multi language edition in J2.5

To activate the edition of content in multiple languages you get: "you need to install Joomfish in order to be able to use multi language edition."
But Joomfish is a joomla 1.5 component?!
Don't hikashop use the native multilanguage system in Joomla 2.5?

There is actually an alpha version of Joomfish for joomla 2.5 so we should be able to have a multilingual solution for 2.5 soon.

Otherwise you can use the native multilingual system of joomla 2.5 but it's really not practical.
You would need to have one category tree per language and duplicates of each products in each category tree and then create several times your menus and modules restricting them to only one language of joomla and associated to the corresponding categories. That way, when you change the language, different menus/modules will be used and display the corresponding categories and products.

So Hikashop do not have multilanguage feature AND jomla 1.6+ compatibility. Quite an important information. I'll leave my Business license on the shelf then, for a possible future use. But I would urge you to consider not depending on a 3'rd part plugin to support multilanguage now that it is not nessesary anymore and Joomfish have been asleep for an eternity.

The multi lingual support of Joomla doesn't change much for us. As it is done, it is as useful as what was in Joomla 1.5. Which means that we would have to handle all the multilingual processing on our end. Joomfish wasn't just about proposing modules and articles in several languages for Joomla 1.5 but it was a real way for extensions to easily support it with a small integration.
It was also the de facto standard on 1.5.
I agree that having that directly into HikaShop will be a good idea for the future. It's on the todo list.

Would it be possible to use Falang instead? They are ready now and should be alot like Joomfish.

Hi,

We worked on the compatibility with Falang on our end and it is working great.
It will be available for next release of HikaShop in February.
If you need it before, please use our contact form to request a pre version (along with your HikaShop Business/Essential order number if you use one of our commercial versions) and we will provide you an install package which will work with falang.

Same multi language issue but I'm working in J1.7.
FaLang is great but at this point the SEF URLs do not get translated!
FaLang is not compatible with any SEF component, Stephane is planning to integrate with a SEF component but no date.
So I'm thinking of falling back to J1.7 multi language edition (I know it translates SEF URLs).
But it sounds like Hikashop multi language will not work with Joomla multilanguage, right?

Why can't you use both ?
Falang installed for HikaShop's multilanguage and then use the joomla mutlilanguage for the rest.

HikaShop's multi language will indeed only work with joomfish and falang.

Your idea sounds good. Thanks! I'm going to try...

Hi Nicolas

Sorry but I don't agree with you here.

Joomfish makes no sense in Joomla 2.5, the system is already prepared for multilingual websites.

In our case before buying your component we have to have this really clear.

We need to create a multilanguage website to sale all over Europe so this feature is essential. Other e-commerce solutions have this option natively so please consider adding it as I still don't see the need for Joomfish here.

Regards

I tried the solution that Nicolas suggested and it's working great!

I'm now using Joomla multilanguage for the menus (works fine with SEF URLs).
And Falang for Hikashop translations (+ modules translation)

This tutorial was very helpful in order to understand Joomla multilanguage and make it work:
multilingual-joomla-demo.cloudaccess.net...-steps-by-steps.html

You can create menu items for your Hikashop products in each language, but you have to make sure to select Language: "All" in these items so that they will get translated by FaLang.

Hi manuxx,

The multilanguage system of Joomla is not something you can really "integrate with" but for which you can build your own multilanguage system. Basically, you have to have your own translation layer (and thus change a lot of things if your component doesn't already handle that from the start).
Joomfish-like systems have the translation layer on their end. So for a developer, integrating with it is really easy. Plus, when we started to work on HikaShop Joomfish was the reference for translations. It was making perfect sense to integrate with it at that time.

Now that HikaShop has been release supporting Joomfish for more than 1 year, continue on that path is easy for us which means that we can give a solution to that rapidly to you.
Supporting multilanguage directly in HikaShop would mean literally months of development. We prefer to spend that time on new features that are requested from a long time instead. We feel that it's a win-win for everyone.

Hi Nicolas, thanks for fast reply.

I can understand that, if I can build my multilanguage website with Joomfish and your component I'm happy with it.

The question I have basicly is that we want to build a website selling all over Europe with your component, for that, Multilanguage is essential thats why Im worried about this feature.

Regards

As mbeley said, Falang on 2.5 with the preversion of HikaShop (it will be in next release of HikaShop) and Joomfish on 1.5 with the current version of HikaShop works great.
Sure, you have to have Joomfish/Falang on your website. but I don't see why that would be a problem.

I installed the version that supports Falang, but it seems to do so without the language-tabs for content that you have for joomfish, so that would mean that the use have to make products and then go to falang and make translations. Is this how it is supposed to work?
Joomfish is still not officially supporting J1.5+ so they are not serious, and I don't think I make my customers have to rely on joomfish. They might have been standard once but obiviously not anymore

The integration is the same with Falang. You can have the language tabs for content directly in HikaShop.
For that, you need to activate the corresponding option in the Languages tab of the configuration of HikaShop.

As I said Nicolas I'm happy with that if there's an option to translate everything, for what I see in the forum section showcase most Hikashops are designed for sales in a particular country and what we need is bigger, hope you understand our concern with this issue.

Regards

Yes, most users don't use multilanguage but others do. We didn't get any negative feedback from them so far be it with Joomfish or Falang.
HikaShop can handle big websites too. We have users with more than 100 000 products catalogue using HikaShop.