Volto / Configuration / Multilingual is missing instructions to adjust the Behaviours of the Language Root Folder (LRF)

[acsr]

Post Activation of Multilingual not covered fully in docs

The page on Volto / Configuration / Multilingual /volto/configuration/multilingual.html covers the Setup in Backend and Frontend and mentions the activation process in the setup but misses that in the case you activate it later in an existing site, you may get stuck if you do not know how to work around.

The actual docs are in a submodule in the Volto Documentation: https://github.com/plone/volto docs/source/configuration/multilingual.md

There is an older longer Community Forum topic on that from 2022: Multilingual site - Edit Homepage

Goal: add Post config pitfalls in the docs

• It would be important to document the procedure to configure the Behaviour settings of the Language Root Folder (LRF) content type:
• I could not manage to have this properly set by default automatically, even after killing the whole ZODB and recreate from scratch.

Steps to be mentioned in the docs:

Fix outdated instructions for Volto 18

• The filesystem location and filename of the example in the existing docs (see cited below) is unclear

• The part https://6.docs.plone.org/volto/configuration/multilingual.html#volto-configuration seems outdated:

  Volto configuration

  You need to enable multilingual in Volto's configuration object.

  import config from '@plone/volto/registry'
  
  config.settings = {
    ...config.settings,
    isMultilingual: true,
    supportedLanguages: ['en', 'de', 'ca', 'pt-br'],
    defaultLanguage: 'en'
  }

  Declare the language you want to support in your site in the supportedLanguages array, and which is the default language of your site.

  e.g in current cookieplone based setups the settings go into the default addon: ./frontend/packages/volto-project-title/src/index.js

Changes in the site

After activating the Multilingual Functionality in the Volto Settings and the backend two new contenttypes and 2 corresponding objects per language are available:

• Language Root Folder LRF (The new navigation root folders for every language)
• Language Independent Folder LIF (used for the assets folders in each language LFR)

When you visit the LFR using the language selector menu, the objects have no UI to edit blocks. The behaviour is missing.

Fix the Baviour of the LFR

To fix the missing features you need to go to the Control Panel Content Types and there to Language Root Folder /controlpanel/dexterity-types/LRF

Activate what you are missing when comparing with a regular page:

Mandatory

• Blocks
  Enables Volto Blocks support

Additional ( I need this as an editor to match page/documents):

• Locking
  Locking support for dexterity

• Versioning
  Versioning support with CMFEditions

I omitted (Page default)

• Allow discussion

Initialize the LFR

Then you need to visit your LFRs and at least edit something and save to trigger the new behaviour.

Status

This ticket needs review by myself, but should contain all aspects

[acsr]

@stevepiercy I guess this has to be moved to the submodule, but the issue shows up in the main docs.

[stevepiercy]

@acsr it belongs in plone/volto. Moving.