How to build Multilingual Shopping Cart?

Transitioning admin experience from ohh to aha

Gaurav Jain , 30 January, 2015


If you are using Joomla! CMS, for your multilingual website. You have two options,

  1. To use Joomla core.
  2. Use 3rd party extensions like Falang and JoomFish.

Both of these options are not so manageable.

However, setting up your own online store in multiple languages will be no more painful. No more nightmares of duplicating menus, category for every language. No more headache of using complicated 3rd party extensions. All thanks to the newly released shopping cart PayCart.

Creating multilingual websites requires translation of two parts i.e. Interface and Content. A language switcher is also required by which customer can choose his prefered language.

Translating Interface (e.g. form field labels) is simple. You install multiple language pack, and the interface can work in multiple languages. But Translating content (e.g. article, product, blog) is not straightforward. You need to create duplicate menus pointing to same content in different languages. After that in frontend visitor is presented menus related to current language. It requires more efforts and consistent approach, right from the start of website planning.

Let's explore an example of creating a store of 10 products in 3 languages Hindi, French and English -

Using Joomla Core :

  • Using joomla core methodology you need to create 10 items in each language.
  • Then you need to create menus for each item in each language.
  • So you need to create 30 items and 30 menus for proper working of website.

Using Translation Extensions (Falang) :

  • Need technical knowledge to create content element for each table which you want to translate, this will refer as DB Reference Eg create table for each one ie product, category, product attribute etc.
  • Now create Translation for each content element e.g product in one of your specified language like in English.
  • Repeat step b separately for each of the languages eg Hindi, French.
  • Repeat steps b and c for all other content elements tables like category, product attribute etc.
  • So if you have 10 products then you need to create content element of its table and all its translations.
  • Additionally if table or its structure gets modified then you have to make changes in all existing data.

So Falang, JoomFish and other translating components helps you to simplifies the management of multilingual sites. They allows you to translate all aspects of your site element after element to language after language.

But the only drawback for this is - you need a dedicated component to manage your multilingual.

<h4 class="jpp-font400">Using PayCart (Re-Imagined shopping cart) :</h4>
    <ul style="padding-left: 15px;"><li>Simply choose language from top and translate your data.</li>
        <li>Auto generated menu functionality is available for products and its categories, so no need to create menus at all.</li>
        <li>And believe it simply add translations of title and all your menu get auto translated in desired language. </li>
    </ul><div class="text-center jpp-margin-b30">