Multi site and multi language on Drupal: Installation fails

[Jens-Erik]

Hello,

I have tried to set up a multi site after having changed the settings of the first site to multi language. Then the import of the modified civicrm/sql/civicrm_navigation.mysql (item 3 in the instructions http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Multi+Site+Installation) failed, because a table (I think it was civicrm_navigation) isn't found, as it has a localized name (original name with "de_" or so added). So as soon as the database is changed to "Enable Multiple Languages", adding another site according to the instructions doesn't work. When I changed the name of the table to the localized version, importing this file worked.

I think this should be somehow improved, and we should mention this in the documentation, as long as this issue is not solved.

Is there a way to change the language of some sites to German and leave the others in English language? When I change the settings on the German and Austrian sites to German, but not to multiple language, does it affect the other sites, that should remain in English? Probably yes, as it's only one CiviCRM instance. Or is it safe to switch to multiple languages after having set up all sites? What if I want to add another site afterwards?

The thing is, we have English and German websites, and having forms with English labels doesn't look professional, and some may not know English so well. Having support for multiple languages and multiple sites is an important feature for the decision if we can use CiviCRM (which I really want to) or going on using a custom made system that somehow works but isn't nearly as powerful as CiviCRM.

Jens-Erik

[Donald Lobo]

any specific reason why you dont want to use drupal multi-site and different civi databases for each site

i think a fair bit of work will be involved to get multi-language and multi-site to get working

lobo

[Jens-Erik]

Yes, we have an international association. and national associations. Every national member from Germany and Austria is automatically member in the international association and can access restricted content. We want to have all international members in one database, and that was one of my arguments for using CiviCRM, so we don't need to move around CSV files. Now we are testing CiviCRM in our new Austrian website in German and soon in a EU project in English, but we have English text fragments in the German form and some other issues we are struggling with (I'll take a look at them and write separate postings). In the back end it absolutely doesn't matter if we use English or German.

If the work is not too complicated and I had an overview how things actually work, I could invest some time in it or we could let a programmer of an agency do it. But I don't know where to start, and I have several other projects to do.

[Eileen]

Hi,

Those installation instructions are a little limited because most people only do the install once it's sort of hard to muster the enthusiasm to make it really smooth.

However, if it's failing on a table name being different I would simply do a find & replace in the mysql. You probably need to capture the error message.

Once up & running there are no obvious areas of concern with mulit-site & multi-language (& we do in fact run a site with that configuration). Where there is a problem is multilanguage + logging (which is an optional configuration)

[Jens-Erik]

Hi,

Okay, I just saw that it's a wiki, so I can give a good example and improve it after having gained some knowledge about it.

In the meantime I have set the CiviCRM language of our Austrian website without having checked multi-language. So that seems to work fine, and I even have English in the main site. Actually that's all I need. In the Austrian and the possible German website we only need German, in the international sites only English.

But what is multi-language then? Probably using several languages on one site as a per user basis or according to browser or Drupal session settings, right?

Thanks for the answers!

[Eileen]

Multi language creates language specific fields for some fields so you can write, e.g. an English & an Austrian version of the event description - without relying on translation