I am here on front-end of my Web site.
I am on the Home page for the English side of the Web site.
And I might be surfing through my Web site, maybe I go here to the About page
of the Web site, and at this point, I decide I'd rather be looking at this page in Italian.
I don't have a lot of pages on the Italian side of this Web site, but I do have
the Home page, and I have the About page.
If I flip to the About page of the Web site right now by clicking on the Italian
flag, I don't go to the About page; I go to the Home page.
So I have to re-surf to where I was just looking on the English side of the Web site.
I am only one click into the Web site, but if I had to really big Web site
that was really deep, with lots and lots of translated pages, that might
really be a big deal.
I might really want to be able to switch between languages on the exact page that I am on.
And the way we have Joomla
set up right now, this is not possible, but it is possible using something
called associations.
And associations were introduced in Joomla! 2.5.
They've been greatly expanded in Joomla 3.0.2. So let me go through how
an association works.
If you go into the back-end of the Web site, and you go to Extensions > Plug-in
Manager, on page 2 of your Plug-in Manager, you should be able to find the System
- Language Filter plug-in.
If you click that, and switch to the Basic Options tab, what you want to do is
enable the Item associations here, so go ahead and turn those on, and then say Save & Close.
By turning on the associations here, you'll discover that inside of your Category
manager, your Article manager, and your Menu manager, you're now going to have
the ability to associate pieces of content.
So if we start by going to Content > Category Manager, and I am going to take a
look at my English category, you'll notice here in my Category Manager, I have a
new column called Association.
So I am going to click on my English Category, and you'll notice that we have a
new tab here as well inside of our Category Manager.
If we click this, this is all of the languages that are installed on our Web site currently.
There's only one, it's Italian, and of course, likewise, English.
Right now, there's no association between these categories.
Well, I can associate them simply by picking the matching Italian category,
which is Italian, and then I can say Save & Close.
So now I have associated the two categories, and you can see that association here.
If I roll my mouse over it, I get a little tool tip that tells me what
it's associated with.
Likewise, Italian down here, I can roll my mouse over it, and it will tell me
what it is associated with.
I can repeat this process for my Articles.
So if I go into my Article Manager, and I take a look at my English About page,
I can associate my English About page with the specific Italian article that matches.
So I can hit Select here, and I can pick the About Us page here, and say Save & Close.
Now when I roll my mouse over the Association column, it describes the
association between these two articles.
I can also associate my Home page articles as well.
So if I find my Home page article here, and I click that, under Association, I
can select my Italian article equivalent here from the list, and say Save &
Close, and now those associations are reflected here as well.
Finally, I can associate my menu items.
So if I go to Menus > English menu, and I go to my Home page, I can set up an
association here, so the Italian association is Home. Save & Close.
And for the About article, I can associate those items as well; there we go, say Save & Close.
Now that I've associated this content, I've got these nice little tips here
that tell me how things are associated on my Web site; I can now go here to my
Home page, and if I am on the About Us page here in Italian, when I click on my
English flag here, and switch to the English side of the Web site, I automatically
wind up on the About page.
So now I have a one to one correspondence in my content here in the back-end of Joomla.
That's really, really helpful
if you've got a big Web site, you've got lots and lots of content, with lots of
translations, this will make the experience, for your visitors who speak more
than one language, it will significantly improve it.