Babel - the missing guide

Hi Guys,

Been trying all day to get my site multilingual. I found that Babel is absolute great but the tutorials and examples are all a bit dated. So to spare you some hours searching, here are the 100% working steps to a multilingual site.

Steps

1. Get clean modx installation (tested 2.5.4)
2. Make sure FURL’s are working
3. Create a new context with key -> en name -> English
4. Create the following settings


• base_url -> /
• cultureKey -> en
• site_url -> {url_scheme}{http_host}{base_url}{cultureKey}/
• site_start -> ID*(once you know wich one)
5. On the access permissions tab give user group anonymous the “load list and view” permission
6. Install babel -> default settings
7. Install langrouter -> default settings
8. Make sure all paths in your tmpl are build with [[++assets_url]]
9. Repeat this for all your languages

If you want to use the web context

1. Open web context
2. Adjust permissions as in step 5
3. Create settings as in 4
4. Give it the right culture Key

Now you are ready to make translations and switch them with [[BabelLinks? &showCurrent=`1` ]]

Helpful resources

• https://modx.today/posts/2015/05/using-xrouting-for-multilingual-websites-in-modx
• http://jako.github.io/LangRouter/usage/
• https://modx.com/extras/package/crosscontextssettings
• https://docs.modx.com/extras/revo/wayfinder --> see contexts parameter
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Kind

Thanks. I have bookmarked this for future reference.

Thanks for the how-to!

I set up all contexts and settings according to your manual, Babel language switch, everything works.

But is there a trick for the default context 'web' to be called like "www.example.com/" and not with the default contextKey in the URL like "www.example.com/en/"?

Long story short:
Default Context: www.example.com/en/ --> I want www.example.com
German Context: www.example.com/de/ --> that's okay.

any ideas very welcome

Quote from: Relias at Feb 22, 2017, 10:42 AM

Thanks for the how-to!

I set up all contexts and settings according to your manual, Babel language switch, everything works.

But is there a trick for the default context 'web' to be called like "www.example.com/" and not with the default contextKey in the URL like "www.example.com/en/"?

Long story short:
Default Context: www.example.com/en/ --> I want www.example.com
German Context: www.example.com/de/ --> that's okay.

any ideas very welcome

Great to hear. This is one way:

snippet -> https://gist.github.com/christianseel/504302ce8ddfcde009c0
ref -> https://modx.today/posts/2015/05/using-xrouting-for-multilingual-websites-in-modx (bottom)

What to keep in mind when I got MODX installed in a subfolder?

Start-Pages throw an ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS when I try to access www.example.com/modx/en/
Pages like www.example.com/modx/en/page1, www.example.com/modx/en/page2 ect. work fine.

in .htaccess the subfolder is set, same as in the context settings for base_url -> /modx/

I've wrapped my head around this for hours but I can't come up with a solution... having modx installed in root works fine :/