Using extra field to activate/disactivate items

Hello !

I am new to Joomla and have already begun with a complex project.
I have a multilingual site with many subdomains. So I use Falang, JoomSEF and VirtualDomains to make everything working. It seems ok. However, an article could be displayed on several langages and hidden on others. Falang doesn't allow to make that, because it will replace missing/unpublished translations by default text.

I think FlexiContent could help me. I've started to create an extra field "language" with my different languages as checkbox. Now I want items to be available on the frontend only if the current language matches checked languages.

Do you think I am going on the right way to do what I want ? If it's possible, how to achieve that ?
I don't really know how to handle this since it is my very first Joomla's project.

Thanks in advance !

First,

before you make this design decision,
are you sure it is best approach?

FLEXIContent and Joomla define article's (=FC item) language per Content item, and FLEXIcontent allows you to associate item's translations (THIS way you can translate ALL flexicontent field not just title and description like Falang Does, use Falang only for translating category names/description, field names, etc)

Also for associated translations can share untranslatable fields, (goto a custom FC field and define it as untranslatable)

Thanks for your quick answer.

I am not sure about separating all the translations between different components. Compared to what we wanted first, it is already more complicated. Having all translations on the same component is nearly essential... The best solution would be to activate/disactivate items like publishing/unpublishing translations in Falang but it seems to be impossible.

However, is there any tutorial about translations associations on FlexiContent ?

no no , i never said to use 2 components,

My answer was depicting that FLEXIcontent is a super set of Joomla's article system

you will be using only FLEXIcontent,

Ok, if I understand well, the idea would be to create one item per langage and add an "untranslatable" field to publish/unpublish items ? So all content has to be duplicated ?

Like joomla

1. create for same content create one item (=one translation) in every language of your site

2. FLEXIcontent for J1.5 / J2.5 allows you to associate translation together so that they switch on frontend when you change language

(this feature was added to Joomla 3.0)

3. About untranslatable fields, some fields may have data that is same among items translating the same content e.g. an email field, in this case mark field as untranslatable so that you only enter it once in the item with site's main language

Neow85 wrote: I think FlexiContent could help me. I've started to create an extra field "language" with my different languages as checkbox. Now I want items to be available on the frontend only if the current language matches checked languages.

As ggppdk wrote in his last post: you only need FlexiContent. I have just finished a larger project and the in-built Joomla system works perfectly together with some additional FlexiContent features. No need for third party components, if you do not have any specific needs that Falang might offer.

One question. What is the reason that you are using a 3rd party SEF component? I believe this is definitely not needed anymore!

Rooney

Thanks, I will try this solution.

One question. What is the reason that you are using a 3rd party SEF component? I believe this is definitely not needed anymore!

Because it fills the gaps in FaLang. I read everywhere that, with FaLang, urls are not translated and that search engines doesn't recognize other languages than the default one, so you need to use a sef extension. And it makes my subdomains work.
Don't know if I need it anymore without FaLang.

Neow85 wrote: Because it fills the gaps in FaLang. I read everywhere that, with FaLang, urls are not translated and that search engines doesn't recognize other languages than the default one, so you need to use a sef extension. And it makes my subdomains work.
Don't know if I need it anymore without FaLang.

You will definitely not need it using FlexiContent and the in-built Joomla multilanguage system because every translation is an own article and every menu item is an own menu item. So the url is built from the aliases.

FaLang stores translation in own data base tables.

You can have a look here for a live site FC+Joomla language system: www.muenstermann.com/en/

By the way, JoomFish (actually FaLang took over the old JoomFish code and started to "sell" it :shock: ) is now also available for Joomla 2.5. The beta version on GitHub ist pretty stable and also uses the in-built Joomla system: github.com/JoomFish/jf-future/w ... structions

Rooney

Thanks for the link. If it uses the Joomla native multilingual system, I think it will not have search engines/url issues like FaLang. Does it work with FlexiContent ?

Also, I wanted to test the full FlexiContent solution, but creating one item per translation is really painful, because I have 10 languages to manage (fr-FR, fr-BE,nl-BE, nl-NL, fr-CH, de-CH, de-DE, it-IT, es-ES and pt-PT). For now, it seems to be the hardest issue, although it should allow to display or not one item for one language.

I wonder if using Joomfish and FC may be a little more user-friendly than just FC.