On my forum we have created a section for Chinese Posts. Everything is working as desired, however the ISO code for the pages still shows English as that is the site setting. Does anyone know if there is a way we can set the category or individual pages to show that they are a different language?
Interesting, what are your thoughts on this @sam
I have not been able to see a way to change this in the existing software. Anyone have an idea if this could be built? I think it could help with traffic on our site as well as many others that have additional languages on one instance. Any direction would be helpful!
-Robert
Not that I’m an expert or anything, but shouldn’t that be possible with JavaScript or something similar?
I agree that it should be possible. I am trying to find a solution or suggestion on how I might implement this as we have multiple languages and I am not sure how I change the language code when someone posts in the Chinese category, however leave it as english when in the other categories. I also want to make sure this is not going to cause any issues elsewhere if we try to implement it. I know there are other forums that run multiple languages, however it looks like all the ones that run more than one language all show an “en” source code when you look at non english pages. Only the forums that are based in another language change. From my limited understanding this will mean that information is harder to find on google and if an english speaking person finds my chinese content google will not offer to translate as it shows english.
-Robert
Unfortunately this isn’t a built-in feature of Discourse. Theme components (javascript) wouldn’t work either, because the page language is set way before any javascript is loaded.
Having separate languages per-category would technically be possible using a plugin. This would work for crawlers like google, and would also trigger browser auto-translation features.
One issue with this is that Discourse is a ‘single page application’, and browsers only seem to check the lang attribute on the initial page load. That means that a user browsing the forum will be ‘stuck’ on the language of the first page they viewed. That may or may not be an issue depending on your use case.
I think the SEO and initial translation benefits of seeing it on a search would outweigh any issues I am seeing once on the forum. I am certainly interested in speaking with someone on what it might take to get this made and what it would look like currently and what might be needed if in the future we add more languages. Would the plugin be set per category or per post etc.
-Robert
Having done some further experimentation, this might not be completely true. Googlebot does render simple javascript when crawling the web, so we should be able to use javascript to modify the language.
To change the language for topics in a specific category (and its sub-categories), you can add something like this to the </head> section of a theme:
<script>
if(document.querySelector("#breadcrumb-0 a[href='/c/chinese']")){
document.documentElement.lang = "zh"
}
</script>
I can’t find any specific documentation from google about whether this is acceptable, but I can see that it works when I “fetch as googlebot”:
@Robert_Fay let us know if you would like a hand adding this to your site.
I’m a bit confused, in looking at the code, there is no #breadcrumb-0 on our page.
I had tried using
<script>
if(document.querySelector("a.bullet[href='/c/chinese']")){
document.documentElement.lang = "zh"
}
</script>
but that didn’t seem to do the trick. I have a feeling those elements are loaded later, because the code works in in the browser console, but not in a component /head. Any pointers?
This code is specifically for the crawler view of the site which googlebot sees. It has a different html structure to the regular view.
If you change your browser’s user agent to googlebot then you will see it take effect.
David,
I am still not seeing the change even as google bot. Could the issue be that my category name is actually 中文 技术论坛 and we use chinese as a category slug? Here is the page
https://forum.digikey.com/c/chinese中文 技术论坛 - Engineering and Component Solution Forum - TechForum │ Digi-Key
Thank you
-Robert
Ah, I should have specified that the code needs to go in the </body> section of the theme. Alternatively, you can leave it in the </head>, and wrap it like this:
<script>
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){
if(document.querySelector("#breadcrumb-0 a[href='/c/chinese']")){
document.documentElement.lang = "zh";
}
});
</script>
If you would also like the <html lang= to be updated for non-googlebot views, you can add this. Google chrome doesn’t seem to detect the ‘live’ change in language, but other browsers might:
<script type="text/discourse-plugin" version="0.8">
api.onPageChange(()=>{
const body = document.documentElement.querySelector("body");
if(body.classList.contains("category-chinese")){
document.documentElement.lang = "zh";
}else{
document.documentElement.lang = I18n.locale;
}
});
</script>
This is in and looks like it is working in the googlebot views.
Thank You for all the help!
-Robert
Hola @david
Mientras realizaba una auditoría reciente, noté que este fragmento de código para nuestras categorías en chino, español y hebreo solo funciona intermitentemente, y las únicas páginas en las que funciona ahora presentan un error en nuestra consola. Las páginas que no tienen el error ahora aparecen como páginas en inglés en el Search Console. ¿Alguna idea?
Aquí está el error.
Código de la categoría en chino que se está utilizando.
<script>
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){
if(document.querySelector("#breadcrumb-0 a[href='/c/chinese']")){
document.documentElement.lang = "zh";
}
});
</script>Una nota rápida. Cuando realizo una prueba en vivo en las páginas con errores, estos desaparecen; sin embargo, luego cambian de mostrarse como una página en chino o español a mostrarse como una página en inglés.
- Robert
La advertencia de data-vocabulary.org debería resolverse en la última versión de Discourse según
Tu sitio tiene esta actualización, así que solo necesitamos esperar a que Googlebot se ponga al día. Como descubriste, realizar una prueba en vivo resolverá la advertencia.
Desafortunadamente, esta reestructuración de las migas de pan rompió el pequeño script de idioma que ideamos. Las migas de pan ya no tienen el id #breadcrumb-0, por lo que necesitamos otra cosa. Creo que esto debería funcionar:
<script>
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){
if(document.querySelector("#breadcrumbs a[href*='/c/chinese']")){
document.documentElement.lang = "zh";
}
});
</script>
Avísame si esto resuelve el problema con una prueba en vivo.
Esto pareció resolver el problema para los elementos de la categoría de chino, sin embargo, las subcategorías no funcionan. ¿Necesitaría tener una separada para mi /c/chinese/FAQ, por ejemplo?
-Robert
Hmm, debería funcionar también para subcategorías. Al obtener este tema como Googlebot, obtengo los metadatos lang=zh.
¿Es posible que Google tenga en caché el tema que intentaste? Además, ten en cuenta que este script solo funciona en temas, no en las páginas de categoría en sí.
No estoy seguro de qué sucedió en la primera prueba. He creado varias páginas más de subcategorías y están funcionando.
Gracias nuevamente por tu tiempo.
-Robert
Hola @david
Estaba revisando nuestro sitio con mi equipo de SEO y parece que esto ya no funciona.
Publicación de ejemplo en nuestra categoría en alemán.
Cuando reviso la página rastreada en la Consola de búsqueda de Google, aparece en inglés.
Aquí está el código que estoy usando actualmente.
<script>
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){
if(document.querySelector("#breadcrumbs a[href*='/c/german']")){
document.documentElement.lang = "de";
}
});
</script>Agradecería cualquier ayuda o orientación.
-Robert