Textpattern CMS

#13 2025-04-11 09:37:00

abutcher

Plugin Author

Registered: 2023-06-29

Posts: 16

Re: multilingual sites

Hey Bloke,

I agree about the tabs, or a selector, or whatever, so long as it’s clear on the status of the translations are. I can see how it could be unclear which version you’re saving, but then there’s a decision to be made: Do you keep one interface for modifying the article, and within that you select which language you’re editing, hiding the implementation from the user, or do you expose the implementation to the user by showing an article as a header with one or more content lines underneath it, so you can choose which article instance you’re choosing.

The former feels cleaner if you have a small team, but the latter makes more sense for larger sites. For former allows you to bulk edit minor changes more efficiently, but should include a modification to only save what has been modified, showing the user clearly what will be saved. The latter on the other hand also opens up the possibility of A/B switching (i.e. an article that’s published and live, but a second draft version in the same language as a work-in-progress to update it).

Thanks also for the clarity on where this is heading for 5.x. I’m trying to weigh up the best use of resources for an upcoming project I have: on the short term, do I (or someone else here) implement this client’s site in Textpattern and write a new plugin from scratch to handle the multilingual support, especially if it’ll just be obsolete by 5.x, or use another package (which I really don’t want to do). If it’s going to become a core functionality in the short term anyway, then maybe I don’t bother :)