Multilingual site using Gantry or any other RT template
-
-
- Who?
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 25562
- Thanks: 613
- Joomla freelancer
-
Lots of members ask us how to develop multilingual web site using our templates so I took the time to explain this in details with this tutorial. Hope you will find it useful. Everything written here can be applied to any of the templates provided by RocketTheme.
Prerequisites :
- Joomla 2.5.7 (or higher one day) since I am using direct language install that wasn't implemented in previous versions of Joomla
- RocketTheme template
- RokNavMenu extension installed
- the best results can be achieve with the clean installation of the web site but you can follow the steps to add multilingual setup on already developed web site. You will just have to fiddle around much more with menu configurations after you finish this tutorial
Start the tutorial
First thing that you should do is to install additional languages that will be used on the web site. Go to Extension Manager -> Install languages tab
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Choose additional language from the list of available languages and press Install button.
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Install as many languages as you want to use on the web site
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
When you installed all the required languages go to Language Manager
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
On the first tab Installed - Site you will see the list of all installed languages on the web site. Now we just need to add content languages manually
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Click on Content tab to start adding content languages
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Add new content language by clicking on New button in joomla toolbar
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
You will have to fill required fields. If you need help understanding what is the meaning of each field, use Google search or ask for a help on Joomla official forum or consult Joomla official documentation. Thing are really straightforward and there shouldn't be any problems but you never know :cheesy:
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
When you finished adding all wanted or required content languages, you should have situation similar to the following screen
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Go to Joomla plugin manager as you need to configure Joomla multilingual plugins
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Find System - Language Filter Joomla plugin
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Configure it according to your liking. I recommend the following setup
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
It is time to create some language related categories. Add new category/categories
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Create main category for each language you will use
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Under each language category, add additional categories based on your requirements. Be sure that for each category you set corresponding language
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
When you add categories you should have similar situation to the following screenshot
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Add some articles. Be sure to assign each article to a specific language category
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
You can also configure some SEO related stuff in global configuration so go to Joomla global configuration page
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
It is good choice to use unicode URL aliases, especially if you have special characters in one of the selected language, for example letter 'čćšđž' in Croatian language
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
In order for everything to work and look correctly, you have to add menus that belongs to each language in Menu manager
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
For example, add new menu for German language
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
When you add all required menus, you should have situation similar to this one
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
In menu manager, filter menus items by one of the language related menus (1) and click on New button in Joomla toolbar (2) to add menu items for that specific language
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Create menu item in the same way you would do it normally but be sure to assign Language parameter (4). Also, for menu item that will represent default (Home page) menu item for a specific language, be sure to set Default Page parameter (3) to Yes
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
When you add all menus and you define Default Page parameter for each language you should have situation similar to the following one
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
One thing that you need to set (if you want specific article for example to change depending on selected language) is Menu Item Associations section's parameters.
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
If you set menu item associations parameters, you will notice new icon in menu item list
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
At the end, you have to assign template copy for each language installed. That is necessary so you can load different menus depending on selected language. Go to Template Manager
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Select Master copy of the template and press Duplicate button in Joomla toolbar. Create copies of the template for each installed language
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
On template edit screen, be sure to assign language for that specific template copy
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
If you have done everything correctly, you should have multiple copies of the template, each assigned to it's specific language
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Edit each template copy and assign different menu for each copy so menu can actually change based on the selected language on the frontend of the site
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
If you want to offer possibility for your visitors to actually change site's language on the frontend, you have to publish language selector module so go to Module Manager to do so
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Click on New button in Joomla toolbar
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Find Language Switcher module and click on it's title
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Configure module the way you like it. For example, like this and save module configuration
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
For default language (I set English as default), web site home page is loaded the same as it would if you would use only one language
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
When you click on Language selector images, Home page of the web site changes according to the configuration set previously in menu manager. Notice that Home page for each language doesn't have to be the same menu item type as it is in other languages. You can use which ever menu item type you want. Just be sure to set Menu Item Associations parameters
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
For the end, you can also enable Multilanguage status administrator module so you can check configuration status at any time.
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Enable Multilanguage status module
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
You will notice new link on the right side of Joomla menu toolbar strip
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
When you click on that link, you should have similar situation like the following one. As you can see, everything is configured and published correctly.
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
This concludes my tutorial. Again, I hope it will be useful to someone. There are few other possible ways to configure multilanguage web site using RocketTheme templates but that might be a subject for some other tutorial
- Check my services at: Mihha-Vision
-
-
-
- Graham Bayne
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 105
- Thanks: 4
- That was a fantastic tutorial. I have just set this all up from scratch in half an hour. I am very very thankful as this would have taken me hours to work out without the tutorial.
-
-
-
- Sara Iannaccone
- Newbie
- Posts: 3
- Thanks: 0
- thanks, very clear
-
-
-
- King Leo
- Newbie
- Posts: 13
- Thanks: 0
- Solution Developer
-
Great tutorial. I have a question: Does this setup work for RTL languages as well? when setting up latin languages things seem to be more of translation and charachter set however I am dealing with multi-language site that includes an RTL language version. RTL images, RTL icons, RTL content...etc. So far I planed to create two separate joomla/gantry instances and treat everything separately only because I don't know better.
Thanks for your input
-
-
-
- Grith Hodal
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 72
- Thanks: 0
- Great tutorial! Thank you :cheesy:
-
-
-
- Who?
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 25562
- Thanks: 613
- Joomla freelancer
-
I locked this topic because it was not meant to get replies. Everything is really explained step by step in this tutorial and it is the way it works. If you have any questions regarding this, please open new thread in template specific forum
- Check my services at: Mihha-Vision
-
-
-
- Andreas Saller
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 190
- Thanks: 0
- joomla-enthusiast
-
excellent tutorial!!!!
-
NO COMMENT 
Time to create page: 0.101 seconds