Check the pdf in documents for latest documentation including some screenshots.
This language expansion module was designed to simplify content editing when using a large amount of languages in your Sitecore environments.
When you have multiple sites with different language sets (e.g. a Belgian site in Dutch/French, a Swiss site in fr/de/it and a Danish site in dk/en) or simply a large volume of available languages, managing these languages in Sitecore can become cumbersome.
Sitecore has no out of the box functionality that restricts or manages the languages used per node/site and only offers the languages list to navigate through the available languages. The language list presented by Sitecore comprises of both those with one or more versions as well as those that have no version available or are irrelevant for that context/site.
The module is tested with Sitecore 8.1. It will probably work in other versions...
This module consists of 2 parts, which can be activated separately.
The bar can be toggled on or off:
Once the bar is toggled on:
###Section meaning
The component consists of 4 language lists that are visualized slightly different across the two presentations: ####Versioned languages
The first list shows all the languages that have an actual version available. This is a subset of the languages that are allowed within Sitecore as configured in the System node and/or the “allowedLanguages” setting on the site definition.
####Fallback language versions The second list contains all the languages for which a fallback version exists (Working through Sitecore’s item fallback available as of version 8.1). The versions with fallback on are rendered in italic.
####Languages without a version This third list holds the languages that are available on this node/site, but for which no version exists. This line will not be rendered if there are no such languages.
####Other available languages This fourth and final list holds those language versions that are not covered in the ‘allowed languages’ or System node. This could be rogue langue versions that are a remainder of a previous setup or languages created by admin users who are free to create any type of language version. In these lists, the current language on the Sitecore context is visualized in bold.
Languages in all the lists are clickable so the editor can easily switch languages without having to go through the whole list.
In order to get a nice view like in the screenshots it is necessary to manually set the icons of the languages in the system section of Sitecore (as Sitecore does not use these icons anymore in the list, they are not set by default. Flag-icons are still available though).
We loop through the configured sites and check whether the current item is part of it (based on the path in the content tree and the “rootPath” of the site).
For each site we check if a custom property “allowedLanguages” is available in the SiteSettings specific site node. The distinct union of all these languages will be the list of allowed languages for the item. If the list is empty, all available languages in the Sitecore instance are allowed.
The parameter will be part of a <site /> definition (just like hostname, database, rootPath and so on). It is not obligatory – the module works perfectly without it. It can be used for multi-site solution with different languages. For our example mentioned above we could have something like:
< site name=”Belgian” allowedLanguages="nl,fr-BE" … />
< site name=”Swiss” allowedLanguages="fr,de,it" … />
< site name=”Danish” allowedLanguages="dk,en" … />
The language should match the used language exactly (so “fr-BE” ≠ “fr”) and can be completely different or overlap. For the second part of the module it is important though to put the “default” language first.
The second part of the module consists of a request resolver that is put in the httpRequestBegin pipeline after the LanguageResolver.
The current requested URL is checked to disable the functionality for Sitecore URL’s or when not in normal page mode. The current context site is checked for the ‘allowedLanguages’ parameter. If found, and the current language is not part of the ‘allowedLanguages’ set we will redirect the user to homepage in the default language (default is the first language in the set).
There is one configuration file: EasyLingo.config located in “/include/zEasyLingo”. You will find the request resolver and content editor section in here. By default both are enabled. To disable, just comment out the configuration you don’t want.
EasyLingo can be installed through installation of the EasyLingo package in Sitecore. The package contains all configurations (enabled by default) and dll files.
If you prefer, the module is also made available through a ZIP file that includes all files and should be unzipped in the root folder of your website.
No files should be overwritten during the installation process.
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Set the flags for your languages in the Sitecore system folder
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Include the “allowedLanguages” elements to your sites definitions if needed
There are no specific future features on our tasklist anymore. If you have specific functional requirements that you would like to see realized through this module, drop us a line or contact us on Twitter, Community, Slack and we will be glad to listen in on your thoughts and observations!