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Callings
Starting Member
Japan
2 Posts |
 Posted - 18 July 2002 : 11:46:55
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Help. I'm a very new "newbie" building my own website that will offer advice, commentary, business services dealing with Japan. My site will cater to both English speakers and Japanese speakers. I am planning to use a toggle button to go between lanauges by making mirror sites.
Ideally I want to have an English forum, and also a Japanese forum on the same website hosted on the same server.
I just started searching the net for a good forum and found Snitz, and I just had to ask for help about my idea. Sounds easier said than done, maybe.
I have been trying to follow the progress here about a Japanese forum, and visited the i2Asia site that Leorat (Taku) has developed on brinkster that combines both languages on the same forum.
http://www26.brinkster.com/i2asia/forum/default.asp
This is really neat, a kick to have for bi-linguals. Although my site will draw in a lot of bi-lingual people too, I believe that most viewers will not be, hence the need to two separate the language on the forums.
Is it possible to create on that example from the i2Asia site a Japanese area and an English area? So, maybe I wouldn't need 2 separate forums? I just don't know enough about anything, exept that I do know what I want.
I am so new to all this that until 3 days ago I never in my life knew the existence of ASP, SQL, Axcess 2000, and what have you. I just have in my head an idea to have a forum for those who understand English, and another for those who understand Japanese.
1. First of all, is my idea possible from a development perspective?
2. Secondly, even if it is possible to develop and run, is it going to be totally beyond my limited (VERY LIMITED) knowledge of ASP, hosting, and moderating and creating a forum?
You all seem so helpful that I would appreciate some advice or suggestions to stear me in the right direction to make my idea a reality.
Thanks,
Callings
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4116 Posts |
Posted - 18 July 2002 : 16:14:56
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I would advise first to read posts made by Leorat in these forums and speak to him. He exercised a lot of different ways of doing it. The possibilities are:
1. Two forums with two databases
2. Two forums with single database
3. Single forum, single database, separate forums/categories for each language (Taku's installation)
4. One more future case comes with v3.4 (thus with v4b04)
Think Pink
==> Start Internationalization Here< |
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593 Posts |
Posted - 18 July 2002 : 19:57:36
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Hi,
As mentioned by Bozden, there are different ways to achieve your idea with current versions.
No worries about ASP etc. techie knowledge. I started learning ASP, from zero, with Snitz...and yes, everyone at Forum, have been very supportive and helpful...this is a great on-line virtual school on ASP et al., with the best ASP based web forum (which also means that Snitz people are the best geeks in ASP world!!) I reached Snitz like you, after surveying the net for most of the major forums, including ones in Japan.
Am not sure of a next release of V4.x version, but I believe it has better functionaliies and features to address the issue you mentioned, including locale dateformats.
The list Bozden provided for possible approaches summarizes them well. In order or ease of implementation, probably, (3)>(2)>(1)>(4=not yet available!). Also, there is some additional "design considrations" that you may have to have: do you want to have separate member table or the same one for your forums...which affect a choice also. Some of other issues with current version in terms of handling languages and language contents are mentioned at i2Asia, where I try to document as much as possible. This concerns MODS, if you are considering adding some additional features/funcitonalities on the way.
Snitz is flexible and customizable so there are additional things you can do to design your forums, which I believe others at the forum are very helpful in assisting your efforts.
If you have local host (like your computer have IIS or PWS) or if you have ISP who supports ASP programs (Snitz is ASP based, which means Snitz is server side programs), then, you can download/install V4b03004 and install the same version as i2AsiaForum.... You can get a bit of how to do informatin at i2AsiaForum: check Going Multilingual forum and check the topic on V4.x installation....for general guideline for installing Snitz Forum...
If you want two separate forums, one with English, and another in Japanese, you can do it either 2 forums with single DB but with 2 tables, or 2 forums with 2 db and 1 table for each, as Bozden mentioned. You have to do little additional tweeking to make sure either you have a different language selector which brings to each language specific forum, or add special links to a pull down language sepector box link to go to selected language forum....
Also, if you choose Japanese as a default language, then, English (Single Byte) enviornment is already contained in it, so can handle English for forum/category/topics except all UI (like links, FAQ, popup menu, help, and all admin interfaces, etc.) will be in Japanese. But in this enviornment, you can also set separate language forums....in a single "master FORUM" (BBS enviornment).
If you need further help in starting off your efforts, please let me know. Will try to help you as much as I can.
Best,
Taku
Additional Comments: As you live in Japan, you may see many or most of web deployment in handling Japanese and English are to create two discrete Japanese (usually based on Shift-JIS encoding or EUC-JA) pages and English pages, usually switchable by language button (clickable link to xxxxx_JA.html or xxxxx_EN.html, type approach. Or other approach is to have the site developed in Japanese as a default but have English contents in it (as this can be done as Japanese is based on an extended charset - a kind of superset - over English, which is the base charset)... So, one approach is to have a language button on your HP and link it to a separate web pages or forum in Japanese and English...linking a Japanese language button to a forum default page (which is the top forum page you see) of a Japanese forum and an English button to an English default forum page. I had this but for a maintenance reason, I stopped, but feasible. This is bit like what Bozden has with his Istanbul Museum forum web site... very good one.
So, basically, I would recommend you will determine first what design approach you would like to take, and all other things should follow.
Edited by - LeoRat on 19 July 2002 06:57:49< |
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593 Posts |
Posted - 21 July 2002 : 00:32:30
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Hi Callings,
Forgot to mention something basic here: Please go to the link, "Start Internationalization Here", in Bozden's post for his sig.... where you can find the latest version - V4b03003 and necessary patches for V4b03004. You can get a Japanese lang pack from i2Asia.
Download these and play with it...which will give you a better feel of what Snitz can do for you.
Take care.
Taku
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Callings
Starting Member
Japan
2 Posts |
Posted - 22 July 2002 : 07:57:50
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Leorat and Bozden,
Thanks for the replies. The museum site by Bozden is great. One can go from one language to another (exact replica pages) just by selecting the language from the pull-down menu. I have been studying all this and have decided that for right now, possibly the best design solution for me is to separate the language by creating URL addresses containing XXXX_EN.html (for the English) and XXX_ja.html for the Japanese (as you suggested) with the "language switch button". Reason is I might not have every English page in Japanese and vice versa. So, those pages that toggle, will; those that won't, won't. This might be a nightmare later, as Leorat you said you did it and had a maintenance problem so stopped? If you don't mind answering, was the problem related to software, hardware, or simply your own personal reasons for stopping? Your experience in this matter may steer me in the right direction for my own design.
Leorat, you stated "you can do it either 2 forums with single DB but with 2 tables". I think that is what I want. When you refer to "tables", do you mean database tables that hold registrants' info, so that the English registration can be in one table and Japanese separated into another=2 tables? Or are you referring to something complete different when you say "tables"? If I use the same webhosting site, won't I have to have 1 DB?
Anyway, I am trying to put the parts all together to come up with an interesting (I hope) site.
I will take your suggestions and download the files and play around with them, but my last dumb question is: do I have to have a site up and hosted before I can get the real feel of working with the forums?
Maybe, not but just thought I'd ask.
Thanks,
Callings
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593 Posts |
Posted - 22 July 2002 : 21:50:44
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quote:
Leorat, you stated "you can do it either 2 forums with single DB but with 2 tables". I think that is what I want. When you refer to "tables", do you mean database tables that hold registrants' info, so that the English registration can be in one table and Japanese separated into another=2 tables? Or are you referring to something complete different when you say "tables"? If I use the same webhosting site, won't I have to have 1 DB?
>>Tables for members/registrants - you're correct.
quote:
Anyway, I am trying to put the parts all together to come up with an interesting (I hope) site.
I will take your suggestions and download the files and play around with them, but my last dumb question is: do I have to have a site up and hosted before I can get the real feel of working with the forums?
Maybe, not but just thought I'd ask.
>> Do you have Windows on your locale machine (win98/2000/XP/NT?) with either IIS or PWS? If you do, you can run it on your locale host enviornment. I used to run 5 language Snitz (earlier version) on Win98/PWS on my desktop locally to testout design etc. If you have this enviornment, it is actually a good way to start, since you can test out different design approaches. If you don't, perhaps you can check out some free ASP hosting services - can be in Japan or anywhere else.
I used to have a HP with language buttons - switchable between EN and JA along with other clickable links to pages like "About", "News", "Events", etc.etc. so that when you go into a JA page (Home_JA.html), all links will lead to respective Japanese pages and each pages also had a language switch links to jump to English page...to a corresponding English page or to "Go Back" to the top home page in either language.... far simpler approach than Bozden's but met my particular needs at the time. This approach, however, requires, to have 2 pages of same/similar contents...each for JA and EN...but this is more usual web publishing model approach...and forum/bbs/chat type interactive environments are slightly different in design requirements. There are some forums which really have a good dynamic and globalized DB to switch between languages at all levels...but that's rare and requires lots of design and content tweeking efforts between languages.
(My reason for abandoning this approach is purely personal: just didn't have time to keep much dedicated efforts in maintaining/updating, etc....although it was interesting in doing some test drive).
Many of locale language users of Snitz forum are a single locale language forum users - I think - for example, it it's Japanese, use Snitz only with Japanese (usually Shift-JIS) format. Since Japanese uses extended charactersets in addition to Latin charsets, it usually contains most of English charset groups and some Russian. So, if you have a Japanese codepage based forum, you can have Japanese (default) but mixed with English.... So you can have categories/forums/topics in either Japanese or English or both. (While all User Interface, in this case, will be in Japanese). But it doesn't work from English...since Japanese charsets are not contained in Latin 1 group charsets... Anyway, this is a part of challenging issue for language forum.
Language issue is much more tied with web/browser/html representation issue...meaning, you can post, for example, Japanese, in current Snitz Forum, but you have to set a browser encoding to Shift_JIS, for example, in order to view it correctly in Japanese (in Shift_JIS). So, besides the issue of rendering locale language texts correctly on the web to a viewer, other issue is mostly an issue of UI localization - meaning whether online help, UI messages, etc. are provided in locale languages or not. For these, Snitz V4.x can meet requirements/needs well. Do you read/write Japanese? If so, you can modify lang1041 to your liking and more suited expression for your forum.
So, if you are to have 2 separate language forums, not creating language specific forums but have totally discrete language forums, you have to setup one forum based on 1033 and other on 1041. You can create (sorry I haven't tried this yet fully yet but there are posts on this subject at Snitz) two forums out of 1 database, either using the same member table or different member tables. Or you can have two totally different forums with each unique DB and Table.
I would suggest, as a starter, to setup V4.x with Japanese language (i.e. English and Japanese), and see whether grouping forums - the top level is called "Category", then "forums", and then "Topics" - so you can create whatever functional groups under a category and have language specific forums or other way around or mix of...depending on how you like to organize. And see whether this approach (my previously mentioned "easiest approach") would satisfy any part of your needs at all, before going into full fledged efforts to having two separate language forums, which requires little additional works on setting up forums/database but also external links to your website(besides having language buttons on the website to link to a language forum, there may be other features/functionalities that you may want to put with external links....).
You can ask technical design and other issues in various HELP forums if you encounter specific technical problems in setting up.
Best,
Taku
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