multi-language site development

Hello
I need to create a multi language site (4 or 5 languages) with Joomla 3.2
I know that I can work together with distinct languages in FC.

In the present cas something is important : for each language the site is strictly the same : same page contents, same module contents...

What's I think, I need is something like Joomfish where all translations are in the same component and if one translation is missing the page/module is displayed in the main site language.

Is this existing and of course FC compatible ?

thank you for advices

best regards

Michel

Hi,
I have built a large multilingual page with FC. Please have a look here: www.muenstermann.com . FC (Joomla) does not work like Joomfish but it has similar features. For example there is menu item and article association. That means, that you are able to define which article/menu item is a translation of another one. It is the base of correct language switching and FC has the additional feature that it is easy to open the associated article because there is a language flag next to the article in the backend article listing.

Anyway, for me the best structure for a multilingual site is as follows:

• The category and module structure hast to be setup for each language. Otherwise module headers or category titles are not translatable.
• Also, I would duplicate the menus. It is more structured and easier to work with when the page grows
• If you want to show the original language just mark an article or a module with language set to "All". Modules will then be displayed automatically for every language. Articles can just be assigned to different categories. Let's say you have a category view for the category "News" in English. The corresponding German category view would link to category "Neuigkeiten". If one article is not translated just mark it language "All" and assign it to both categories.

Rooney

Hello

-- Falang uses in J2.5/J3. the J1.5 Joomfish method for translating content

Advantages:
- 1 item for all languages !!
- also FLEXIcontent+Falang will do some more than Joomla+Falang:
you can edit all language via TABs inside the FLEXIcontent item form
(title, description, etc become TABBED)

Disadvantages:
- you cannot translate FLEXIcontent custom fields, these are shared among all translation, because you have a single content item
- performance degradation in medium-size sites and serious performance issues in large sites (10,000+ articles)
* (latest FLEXIcontent tries to by pass some unneeded Falang queries in category view, thus it will have much better performance than Joomla + Falang in large site)

ggppdk wrote: -- Falang uses in J2.5/J3. the J1.5 Joomfish method for translating content

My page has 500+ articles for each of the three languages. I would never go back to a 3rd party component, once I was into the native Joomla (FC) system. Much more flexible!
Rooney

Hello

My page has 500+ articles for each of the three languages. I would never go back to a 3rd party component, once I was into the native Joomla (FC) system. Much more flexible!

indeed,
we do not recommend using Falang for --content items--
-- for performance reasons,
-- and for inability to easily translate FLEXIcontent items fully

we would rather improve the Joomla way of an item per translation + associations (which were both first implemented in FLEXIcontent for J1.5 before J2.5/J3.2 added these)

Thank both of you for your answers.

I thought effectively using Falang, but it's not completely FC compatible (customized fields not available in Falang and may performance degradation).

So I will use the core Joomla/FC multi language

best regards

Michel