Polyglott_XH – a CMSimple_XH Plugin

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Polyglott_XH offers advanced features for multilingual CMSimple_XH websites. The main point is that it allows to mark individual pages of different languages as actual translations, so visitors as well as the admin can quickly switch between the translations of a certain page.

Furthermore the plugin automatically emits information mainly for search engines regarding available translations of the current page (so called hreflang links).

Please do read this documentation, before you encounter any problems!

Important Notice

Polyglott_XH couldn't be tested so far in various environments. It is a so called beta version. Use with caution!

Requirements

Polyglott_XH is a plugin for CMSimple_XH. It requires CMSimple_XH ≥ 1.5.6 and PHP ≥ 5.0.0.

Installation

The installation is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins. See the CMSimple_XH wiki for further details.

  1. Backup the data on your server.
  2. Unzip the distribution on your computer.
  3. Upload the whole directory polyglott/ to your server into CMSimple_XH's plugins directory.
  4. Give write permissions to the subdirectories cache/, config/, css/ and languages/.
  5. Switch to Plugins → Polyglott to check if all requirements are fulfilled.

Settings

The plugin's configuration is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins in the website's back-end. Select Plugins → Polyglott.

You can change the default settings of Polyglott_XH under "Config". Hints for the options will be displayed when hovering over the help icon with your mouse.

Localization is done under "Language". You can translate the character strings to your own language (if there is no appropriate language file available), or customize them according to your needs.

The look of Polyglott_XH can be customized under "Stylesheet".

Usage

To use the advanced language menu of Polyglott_XH replace the call to languagemenu() in your template(s) with:

<?php echo polyglott_languagemenu();?>

To make this actually work, you have to tag individual pages of different languages appropriately. You can do this in the tab "Polyglott" above the content editor; simply set the same unique tag for the original page and for its translations.

In the plugin administration (Plugins → Polyglott → Translations) you can get an overview of which pages are already translated. The page headings as well as the translations are linked to the respective pages in edit mode, so you can quickly repair possibly missing Polyglott_XH tags.

Note that the relations between pages of different languages are cached in plugins/polyglott/cache/ for performance reasons. If you have to clear this cache for whatever reason, you have to save at least one page of every language to rebuilt it properly.

License

Polyglott_XH is licensed under GPLv3.

© 2012-2014 Christoph M. Becker

Credits

Polyglott_XH was inspired by Multilang_XH by Jesper Zedlitz.

The plugin logo is designed by Lakshman Poonyth. Many thanks for publishing this icon on openclipart.org.

This plugin uses free applications icons from Aha-Soft. Many thanks for making these icons freely available.

Many thanks to the community at the CMSimple forum for tips and suggestions.

And last but not least many thanks to Peter Harteg, the father of CMSimple, and all developers of CMSimple_XH without whom this amazing CMS wouldn't exist.