Multilingual Joomla: Language selection remains empty.

Question

I am using Joomla 3.2.3 and just installed an empty site with two languages, one for the administration panel and one for the site. I checked a number of tutorials and followed their guidance.

English and Germain is installed. The language codes are en-GB and de-DE. I kept one menu with language "All" and within is one default home page with language "all". The menu module of this default menu is not published. I got two main menus, one assigned to German and the other to English. Wihin are two menu items each which report individual content items, one each assigned to their language. They belong to categories in their respective language.

All menu items, categories and content items are linked to their respective other-language counterpart.

I do have a langauge selector system module. When i configure it so that it shows its title then I see it on all pages. But it is empty. Regardless whether I turn on the flag symbols, the drop down list, whatever. There is no language to be chosen.

Just in case that it matters: At first I tried out K2. It turned out to be capable of filtering content by language but I did not find a way to link the very content items in their respecive language to each other so that the user can switch the language but stays with the same content. K2 is still installed but all modules are unpublised. Should I remove it first? Or would I have to start all over again?

Answer 1

In addition to content languages Joomla! needs a starting menu item for each language to fill the language switcher module.

This is a quick explanation of how to do that:

First, you need a menu for every content language. Create as many menu items as needed (on every menu) and don't forget to set the language on each item (same menu, same language). Set one menu item as start page on every menu. When you set a language and start page this menu item points to the starting page on that language. Now, on the administrator you should see under Menus (on the top bar) a flag in front of every menu you created. You need as meny menus as content languages because Joomla! doesn't allow more than one start item on a given menu.

Example:

Menu for english: ALL items have language set to en-GB

Item 1 Set it as start page, so its the start page for English

Item 2

Item 3

Menu for Deutsche: ALL items have language set to de-DE

Item 1 Set it as start page, so its the start page for Deutsche

Item 2

Item 3

The start page for every language doesn't need to be the first item on the menu.

Don't forget to prepare the associations between the menu items.

Second, create a menu with only one item, set its language to all and set it as start page. This step is needed because this item will do all check for languages and will load the default language start page.

Now go to your home page and you should see your language switcher filled with all the languages which have a start page. This module must have its language set to all.

By the way, now you will need to create modules, articles, etc... for every content language.

Regards,