One of the most frustrating things about Joomla is it’s lack of thorough documentation.  Yeah, there’s an API… yeah there’s a Wiki… but it just seems like there are a  lot of gaps and holes that don’t necessarily have to exist. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to implement languages in your component in Joomla! 1.5.

First off, lets talk about why this tutorial is important.  Let’s say you’re creating a component to give site admins a way to easily create a special Links (yes, there’s already one for Joomla, it’s 2am, just go with me on this) section.  On the back-end, you’ve got an “Add Link Category” page that takes admins to a nice form that lets them create a category for links in this component.  So you’ve got text for “Name:” and “Description:” and maybe even “Category Image:” if they want to use an image with the text.  You finish your component and release it, and someone in the Joomla community wants to make a Spanish version of your component.  They would have to dig into your source code and basically re-write all of your inline html that you’ve written; essentially necessitating a while new release of your component in an “English version” and “Spanish version.”

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Tags: Joomla, PHP, Tutorials