Problems in setting up a multilingual store

[robinast]

Freshly installed store (with inmotionhosting.com, via cPanel), no any products created yet. PHP 5.3, MySQL Community Edition 5.0.96

Freshly added Spanish language seemed to be successful (only - for some reason, the Spanish flag icon does not show up though the 'icon.gif' is where it should be - in the folder includes/languages/spanish/images).
Tried also to add the German language - but without a success. I renamed the 'admin' folder to 'zcadmin' and copied the contents of de_DE folder to the shop folder (as instructed in adding Spanish language; the de_DE folder, downloaded from http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=205, did not contain any instructions. Now, the (shop)/includes/languages contains the following:

The shop can be seen here: http://e-aiand.com/zen/

So far, I've made no any other changes to the install that adding these two languages.

So, how to install the German language? And what could be wrong with the Spanish flag icon? Later, I plan to add the Russian language as well - after the Spanish and German will be OK.

[robinast]

Well, I downloaded the German language pack again. This time I also saw the instructions among downloaded files and it also seems that the German language installation was successful this time.

Only again - neither Spanish nor German flag icon does not show up...

[mc12345678]

Well, I downloaded the German language pack again. This time I also saw the instructions among downloaded files and it also seems that the German language installation was successful this time.

Only again - neither Spanish nor German flag icon does not show up...

So you have a file specifically titled icon.gif (capitalization is important) in:
includes/languages/spanish/images/

and in

includes/languages/german/images/

with both folders being off of your store's base directory. It would appear that the base directory for your store is on your server then in the sub-folder of zen.. so for the images to properly be displayed, would need to have them in: zen/includes/languages/AlternateLanguageOfChoice/images

[robinast]

... so for the images to properly be displayed, would need to have them in: zen/includes/languages/AlternateLanguageOfChoice/images

Thank you very much for your reply!

public_html/zen/includes/languages/english/images/icon.gif : the icon showed up
public_html/zen/includes/languages/spanish/images/icon.gif : the icon did not show up
public_html/zen/includes/languages/german/images/icon.gif : the icon did not show up

After changing permissions for two folders .../AlternateLanguageOfChoice/images from 700 to 755 (as it has been for the English language all the time), the flags appear as expected. BUT - I don't know just too much about files/folders permissions, so the question remains: was that a wise thing to do?

[mc12345678]

Thank you very much for your reply!

public_html/zen/includes/languages/english/images/icon.gif : the icon showed up
public_html/zen/includes/languages/spanish/images/icon.gif : the icon did not show up
public_html/zen/includes/languages/german/images/icon.gif : the icon did not show up

After changing permissions for two folders .../AlternateLanguageOfChoice/images from 700 to 755 (as it has been for the English language all the time), the flags appear as expected. BUT - I don't know just too much about files/folders permissions, so the question remains: was that a wise thing to do?

Read through the following FAQ http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?...-files-folders
My initial thought is that you have now setup the directory as expected; however, I would suggest looking through that FAQ to validate my thought...

And by the way, good question to ask...

[robinast]

Thanks! But I did not change the directory - the only thing I did, was to change permissions.

[mc12345678]

Thanks! But I did not change the directory - the only thing I did, was to change permissions.

Note the first box at the top of that FAQ. It has a clickable link to a FAQ. Although all information in the FAQ is important, take note of item 11 for your issue.

Although you did not change the directory, the security settings are still applicable. In this case, it is not as important about how one caused this problem, as it is that the effects are corrected.

[lhungil]

Thanks! But I did not change the directory - the only thing I did, was to change permissions.

See this article (in particular "Set permissions on folders"). This article will be a good read when it comes time to upgrade (in the future).

I typically do not recommend using the "installer" via cPanel for Zen Cart (if you did) as you sometimes miss seeing some of the important "setup", "configuration", and other "documentation" available during the Zen Cart installation (the installation documentation can also be found in the "doc" folder and on the Zen Cat website).

Note 1: 3rd party installers can also sometimes include changes to Zen Cart which are not standard... Sometimes the changes are good like bugfixes, filesystem permission changes, and changing default settings to work better with their server configuration. Sometimes the changes cause intermittent errors or skip critical installation checks / steps (and the created issues may be hard for anyone here to track down because they are not privy to the changes made by the 3rd party and may not be able to duplicate the issue in a "stock" Zen Cart installation).

Note 2: InMotion Hosting uses suPHP on their web servers (by default on VPS and forced on "shared hosting" if I remember correctly). So when you see "if your server uses suPHP", the information will probably apply to your server. Last time I checked they also use mod_security, so if you run into any strange 406 errors (rare) you will want to contact their support.

[robinast]

Note the first box at the top of that FAQ. It has a clickable link to a FAQ. Although all information in the FAQ is important, take note of item 11 for your issue.

Although you did not change the directory, the security settings are still applicable. In this case, it is not as important about how one caused this problem, as it is that the effects are corrected.

Thank you, the link was both useful for me and interesting!
After reading through it, I made some more corrections to the permissions: it appeared that both the Spanish and German languages had permissions set to 700 in several places where English had 755. So I changed the permission to match them with the English language. The Zen Cart itself was installed via cPanel and the additional language packages were added through gFTP - may-be that's why the permissions were different for different languages. And as I already had a minor issue seemingly due to this mismatch, I gave the same permissions to other languages as the English language has by default. I think it's safe - unless, of course, there is some permissions-linked issue with the ZC default installation itself (which, I think, is not very likely).

Anyway, I'm just learning now and will not start with the real shop very soon. So, if I make mistakes, I can learn from them without too much pain.

One more question: content of which folders have to be translated to an another language to have the front-end completely (including buttons) in this language? 'includes' and 'admin' - sure, but what else? The back-end translation is not important. The Spanish package has three folders (email, includes, admin), the Russian package has a lot more (but as I understand, not compatible with the v1.5.1). I would need both the Russian and Estonian languages in my future store as well...

[robinast]

See this article (in particular "Set permissions on folders"). This article will be a good read when it comes time to upgrade (in the future).

I typically do not recommend using the "installer" via cPanel for Zen Cart (if you did) as you sometimes miss seeing some of the important "setup", "configuration", and other "documentation" available during the Zen Cart installation (the installation documentation can also be found in the "doc" folder and on the Zen Cat website).

Greatest thanks! I bookmarked the links you provided so that I could find this useful info in the future. The info I found from them gave me a confidence that changing folder permissions form 700 to 755 was not only OK but also a must to do.