add Language field to ibf_forums

[soif]

I would love to be able to easely manage multi languages sites within IPB. :cool:
If you run a site in multiple language (different content for each language), you cant find an elegant way to run a different group of forums for each languages. Let me explain:

Lets say i run a site in ENglish, FRench, SPanish.
- Each site language has its own forums written in its own languages (interface AND content)
- There are ie 20 forums written in ENglish, 20 forums written in FRench, and 20 forums written SPanish.

whatever the problem to only display forums with the same language as the site language, it become really difficult to use most of the board usefull fonctions like "View New Posts", "Search", "Forum Jump" , because it obviously mixes the results from the total 60 forums and NOT the results from the 20 forums of the same language as the visitors...

My suggestion:
This would be easely solved adding a "content_language" field in the ibf_forums table.
In the ACP, for each forum, the admin would be able to assign one of the installed language packs to this "content_language" field thru a popup.
The admin would also globally choose to either display all forums whatever the visitor language is (like it works until now), or that each visitors would see and browse ONLY the forums in ITS own language : EN people see only EN forums, FR people see only FR forums and SP people would see only SP forums.

I would kill for that :P

but i'm sure every one running a multilingual site would be really happy with this killer feature.

what you think? May be it is already on the way?

[Wolfie]

You could just use categories combined with personal language selection.

First catagory be (say) English, and it's forums/subforums there, so if you click the "English Forums" title, you go into there and can proceed from there

Same for the other languages, but for each of the languages, have it in it's own language (ie, Spanish would be in Spanish)

You could even have it basically say "Click here for the (English/French/Spanish) forums"

[soif]

You could just use categories combined with personal language selection.

First catagory be (say) English, and it's forums/subforums there, so if you click the "English Forums" title, you go into there and can proceed from there

Same for the other languages, but for each of the languages, have it in it's own language (ie, Spanish would be in Spanish)

You could even have it basically say "Click here for the (English/French/Spanish) forums"

This exactly the way i'm doing currently, but the issue is that:
- when you click on "view new post", you will see posts written in ALL language : this is really annoying for ie an english visitor to see a lists of posts where only 1/3 of the posts are written in english....
- when you do a seach, if you want to seach in the whole board, you end up with post in all language.
- when you use category to separate language, you CANT use categories anymore to split your forums per subjects, as a mono language forum admin could do.
- etc...

This list can be pretty long, if you want me to detail :rolleyes: and this is definitively not convenient to run a multi language board with IPB. Running a board per language is neither the solution, because you end up with separate users databases....

I'm OK to pay a licence per language if this is the point :shifty: (w00t) :P

[soif]

Anymone else interested by this feature?

Any IPB Staff thought about it?

IPB: If only you would add this "language" field to the ibf_forums table and the preference field (global ACP to control how languages are supported), i would be happy to make all the modifications in the php code to fully implement this feature, and will be able to share it with you and the community. o:)

[soif]

IPB staff? anyone?