General Community > Scripting Help
force Language
MrPhil:
It's just courteous to talk to a member (or potential member) in their own language, if at all possible. It's up to the forum owner how they are going to moderate in languages other than their own, and whether a forum is balkanized by not making everyone speak the same language.
That said, the only sure-fire way of selecting a (supported) language is by letting the user make their choice from a menu. If it's a short enough list of selections, all of the choices could be displayed as radio buttons, rather than a dropdown list. As discussed before, a browser configuration may be used to select the default, but many browsers around the world remain configured in English because their users don't know how to reconfigure them (or even that it's possible). Trying to figure the language from geolocation isn't much better -- if it's in Paris, it's a good bet that French is a satisfactory default, but if it's near Brussels, it's a 50:50 chance it could be either French or Dutch, and those two groups of Belgians despise each other. It might just be best to go with English (or maybe the browser setting) as the default, and have a very obvious and easy to use language selection method at the very beginning -- on the main index.php page as well as every other page. In any case, it must be obvious and easy to spot and change the language setting so that the potential member can set it to what they want to use, even before they click on the "Register" link.
Is there any universal label or icon for language selection? If not, all I can suggest is a bunch of tiny national flag icons next to the language selection pulldown.
cocacolas:
--- Quote from: Arantor on June 20, 2012, 01:48:01 PM ---
Here's the thing: I've been working on websites for 14 years now, including some multi-lingual sites. I have yet to see a site that actually successfully detects the user's language correctly. GeoIP is not reliable (for the examples I gave earlier), browsers are not set properly far more than 10% of the time, my research on the subject puts it nearer to 40%.
--- End quote ---
Well... guessing at 40%, why not to do a simple script to offer the corect language to 40 of 100 visits?
--- Quote from: Arantor on June 20, 2012, 01:48:01 PM ---
I don't know enough about your site - you haven't told us anything about it - to tell you whether you're chasing dreams here or whether it would meaningfully benefit your site.
--- End quote ---
I hope don't missunderstand me and dont get bored but i don't told anything because this just was supposed to be " hey how i do that? -> $language='englis-utf8'; -> thanks! " , I appreciate your advice but you're obsessed with I can not do that IN ANY WAY and so must be
Arantor:
--- Quote ---I appreciate your advice but you're obsessed with I can not do that IN ANY WAY and so must be
--- End quote ---
I'm obsessed with trying to you not waste too much time on things that aren't going to work out too well and will ultimately make things worse for your users, not better.
The reason I'm even bothering is because I've actually worked on this for sites in the past. I'm telling you right now it will not work all that well, no matter how effective you think it will be.
Still, you appreciate my advice, the advise that you're wasting your time, but at this point I won't waste any more of mine trying to explain why it's not going to work out.
* Arantor feels much the same about all the people here who want support but don't want to listen to people who actually know about this stuff.
cocacolas:
--- Quote from: Arantor on June 20, 2012, 03:42:39 PM ---
--- Quote ---I appreciate your advice but you're obsessed with I can not do that IN ANY WAY and so must be
--- End quote ---
I'm obsessed with trying to you not waste too much time on things that aren't going to work out too well and will ultimately make things worse for your users, not better.
The reason I'm even bothering is because I've actually worked on this for sites in the past. I'm telling you right now it will not work all that well, no matter how effective you think it will be.
Still, you appreciate my advice, the advise that you're wasting your time, but at this point I won't waste any more of mine trying to explain why it's not going to work out.
* Arantor feels much the same about all the people here who want support but don't want to listen to people who actually know about this stuff.
--- End quote ---
It's hard to explain with my poor English knowledge, but i think you are getting from bad to worse, you think you are the one with the absolute truth and you are supposing / guessing many things ,
At this point i have near 11k reg users, in 4 languages from about 8 differents countrys, not even 2% has change NEVER his language in the panel control, (so the default language set is the one selected by browser / geoIp)
--- Code: ---SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE `lan_default` =0 LIMIT 0 , 30
--- End code ---
--- Code: ---Showing rows 0 - 29 ( 1335 total, Query took 0.0080 sec)
--- End code ---
The default language if none detected is English
--- Code: ---SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE `lan` ='en' LIMIT 0 , 30
--- End code ---
--- Code: ---Showing rows 0 - 29 ( 2120 total, Query took 0.0080 sec)
--- End code ---
I think it's pretty clear that at least, for me, this system work , i'm happy with it and i want to use it in the forum aswel...
Now i want to put a forum, i chooses this because i know it from old projects, i feel good with it, i like the support, and of course, it's FREE, i want just to SYNC the language of web and forum, i come here, i ask a simple question "HOW I CAN FORCE A LANGUAGE" and you dare to force me to pick your solution or i'm dumb and i don't want to leasten, because you are 14 year old in web business and you have the truth and also you are saving my life, you have decided that I'm wrong and must be so, there is no other way, now i tell you things about my site not for getting your help but to show you how wrong you were, you've played to assume that you are the smartest here instead of putting your point of view and triying to help me with the real problem, force a language...
Regards and apologize to other members for having to witness this ridiculous mess
Arantor:
--- Quote ---because you are 14 year old in web business
--- End quote ---
No, I've been developing websites for 14 years, I'm not 14 years old. But I take your point.
So let me understand this correctly, this query:
--- Quote ---SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE `lan_default` =0 LIMIT 0 , 30
--- End quote ---
I don't know the system you're using, however, if lan_default = 0 is the number of users who use the default language set by your system, that's 1335 users out of 11,000, a shade over 10%.
And there are 2120 users who use English, whether that's set by default or not, which is 20% of the site's 11k members.
--- Quote ---At this point i have near 11k reg users, in 4 languages from about 8 differents countrys, not even 2% has change NEVER his language in the panel control
--- End quote ---
So if I understand you correctly, less than 2% of users (200 out of 11,000) have never changed the default, which says that for 200 out of 11,000 the default was right, and that for the other 10,800 it was wrong.
I'm going on what you're posting here and it's possible I'm getting it wrong but it seems to me it's working less well than you think it is.
(0 - 29 is not 2% of anything. It's just the first page of results.)
But hey, thanks. Thanks for showing me that I shouldn't be offering support to people because I don't know what they want, that I don't know anything. It was a mistake ever getting involved in this topic, or this forum, really. (Never mind how many people I've helped over the years, I was wrong on those too, right?)
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