanks heaps Dave, and Rich, guess we'll start playing around with it then. Have a couple of people lined up to help with translations, so as they have time available, will try and get a 2nd language set up.

Will be back to ask more questions if needed, and to let you know how it goes.

Cheers,

[lewey]

OK, have been making some progress in playing around with this, and yeah, this is great software!

Have added one page in French now, my information page, for starters.

It took me a while to remember to add the new 'local settings' block to my layouts in order to actually see what I'd done! I've noticed that when clicking on the magnifying glass icon, even when editing within the additional language, that still displays the original english page.

A question for Rich:
How does it work for the indexing by Google and co with the additional languages? At the moment we can't change the meta tags (title and desciption) for the extra language, can this be changed?

What is likely to show up the Google results for our French page?

Also, how to we go about promoting and doing seo for the French content? Is a just a matter of getting links to the same urls (that show the english version too) and French visitors will automatically see the French content?

Appreciate any advice you can offer on this.

[Rich]

I'm afraid this is not a feature for search engines, only for your site visitors. Search engines will see the default language text. Each page only has one URL, and Google can't index two versions of the same page.

The only way to have two language versions indexed would be to have two sites.

[Hela]

Hi,

Did anyone every answer the question about being able to have product descriptions in a second language?

Thanks
Hela

[Dave]

Hi Hela,

Yes I answered this in post 2 of this thread. It it indeed possible!

[Hela]

Hi Dave,

Missed that - thanks for pointing it out.

Hela