Public-side multi-lingual URLs

ax · 2017-03-03 00:20:51

Just stumbled upon this problem again. After having changed the currently active language on the admin side from English to German, all URLs with “&context=image” were broken and threw a 404 error. Only recognized this a couple of days later, and it took a while to locate the problem. Yes changing the respective form to “&context=bild” would restore the website. But why? Who cares about the URL? It should be possible to change the admin language without destroying the website, in my opinion. Thanks for reading.

Bloke · 2017-03-03 08:53:07

ax wrote #304341:

It should be possible to change the admin language without destroying the website

In 4.7.0 it will be. Admin language and front-side language are treated as separate entities. Phase one of bringing multiple-language site support to core.

It doesn’t fix the language-sensitive URLs, unfortunately, but we’ll address that in future versions. Maybe we’ll go back and make everything English URL strings at the expense of backwards-compatibility, or permit both for a few versions so people can adjust, or keep them as they are and just manage it better so it’s more transparent. No decision has been drawn yet: it’ll depend on us weighing up the pros and cons of each approach.

etc · 2017-03-03 09:06:43

ax wrote #304341:

Who cares about the URL?

Many people, unfortunately. We are slaves of SEO.

ax · 2017-03-03 09:17:00

etc wrote #304354:

Many people, unfortunately. We are slaves of SEO.

Correct, but SEO likes URLs that would not change (as per language settings for example), and prefer readable buzzwords, such as “image” (better than “bild”, I assume). Therfore, I would vote for freezing the English language into the URLs. It does not affect a whole lot of keywords anyway.

Bloke wrote #304349:

weighing up the pros and cons of each approach.

What about having a voluntary advisory board for questions like this?

etc · 2017-03-03 09:30:23

ax wrote #304355:

I would vote for freezing the English language into the URLs.

+1, if a bw-compatible way is possible.

jakob · 2017-03-03 09:57:43

I admit to not having read the entire thread, but I do think there are some cases where it is good to have localised urls, for example /author, /category etc. Currently I do this via htaccess.

Bloke · 2017-03-03 10:22:44

ax wrote #304355:

SEO likes URLs that would not change (as per language settings for example)

Maybe. The vagaries of search engine’s algorithms remain a mystery. In terms of language designators, I sort of agree. My initial draft when I started thinking about it was that having /en, /jp, etc in the URLs wasn’t much use. As long as the <html> tag has an appropriate lang attribute, search engines can figure out the language and index accordingly. Not having a visual URL designator makes things a whole lot simpler (in some ways) but more tricky in others. But it’ll largely depend on how we implement multi-lingual content.

Having localised URL components such as /category, /author, etc, I still don’t know. Part of me thinks it’s a nice-to-have. Part of me wishes I’d never followed the original Txp paradigm when I introduced context for the other content-types. It works fine for most Western languages, but looks terrible in browser bookmarks when they urlencode, for example, Japanese URLs.

Somewhere there’ll be a solution that satisfies most people, I just haven’t stumbled upon it yet.

What about having a voluntary advisory board for questions like this?

You mean, like a forum ;-)

Destry · 2017-03-13 09:58:12

Bloke wrote #304359:

You mean, like a forum ;-)

+1

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#21 2017-03-03 00:20:51

Re: Public-side multi-lingual URLs

#22 2017-03-03 08:53:07

Re: Public-side multi-lingual URLs

ax wrote #304341:

#23 2017-03-03 09:06:43

Re: Public-side multi-lingual URLs

ax wrote #304341:

#24 2017-03-03 09:17:00

Re: Public-side multi-lingual URLs

etc wrote #304354:

Bloke wrote #304349:

#25 2017-03-03 09:30:23

Re: Public-side multi-lingual URLs

ax wrote #304355:

#26 2017-03-03 09:57:43

Re: Public-side multi-lingual URLs

#27 2017-03-03 10:22:44

Re: Public-side multi-lingual URLs

ax wrote #304355:

#28 2017-03-13 09:58:12

Re: Public-side multi-lingual URLs

Bloke wrote #304359:

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