Hybrid Forge

The problem: no language settings in Magento’s CMS pages causes 404 errors

If you are developing or planning to develop a multi-lingual site in Magento, you may have noticed that there are no language settings in the CMS content pages. You can select the store view where the page will display and have different content pages show up in each view of the store, , say one called ‘english-content-item’ enabled only for the English view and called ‘french-content-item’ enabled only for the French view. Using static blocks and different templates for each language you can make this work.

For example, we have some English language menu links in a static block called ‘header_links’ with a list of menu items pointing to the English content pages , and we have some French language menu links in a static block called “header_links_fr’ with a list of menu items pointing to the French content pages. We would modify the template/page/html/header.phtml file in our English view template with the following code:

getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('header_links')->toHtml() ?>

and the French view template with the following code:

getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('header_links_fr')->toHtml() ?>

That’s pretty straight forward, but here’s the rub. If you are in the English content item and switch to the French language, you’ll get a 404 error. The reason for this is that the URL in the English view is http://yoursite.com/english-content-item, for example. When you switch to the French language, the URL is http://yoursite.com/fr/english-content-item.

Since the ‘english-content-item’ isn’t enabled for the French store view, you get a 404. This is unlike the product pages, which can have separate content defined per store view.

The solution: URL rewrites to the rescue

The solution to Magento’s lack of multi-language CMS is to use the built in Catalog URL Rewrites under Catalog->URL Rewrite Management. By using permanent 301 redirects, not only can you avoid the 404 errors, but you can keep the URLs specific to each language – that’s good SEO!

In the URL rewrite manager, you’ll want to click on Add URL Rewrite and select “Custom” from the drop down list.

Under “Store” you will want to pick the first store, in this case we’ll start with the English store. “ID Path” and “Request Path” in the case of the CMS pages are going to be the same. In this case we want the French language site to properly redirect when switching to English, so we will use the “french-content-item” for the ID and Request paths.

Next we fill in the target path. In the case of the switch to the English site, we want it to redirect to “english-content-item”. We want it to be a 301 Permanent Redirect. You can add whatever description you need and Save.

Now, do the same for the French site, so use “english-content-item” for the ID and Request paths and “french-content-item” for the target path. Be sure select the French view under “Store”. Save that.

Of course, don’t forget to refresh your cache and make sure you re-index the catalog rewrites if needed. Now when you change languages on the front-end, the CMS page will switch to the appropriate page for you. No more 404′s and you get nice clean URLs, which means happy robots and better SEO results.