Muti-language site

[eelucid8]

Hey there!
I want to make a website available in Spanish as well as English. Can I just paste the Spanish text into the design mode of Dreamweaver? Will DW translate the special characters properly? Thanks in advance,
Bill

 

[chrishirst]

I want to make a website available in Spanish as well as English.

Use a database driven site with documents written in both languages.

Can I just paste the Spanish text into the design mode of Dreamweaver? Will DW translate the special characters properly?

No and highly unlikely.

 

[eelucid8]

Hi and thanks for the response. I don't know how to make a database driven site. I guess I'll just build the site and go in manually and 'insert special characters' in Dreamweaver whenever they pop up. It'll be a daunting task, but I want to use a simple HTML/CSS approach here. If anybody else has other ideas, feel free to chime in. Thanks much!

 

[chrishirst]

I don't know how to make a database driven site.

Use a CMS that has multi-language capabilities and create your own template for it.


And ....

but I want to use a simple HTML/CSS approach here

ALL web pages are HTML/CSS when it is delivered to browsers.

 

[ronaldroe]

Google has a page translate widget. Give that a look.

 

[eelucid8]

All the characters I need have an &html; equivalent so I am going to paste the Spanish text into DW's design mode, then Find and Replace all 5 or 6 non-English characters with their given &html; code in the Code Window. Any reason this won't work? I'm being supplied the Spanish pages in a Word doc. I don't trust auto translation stuff.

 

[eelucid8]

The main reason I don't want to use a CMS is because I'm making the site responsive and I don't know how to do that in Joomla yet, which is the only CMS I know. I don't see why I cant take a Spanish Word document, do the 'paste to notepad' then copy to Design Mode then go into code view and bulk find and replace the Spanish characters with their html codes. Feel free to school me about why this won't work.

 

[chrishirst]

Making a Joomla! template 'responsive' is EXACTLY the same as making ANY website layout 'responsive. There is no "special way" for any CMS.

So if you have your layout already coded in HTML and CSS you're two thirds of the way there and the rest is simply a matter of putting the various "bits" of the template into the "right places"

Camebridge Software have a free blank template (HTML5 & 'responsive') that will give you a head start rather than trying to reverse engineer a standard Joomla! template.

Or if you want to try Wordpress, download Chris Coyeir's 'blank' theme and start with that.

 

[eelucid8]

Thanks, Chris. I'm familiar with Joomla, and it turns out the client indeed wants the ability to edit their own pages, so CMS is definitely the way to go. Thanks for your encouragement and links. Take care!