Multilingual content management system

We can only achieve a consistent management with a multilingual content management system. In this kind of CMS, each item to be published consists of two types of information. Part of the information is language independent, for example, such as the date of an event. The other part is language specific, this means that for each language we will have localized content.

There is, however, one item that must be considered. Although part of the information is language independent, the way we format this information may be language specific. In the example given, if an event date is 04/30/2008, when we show this event in the french language we need to show 30/04/2008. However, the information itself is the same.

For each website section there will be only a file, and, as we did in the previous alternative, the requested language will be specified in a querystring or cookie parameter. The file may contain include files, but the include files are language independent, so only one will be used for all languages.

Advantages of a multilingual content management system when compared to other alternatives:

- For each website section there will be only one file for all languages. The biggest advantage is that if we need to change the layout we can edit only one file and the change will be immediatelly available in all language formats.

- It is a straight forward process to change the language and to retain it in the same section. The only change that needs to be made is to the language option.  The user would then be automatically redirected to the same page.

- Making a new language available doesn't increase the risk of creating broken links. Because each section will use the same file for all languages, any updates made to one will also be reflected in all the other links for those languages. 

Another important aspect needs to be mentioned. Implementing a trully flexible multilingual content management system is complex. It doesn't help having a content management system that needs to be modified to support a new language.

We still have a problem that we had in the previous alternatives. As we saw, for each website section the same file will be used and inevitably we will run into untranslated urls.

How can we solve this?

Using virtual urls!