Ola,

I thought about something that could be nice for miniBB.
Nowadays, we got about 30 languages to be used with miniBB. This is very nice. When you visit a forum, the default language is shown. I have visited miniBB-forums in Russian and Arabic. They are hard to read for me:)

Would it be posible to change the language although you did not sign-up?
I think a menu-item for non-registered visitors like "Change Language" could do the trick. This preference could be saved in the cookie.
Then every visitor (member or non-member) can see the forum in the language he/she likes best. It's kinda hard to sign-up on a chinese forum for me, if this is allowed.

I am aware that most content on foreign forums will be in the foreign (default) language. This doesn't mean I'm not interested what they write :-) When I'm able to set the forum-text (not content!) to English this will make my life easier. I once spend an evening reading a Russian forum with a free translator :-)

_Marco

miniBB has built-in options for this - true, it was not tested in all cases, but it should work (except for mod_rewrite module enabled, of course, when it won't work and shouldn't work). When you have multilanguage board, you can provide outside link to forums with "setlang" parameter in it.

For example:

//yourforums/index.php?setlang=rus
//yourforums/index.php?setlang=ned

will provide links for anonymous users to Russian and Nederlands interface, if available. These parameters also should be automatically saved in inner URLs when browsing a forum.

Nice! I'll run some tests.

_Marco

It's working.

I also found out there was a default setting in miniBB 1.7
index.php?action=language

Why is this not in 2.0? (or did I do something wrong?)

_Marco

Analyzing the wishes, we have moved this setting to user's profile in 2.0. Mostly, users have one-language boards, so if somebody has multilanguage, it's better (for search indexers, including) if users register the profile and then choose their language there.

The logic is as follows: people take part in discussions in a language they understand. So, the menus are in the same language - usually the regional, the domestic one.

If I go, for example, to a Portuguese forum, it's supposed that I know this language. If I don't, it will be not of much help to me the menus to be in Bulgarian :)

In the other case, when I'm from a certain country and I can communicate in the language of the board, but for me is more pleasant to see the menus in my own language, I can set it up from the preferences - if my language is offered. Somewhere it will be, somewhere - not. It depends on the owner's will.

In addition, this is not Photoshop with hundreds of functions, here the menus are relatively simple.

People, that want menus in their language but do not spend a couple of minutes to registrate themselves are not serious.

Team
Analyzing the wishes, we have moved this setting to user's profile in 2.0.

You are right. That's a much better option.

Ivan
people take part in discussions in a language they understand.

True.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I don't need this. I just create accounts for my foreign friends with the English and Spanish language set.
For other visitors it ain't much use to have Russian menu's and Dutch content.

Thank you.

_Marco

I will reuse this topic for language question.

My wish is to have two language forum (english and slovenian). I like to make list of forums for both languages. Because english users will not understand slovenian I like to show only english forums/topics/posts for english users and slovenian forums (+maybe also english) for slovenian users depending of choosen language on my main site.

My idea is to add some language field to forum (and topics if needed) table and make a little change in sql query to get only language I want.

Do you have any better idea?

I think cookies may be a better idea than SQL query.

I don't understand how can I choose what forums/topics to show with cookies. Maybe I was not clear enough, but I like to have a few forums in English and a few separated forums in Slovenian language. So English users will not see topics open in Slovenian forum and vice versa and will only see forums for particular language.

Anyway I already implemented this yesterday. I add additional language field in forum and topics database. In php files I only add additional condition for language when retrieving forums/topics. Depending on the choosen language on my site I show only those forums/topics. So I have integrated 2 different forums in one DB model.

Currently forum is still almost fully empty but you can see that if u choose flag at top-right.

kraji.eu/forum/eng

Guest
Ok you did this - but did you think of miniBB upgrades in the future? Now if we release the new version, you either will not have any easy chance to upgrade at all, either will have to re-update all of your files again.

Your case is a bit more difficult than explained in this thread. You really need to have 2 different table chains to store different forums in them, but the same users table. Then for each forum, you preferably should have a different sub domain, which still would point to the same forum core files. When a Slovenian or English sub domain is chosen, there should be a code which selects the proper table set for this forum.

In setup_options.php the code would be like this:

I.e. the script will load up different tables for different language. No cookies, no other alterations to database or scripts are required.

This implementation requires experience and your creativity :-) Multiple forums from multiple sub domains may run on the same, not altered core of miniBB. That's the main concept. I hope you've got some basics of the idea.