PHP Framework (especially for multi-lingual sites)

[StrangerInBeijing]

I guess this is a topic that have been discussed and argued about many times. But I always preferred building complete systems from scratch, and never bothered with any framework, cms or the likes.

Anyhow, will be taking on several smaller projects, nearly all multi-lingual, and was wondering if (and which) ther is a framework to not only allow you easily build multi-lingual sites, but also make it easy for site-owners to add and edit languages.

[dclamp]

Have you looked into SMARTY? it is a template engine that allows code and HTML/CSS/Language to be seperate. I have never really played with different languages, you may want to look into it.

[StrangerInBeijing]

I'll spend some time looking into it.
Started messing with Joomla a few days back, and read that creating multi-lingual sites with that is also possible. Will see if it "meet my criteria".
Thanks again bothering to reply

[dclamp]

I am not sure if you use FaceBook or not, but their approach to multiple languages is to have all the text dynamic.

for example, if i want have the title "My Great Site" in Spanish, it would be like this:

<?php 
$lng = 'es'; //set the language in the beginning
 ?>

<title><?php getText('mygreatsite', $lng); ?></title>

getText will be some function that looks in your database for 'mygreatsite' then finds the spanish translation.

[StrangerInBeijing]

yep, used facebook, but blocked in china now (along with twitter, youtube, etc). good to hear they use php, never knew that. :-D

Actually I build a language framework working like that myself. Works pretty well (though I want to refactor the whole thing as I wrote it when I lacked some oop knowledge). Works really great. Once site is up, the site owner can add as many languages they want (and translations of course) without any need calling the developer.

Will see....guess have to use the different frameworks and systems to know if have to use my own or de not for future work.