Making a site multi-lingual
Posted by Helmut_pdorf on 06 Jul 2015 06:30, last edited by Helmut_pdorf on 04 Sep 2015 07:53
This how-to explains how you can build a wiki with pages in different languages.
Thanks to RobElliott who has built the "Multi-lingual" site to explain with a live example which pages are necessary for such a layout.
It is self-explanatory in the English, Spanish and German start page (home) depending which language flag you select.
This was based on a wish in our community-forum: duo-lingual wikidot?
Notice: our "Handbook" has a multi-lingual layout, but with such a lot of languages is it a little bit difficult to explain for newcomers how to do it.
Thanks for sharing this live example.
I have applied the approach on a larger scale, with Wikidot themes, at http://www.actor-atlas.info/
A question: As we must determine one language of the wiki in Wiki Settings, how can we set a different language for a template?
Then a proposition: In "flags" page of the life example, the links for the flags are coded as follows:
Taking note of Google Search Console recommendations regarding international targeting, it is possible to add hreflang tags to the link, for instance as follows:
A difference with the original example is that the clickable "en" would appear next to the flag, the benefit is that Google can couple the language preference of the user to the proper variant of the wiki page.
But, I would think that the coupling would have more impact if we can also declare that a page is in a certain language (hence my question).
Jan Goossenaerts
@collaboratewiki