What's hot in Revolution?

Lexicons are definitely things to look forward to. I too build multilingual sites and I can already see how much fun it’s gonna be working in the new environment.

By the way, Revos’ intuitive GUI is just ridiculous. Kudos the design team. I noticed you’re using EXTjs and that’s simply fabulous. Good call on that one.

Can’t wait

Quote from: treigh at May 25, 2009, 03:37 PM

Lexicons are definitely things to look forward to. I too build multilingual sites and I can already see how much fun it’s gonna be working in the new environment.

By the way, Revos’ intuitive GUI is just ridiculous. Kudos the design team. I noticed you’re using EXTjs and that’s simply fabulous. Good call on that one.

Can’t wait

This is sweet! I have one site that I have built in Wordpress but I want to convert it over to MODX - and this site requires both English and Spanish. So this will be a blessing! Whooo hoooo!!!

Multilingual support! We’ve got several clients right now that need multiple languages as a main requirement. Evolution needs multiple installations or sub-trees in a single installation which just doesn’t cut it when you’ve got 20+ languages!

Quote from: markhurd at May 27, 2009, 10:16 AM

Multilingual support! We’ve got several clients right now that need multiple languages as a main requirement. Evolution needs multiple installations or sub-trees in a single installation which just doesn’t cut it when you’ve got 20+ languages!

Multilingual sites are always a challenge even for robust commercial CMS’s. I had to figure different scenarios each time I had to deal with a multilingual site and if the client can afford a slightly bigger development team, multiple installations might be the next best option when all else fails.

This is something I’ve tried to explain several times, though I think still unsuccessfully; but here goes again.

Producing a successful multi-lingual website is more than just translating content, it’s about organization, accessibility, and SEO as well.  If you provide a single URL that produces content in a specified language, based on client browser language settings, or returning user preferences, of Geo location of IP addresses, etc., you’re going to have a hard time producing good SEO results per language.  You need a structure where URLs are unique for each language.

Lexicons (a MODx Revolution word/phrase dictionary which replaces the 0.9.x concept of language files), IMO, are only useful for producing language-specific management pages (not indexed by search engine anyway) OR providing specific components with the ability to serve language-specific content/templates (based on the language of the page it is called from), multiple translations of errors, and/or other internal/common messages.

So really, the only thing other than improved maintenance of the translations in the Lexicon (vs. the old language files) and the Lexicon API itself that will be possible in Revo that is not achievable now in 0.9.x, is the use of Contexts to allow subdomains so you can have essentially the same url structure for each language specific subdomain.

Thanks OpenGeek for the clarifications.

I know it must a little annoying going the same stuff over and over, but thanks for baring with us.

Cheers

OpenGeek - thanks for the clarification. I understand the difficulties of creating and maintaining multilingual sites. I suppose I should have been more clear, but my excitement lies in the fact that Revolution can manage multiple sites (ie, one per language) from a single installation.

Yes, but you also need the option for content relation. For example, when you create a "services" page you need link it to the same version in other languages ( in case that exists ). With multisites you won’t have this option.
In other hand, opengeek said that we could create subdomains with the same folder structure, yes but it is not usefull for multilingual sites and SEO because in spanish we need to be positioned by the word "servicios" and not "services". Multilingual feature is needed. There are some implementations/recomendations on the wiki, but it are all "addons". Is not possible to implement that in revo? :S

Quote from: mIDO at May 29, 2009, 05:32 AM

Yes, but you also need the option for content relation. For example, when you create a "services" page you need link it to the same version in other languages ( in case that exists ). With multisites you won’t have this option.

Why not? If you are talking about multiple contexts in a single configuration, you can certainly relate those pages in any way you see fit.

Quote from: mIDO at May 29, 2009, 05:32 AM

In other hand, opengeek said that we could create subdomains with the same folder structure, yes but it is not usefull for multilingual sites and SEO because in spanish we need to be positioned by the word "servicios" and not "services". Multilingual feature is needed. There are some implementations/recomendations on the wiki, but it are all "addons". Is not possible to implement that in revo? :S

My point is you generally don’t want the same folder structure per language, as you indicated. I was responding to the desire to have that because someone was mentioning that issue. As for a single piece of content having different versions per language, that is not going to be in 2.0, but will be introduced, along with content versioning, for 2.1. This is part of the transition process from the legacy data structures that are common across 0.9.x/1.0 and 2.0 to the improved model planned for 2.1. Once everyone has time to adjust to the new API’s (and get rid of all the deprecated API calls in 2.0 they are still relying on) through the 2.0.x lifecycle, we can abstract the data structure changes behind the new API and introduce Content Versioning and Cultural/Language-specific Content.

great