Greek & English language site

[vasilios]

I am trying to setup a dual-language zen cart site (Greek default language and English). Initially, this will be a test site on my local pc (windows xp with WAMP server and zen cart version 1.3.7.1) and finally I will transfer it to a commercial web server.
The product attributes will be presented in these two languages (e.g. product name, description, and other attributes) as well as the front end of the site.

Will there be two separate databases or one with additional fields to accommodate for the language versions of the product attributes?

I guess, if there is one database, the language pack or some add on should provide for the additional fields (e.g. the english/greek versions of a product description, when the visitor selects the Greek site, the greek version of attributes-field is output, and accordingly for the english version).

I have read many posts related to language packs but I also have read that mysql database collation plays a role in the correct character storage.

After all this reading I am a little bit confused as to what should I do. From what I have understood, first I need to change the collation of the database to either utf8 (which kind of utf8 ?, utf8_bin or utf8_unicode_ci ?) or greek_general_ci.
Which exactly collation do I use for Greek and which for English?

Then, I guess I will have to install a greek language pack (the one from krom) or just a utf8 pack ? In other words, does the utf8 pack take care both of the English and Greek versions?

How will the administrator fill the store with new products, in both languages ?
I understand that my questions are many but they are all related together....


I appreciate your help
Vasilis

[manton]

I had great problems with the greek language because it was stored both at the database and in php files as question marks.
I followed the steps described here and it worked for me.

Note that I am not using utf-8 but greek_general_ci

As far as storing categories and products is concerned, don't worry, you will find out that zen-cart, when inserting products, requires details for every language you have installed ;)

[vasilios]

I am very happy to hear that...(about zen cart asking me to fill in the fields for the additional language packs, so only one database is used, as it should be).
Does greek_general_ci take care of English characters as well (in case a product has english characters in its attributes) ?

Now, another question: in case that one has already setup a store and needs to change the collation, if he does that, the default new collation is applied to the newly created tables or columns. Is there a way to change the collation and apply the new one to the already created database tables and columns (I dont mind about the data, I haven't inserted many).... In other words is there a way to avoid re-installing the store from the beginning ?

[manton]

My attempt to change the collation on the installed database failed and I had to create a new one.

Yes, it applies to the English (latin) characters as well, but I suggest that as soon as you setup the database, you should do some testing in both languages to verify that it is working fine.

[vasilios]

Have you tried the Greek language pack (krom) with zen cart version 1.3.8 ? Does it work? For example, if I want to use some add-ons like bar code functionality, which I think is for version 1.3.8, can I use also the greek language pack for this version ?

[manton]

I am not aware of the add on you mention but in some others I tested I didn't face any problem, except that some greek php pages are not fully or not at all translated.