README

The Language Manager plugin adds easy integration for a language switcher and for the correct hreflang attributes in the header.

• The language switcher is a simple menu that links to all parallel language versions of the same page
• The hreflang tags add the correct hreflang attributes in the header of the page (including setting the x-default tag for the primary version)

Requirements

This plugin requires Craft CMS 4.0 or later.

Installation

You can install this plugin from the plugin Store or with Composer.

From the Plugin Store

Go to the Plugin Store in your project’s Control Panel and search for “Language Manager”. Then press Install in its modal window.

With Composer

Open your terminal and run the following commands:

# go to the project directory
cd /path/to/my-project

# tell Composer to load the plugin
composer require spacemonk/language-manager

# tell Craft to install the plugin
php craft plugin/install language-manager

Language Switcher

The sites have to be added in the same site group in Craft CMS.

The language switcher will switch to the parallel site in a different language, if there is no parallel site, it will fall back to the main page. The labels can be set to different styles or you can provide your own. The plugin supports keeping query parameters for the url (default off)

Easy → via hook

In your twig template at the position where you want to have the language switcher menu, add the following hook:

{% hook 'languageManagerNavigation' %}

You can also use caching (be careful when using cache together with the activated setting to keep query parameters).

{% cache %}
    {% hook 'languageManagerNavigation' %}
{% endcache %}

The main nav has the class language-manager for easy CSS targeting.

The output will look like this:

<nav aria-label="Change language" class="language-manager">
  <ul>
    <li class="active">
      <a href="https://yourwebsite.domain/" hreflang="en" lang="en">
        English
      </a>
    </li>
    <li>
      <a href="https://yourwebsite.domain/de/" hreflang="de" lang="de">
        German
      </a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</nav>

Advanced → custom integration

The plugin exposes a twig function getLanguageManagerPages(), which returns an array of page objects. For details see below.

As a starting point you can copy the code from the hook template here.

Labels

You can choose from several options to display the language switcher labels.

1. Language Code (e.g. 'EN')
2. Long Language Code (e.g. 'EN-US')
3. Language Name (e.g. 'English')
4. Long Language Name (e.g. 'English (United States)')
5. Your own custom label translations, see here

Hreflang Tags

Easy → via hook

In your template (in the html head), add the following hook:

{% hook 'languageManagerHreflang' %}

You can also use caching.

{% cache %}
    {% hook 'languageManagerHreflang' %}
{% endcache %}

The output will look like this:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://yourwebsite.domain/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://yourwebsite.domain/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://yourwebsite.domain/de/" />

The x-default attribute is set to the primary site.

Advanced → custom integration

The plugin exposes a twig function getLanguageManagerPages(), which returns an array of page objects. For details see below.

As a starting point you can copy the code from the hook template here.

Custom Label Translations

If you choose to provide your own label names, you can do so via the translations. The plugin uses the language codes (e.g. en or en-US) as translation key for the labels. To add your labels create a translation file with the name language-manager.php and place it in the folder with the specified language (e.g. yourprojectroot/translations/en/language-manager.php. Then add your translations:

<?php

return [
    'en' => 'English',
    'en-US' => 'American',
    'de' => 'German',
    'de-CH' => 'Swiss German',
];

Twig function

The plugin exposes a twig function getLanguageManagerPages(), which returns an array of page objects. Each page object has the following fields:

'url' => The url
'queryParameters' => The query parameters to concatenate with the url (always empty if setting 'keepQueryParameters' == false)
'label' => The label to show in the navigation
'isoCountryCode' => The ISO country code (e.g. 'EN', 'DE' or 'CH' (ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 code))
'isoLanguageCode' => The ISO language code (e.g. 'en', 'de' or 'de-CH' (ISO 639-1 and two letter country code where relevant))
'isActive' => true if this is the current active language version, else false
'isPrimarySite' => true if this language version is the primary site in the control panel
'isFallback' => true if no language version exists (this means the url points to the base path)

Settings

Control Panel

Settings can be easily adjusted in the control panel.

Config

Settings can also be set via config and will overwrite and disable the Control Panel settings.

Create a file called language-manager.php and place it in the config folder (e.g. yourprojectroot/config/language-manager.php). Then add your config:

<?php

return [
    'keepQueryParameters' => false,
    'showLanguageInThatLanguage' => false,
    'labelType' => 'code'
];

Following options are possible:

• keepQueryParameters → true, false
• showLanguageInThatLanguage → true, false
• labelType → code, code-long, name, name-long, custom
  • They represent each of the options explained here