Orchard CMS: Up and Running

Chapter 7. Localization

Though there’s no pressing need right now, it seems inevitable that Daisy’s Gone will need to support other languages on its website. Given the (partially) Italian blood that flows through the founding members, it seems like Italian language support is a good place to start. Porteremo Daisy per le persone buone d’Italia!

Orchard Site Localization

ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET WebForms both offer localization support by way of resource (.resx) files. Orchard instead takes a different approach that is a better match for its modular architecture. This approach is to use PO files, which are simple text files with a well-defined format. PO files are commonly used by other web frameworks, including many other CMS platforms.

Within an Orchard site, there are three areas you might need to localize. If your content creators are not native English speakers, you’ll want to take advantage of the admin and module translation files that have been created by the Orchard community. If you have developed a module that you’ll share in the Orchard Gallery, you might want to contribute translation files of your own. You’ll also likely want to enable the Localization module to allow the content that you create to be localized.

Admin Localization

Whether you’re looking to localize for Italian, Polish, or some other language, you’ll first want to visit http://orchardproject.net/Localize/ for a listing of available translation files. For each listed locale, you’ll be able to download a ZIP ...