There's one final step that we need to take care of to make our site multilingual.
It's a small step; it's really easily missed.
If you're looking at the front-end of your Web site, and it's still not behaving
quite right, this is probably the step that you missed, and that is we need to
enable the plug-in for the language filter.
So to do this, I am going to go to Extensions > Plug-in Manager. I am going to go
over to page 2 here in the Plug-in Manager, and I am going to scroll on down to
System - Language Filter.
And what I am going to do is simply enable it.
All I have to do is click on the red X, it becomes a green check, and that is now
enabled for the Web site.
Now when I refresh the front-end of the Web site, I should see my site function in
a multilingual manner.
So I am going to switch over here to the front-end, I am going to hit refresh,
and here I am on the Italian homepage, and the Italian homepage article, and I can
also see my About article here inside of the Italian Web site.
And if switch over to English, I have my English homepage, as well as all of
these other pages that you've become familiar with here on the Web site.
But you might notice that there is a few things missing where the homepage is concerned.
So, first of all, what happened to my random image? There used to be a random
image right here, and now it's gone, so where did that go?
Second of all, what happened to the Testimonials? I used to have some
testimonials over here in the right column; they are gone. What happened to them?
I don't see them on the Italian side either, although I don't really
necessarily want them on the Italian side. Those are English testimonials, and
they are not translated into Italian, so I'd like the testimonials to show on the English side.
And then the third thing that's happened is the background of this Web site is
orange now, and it used to be that we had teal on the homepage, and orange on all
the other pages, so what happened with that?
Well, let's tackle these three problems one at a time.
First of all, let's take a look at the issue with the random image.
So, always a good place to start is the Module Manager, so we're going to go to
Extensions > Module Manager, and I'm going to find my Random Image module, and I am
going to go to the Menu Assignment. Always a good place to start.
When a module that you think should display on the site is not displaying,
always check the Menu Assignment.
Back when we started building this Web site, we had just a homepage, and the main
menu, and we had a homepage in the footer, which was an alias type of link, and we
had the random image assigned to both of those pages. It's still assigned there.
But since then, we've made an Italian homepage, and an English homepage, and this
module is not assigned in those locations.
So what we need to do is assign it.
I am going to check off the English homepage for the Random Image, and I am going
to check off the Italian homepage for the Random Image, and then I am going to
go ahead and say Save & Close.
Now when I go back to the front-end of the Web site, and I click refresh, now I've
got my random image here on my English homepage.
But now I need to check the Italian side of the Web site, and when I check that,
I still don't have a Random Image module here on the Italian side of the
Web site. Why is that?
Well, when I put in my Italian article, I did not include the little piece of
code that loaded the module.
Remember where the Random Image module came from.
We put in a piece of code that said load position, way back many, many, many
videos ago, to load the Random Image module inside of the article for the
homepage for the English side of the Web site, and that English article is now
in use for the language of all homepage, and the English homepage, so that's
why we see it there.
But on the Italian side, we don't have the little code that calls for the
Random Image module.
So even though the module is assigned to this page, it doesn't have a
location to display.
So I need to go back to my article, and add that little bit of code.
So here in the back-end of Joomla,
I am going to go to Content > Article Manager, and I am going to find my Italian
Home page article, and I'm going to add to the end of it {loadposition random}
and say Save & Close.
And now when I refresh the Italian homepage, I have my random image showing up
here as well, and it's also present on the English homepage.
So that's the first problem solved.
The next problem I want solved has to do with my testimonials.
I need to make sure that the testimonials are displaying on the English side of
the Web site, but I don't want them displaying on the Italian side.
So, I am going to go back to the back-end of Joomla, back to Extensions > Module
Manager, and I'm going to go to my Testimonials module, and I am going to go to
the Menu Assignment.
Once again, always a great place to start.
This module has the same problem as the Random Image module in that this was
originally assigned to the footer menu home, and the Main menu home, but we now
have an English home, and it's not assigned there, so I am going to go ahead
and check that off.
The other change I am going to make is that since this is an English language
module, I'm going to assign it a language of English as well.
If I ever wind up adding a Testimonial module for the Italian side, I can set
that up, assign it to the Italian homepage, and set its language of Italian, so
that it will switch properly.
So I am going to switch over to my Details tab, and change the Language from All
to English (UK), and go ahead and say Save & Close.
And now when I refresh my English homepage, there's my Testimonials where I want
them, and on the Italian side, I don't have any testimonials, which is exactly what I want.
So, the last part of this has to do with why the background image is orange now,
and what happened to that dark teal background,
and the answer for that lies in the templates.
So in the back-end of Joomla,
we'll go to Extensions > Template Manager. Let's take a look at the templates that
we have in use on this site right now.
We have isis, which is our administrator template; that's not causing any problems,
but we have these four templates down here that are in use.
We have the protostar - Default template, which is controlling the language of All
for the Web site, and I have a homepage that's assigned to a copy of that.
That is, the homepage of all actually is assigned this template, and this template
is the one that has the teal background in it, so that's why that page is teal.
We made a copy of protostar - Default with the orange background when we made our
English and our Italian template styles.
So if I want to have a teal background on the English side of the site for
the homepage, and an orange background for the rest of the site, I need to
make one more clone.
So I am going to copy this English template, put a checkmark next to it, and say Duplicate.
This is going to make a second English template.
I am going to click on this to edit it, and instead of calling it English (2), I
am going to call it English Home.
And under the Options here, I'll set the Background Colour to be the same as the
Template Colour, so 006078.
Then under the Menu Assignment, I'm going to check the English Home menu as
assigned to this, and I am going to say Save & Close.
Now when I switch to the English side of the Web site, I have my teal background
here for the homepage, and I have the orange background for the About, and all the
other pages of the Web site.
If I would like to have my Italian homepage also have a teal background, I'm
going to follow that exact same procedure that I just did for the English
homepage, I am going to repeat that same process for the Italian homepage, and
then the Italian homepage will have a teal background, and orange pages for the
other pages on the Web site.