CMS and multiple languages

Many large websites display content in several languages. Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) has powerful support for multi-language management, including translating content into a wide range of languages, defining fallback languages for non-translated content, and switching languages for the editorial user interface.

How does CMS know which language to display to visitors? CMS enforces the language to be visible in the URL, path, or domain part of the URL. When a website visitor selects a language option (if available), content in that language displays. Alternatively, the preferred content display language may be detected by the browser used by the visitor. A fallback procedure may be applied if content does not exist in a selected language.

Usually, a website has a default content language set up at the time of installation and might be set up with other languages.

Administrators can also set up different access rights to different languages so that you can access English and French content but not German and Spanish, for example.

The Optimizely user interface is available in 12 different languages. To set the desired user interface language for CMS, click your user profile name. Select My Settings > Display Options tab. At the Personal Language drop-down list, select the language of your choice, and click Save.

CMS supports 12 user interface languages. English is the master language, and the others are translated languages. You can have many more content languages.

See Multi-language management to work with multiple languages if Optimizely Commerce Connect is installed.

See Optimizing multiple sites and languages to work with multiple languages if you have Optimizely Search & Navigation installed.