TapBeat - International Tap Dance Center

[schwoortz]

http://tapbeat.de/en/ is the new site of the premier tapdance studio in Berlin. In this case, the bilingual concept is solved via two seperate installs. They had something else first at the tapbeat.de root level, so - knowing they might well come up with more than one language, I instelled GetSimple to /de/ and we developped the german version there. Added english just today.

As of now, these are two totally seperated (duplicated) seperate installs. Next step would be to share css and background-graphics from the same folder.

[polyfragmented]

Hi Michael,

thanks for sharing that GS-powered site! I like the clean and orderly layout, colours are fine for me as well. Good job! Did you use any additional plugins in your install?

I noticed that the footer on the English version is in German, shouldn't it be in English?

The "imprint" at the bottom of the page might get you in trouble if a lawyer stumbles across the site and bombs you with a disciplinary warning letter asking you to pay a silly amount of money. The imprint is nowhere near complete for German legal standards. A search for "impressum website geschäft" or similar should find you informational sites.

As for the bi-lingual solution, there's a plugin called "I18N" which provides multi-lingual features from within one install (and an internationalised multi-level navigation as well). From your wording I wasn't sure if you guys deliberately separated the installs or not. Having 2 or more installs for a website is, most of the time, not very practical.

Keep rocking with GS!

[schwoortz]

Hi,

thanks for the feedback and also the warning - I guess the client needs to create a real imprint, I just told her so. This is something I really don't like to deal with :-)
In fact, I did another very similar Site - http://www.nightofjazzguitars.net - and I'm afraid, same issue here - although they're neuíther selling anything nor do they offer any services, so.

You're doing the German GS Site, righht? Cool!
Reg
Michael

[yojoe]

As of now, these are two totally seperated (duplicated) seperate installs. Next step would be to share css and background-graphics from the same folder.

I've been wondering for quite long time how to make a bit easier maintaining of multilang website and make it still SEF'ly.
You used 2 GS instances, thus to have a bit more automated management, those instances would have to share same session between each other, and backend theme would have to get a linky to 2nd admin panel.
I still wonder why I couldn't find out simpler method at the beginning
I advise you to install Mvlcek's advanced menu plugin, and reorganise a bit the site structure.
Create main language containers (just an ordinary pages), mark existing pages in their options as subpages of main lang. container page (index page will load automatically, thus move this page to default language container) The last thing to setup is to display 2 instances of the same menu.
First menu should show only top lvl pages w/o siblings, thus it will simply become a "change language" menu.
The "main" menu will have to be initialised beginning from 2nd lvl of siblings.

If there would be any problems, you can always prepare 2 themes and hardcode menu's top levels in some way. You can also display siblings of certain parent
Don't forget to declare document languages.
This is just a raw solution, and still needs a bit polishing and working on nuances (for example root language page redirect rule to 1st page inside language container)

have fun

ps. there's of course Mvlcek's i18n plugin allowing easy management of multilanguage websites.
But as I mentioned, SEF had top priority, and default showmenu function offers only flat 1 lvl menu.