Handling languages

[sooskriszta]

IndexU Deluxe is a great product and I think there is a fairly strong community that contributes, for example, to the language support.

I have one suggestion about the language support, though, and I'd be happy to hear reactions to this:

I feel IndexU is great for listing targeting a single market/language but not suitable for expansion to other markets.

There are several language packs available, which make the program itself usable in multiple languages. But when it comes to having a multinational/multilingual environment, it doesn't work so well.

Let me try to explain with an example. Language packs are available. So if a classifieds site in Saudi Arabia wants to use IndexU, it can. So can one in Czech Republic.

However, if there is a classifieds site that has ambitions beyond its own country (like mine), then we run into a problem - the users can use the language panel to "translate" the website, but the content remains in one single language! In other words, if I have English, Bhasa, and Hungarian language packs installed, users from UK/US/ANZ, Indonesia and Hungary can access it, and have interface translated just by clicking a flag - but the content (link description, name, etc) remain in a single language.

I think the development team should seriously look into implementing an Opencart (OpenCart - Open Source Shopping Cart Solution) like solution, where when Admin installs a language pack, many fields (such as product name, meta tags description, product description, category names, category description, etc etc etc) are duplicated for the new language. So now, the admin (or user) can enter content in 2 languages, and depending on the language chosen by the user, appropriate content is shown.

From my perspective, this is a very important feature. Category, subcategory names can be different in different languages (even country names are different in different languages), site descriptions and other content can be different in different languages, for some sites, the URL could be different for different languages, so I don't see why IndexU has to restrict itself to a single content model.

Believe me, implementing this single feature, would put IndexU heads and shoulders above other directory listing programs...

[sooskriszta]

Really, Dody, and other Nicecoders, please download Opencart (OpenCart - Download - 1.4.8b is the latest version - 2nd download button) along with an additional language pack, and check out how they have done it.

[sooskriszta]

OpenCart is an opensouce eCommerce software, so the purpose is quite different from IndexU. However, some of the things they do can be applied to IndexU to make it much more flexible, and attract many more customers.

Regarding language implementation, there are 2 issues:

1. Flexibility and ease of use, as well as management (including speed of error correction): I think the po-mo model is a bit difficult. Dody agrees, and is thinking about alternate ways. Refer the thread: http://www.nicecoder.com/community/f...anguages-9287/

2. The second big issue is what this thread is about - support for multiple languages in the same installation. As long as IndexU customers are small and content with playing within relatively small regions, it's sort of ok. But considering that many countries (even those as small as Macedonia) have multiple languages, it is not an ideal situation. Also, as soon as an IndexU customers starts having ambitions of expanding to other markets, IndexU becomes virtually useless for him (a less than desirable workaound is having multiple installations...but as mentioned it is less than desirable).

This is an area where the OpenCart model can be hugely effective!

While the 2 products (IndexU and OpenCart) have different purposes, consider for the moment that:
IndexU categories are analogous to OpenCart categories
IndexU links are analogous to OpenCart products

There are key differences in the database design:
While IndexU uses a relatively "flat" table structure, Opencart tables are much more "relational".

- In IndexU, in the link table, there are 3 fields to specify which categories the link is associated with. In OpenCart, the Product table does not have these fields. Instead, there is a separate table Product2Categories which has 2 fields (product ID and Category ID), where the relationships between the products and categories are defined. Please refer to the thread http://www.nicecoder.com/community/f...tegories-9306/

- The same goes for languages.

While IndexU has fields within the link table for storing website name, description etc, OpenCart takes a different approach. In the product table, it has bare bones info (product ID, price, weight, sku, etc)...this is akin to having only the link ID, URL, suspended, rating, etc in the link table.

In OpenCart there is a separate table called product description which contains the fields product id, language id, product name, meta keywords, meta description and descriotion.

The impact of this small difference is massive!!!

This means that while adding a product, the editor can provide product, name, description etc in each of the installed languages! And since OpenCart follows the MVC+L model as discussed above, when someone accesses an OpenCart-based store, the product name description etc are shown to him only in the language he has chosen to view the shop in. Brilliant!

Similarly, by having a separate table for product images, OpenCart allows multiple images for the same product! I'm sure we could use that here at IndexU as well.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not criticizing IndexU - I think IndexU is great. And it is only because I like it so much, that I am spending so much time providing suggestions on how it can be made even better.