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Howto: "host" site access + multilanguage - the "ez" way

Author Message

Olaf Fichtner

Saturday 12 June 2010 8:21:16 am

Ask me why, I say it's most unusual. How can I even try to explain. Why today I feel like dancing...

Yes, I do, because after days (weeks?) of confusion and frustration I finally found a solution to the host access + multiple language problem and it is even easier than everything I have seen in the forum so far. Should someone have posted this before: Sorry, I wish I had discovered it, that would have saved me lots of frustration. I already ran out of hard surfaces to bang my head on...

But to not waste your time, the solution I like to present applies to this situation: In the domain "example.com" you want to create a site under the subdomain "nice", so the FQDN is "nice.example.com". You have installed ez Publish 4.3 (may work with others too) in the subdirectory "/ezp" of that webspace as it is just one of several sites mapped this way. You only want to create ONE site, but it has to be multilingual, with URLs like "nice.example.com/eng" or "nice.example.com/esl". This works on cPanel environments and is ez, ez, ez - so to say. If your conditions are different, this may not be of much help to you.

- Install ezP into the directory /ezp on your webspace, use the default URI site access method and do not forget all your languages. (Host access install would be buggy anyway, and we do not actually need it!)

- Set up DNS (and your web server, if you do not use cPanel or an equivalent) to map "http://nice.example.com" to "http://example.com/ezp", the location of our installation.

- Go to "http://example.com/ezp", log in and go to "Site settings". Set "Site URL" to "nice.example.com", click on "Send for publishing" and say goodbye to the site for a while.

- Open /ezp/settings/override/site.ini.append.php. If you see a "SiteURL" item under "SiteSettings" (not likely in this file), shoot it on sight. Shoot first, ask questions later. Check the name of your admin site access. Let us assume it is "ezflow_site_clean_admin". Add this line under "SiteSettings"

"

AdditionalLoginFormActionURL=http://nice.example.com/ezflow_site_clean_admin/user/login

"

Scroll down to "SiteAccessSettings" and add the line

"

ForceVirtualHost=true

"

Your URLs do now not contain "index.php" any longer. If you want some more cosmetics, you can also add "RemoveSiteAccessIfDefaultAccess=enabled" in the same block.

- Open the site.ini.append.php in EVERY language site access (best all site accesses). If you see a "SiteURL", shoot it. It is only there to cause you trouble, so shoot it. Take a bazooka if you like. (I would very much at this point...) You may also find more "AdditionalLoginFormActionURL" items. Shoot them too, we have already defined this.

- If you have not done so already, activate the htaccess file coming with ezP by renaming it to ".htaccess". You will find it directly in /ezp.

- Now go to /ezp/var/cache/ini/ and delete ALL files in there. At this point, you may not be able to properly access your site through the web interface. Delete at least the ini cache, then point your browser to "nice.example.com" and log in to the admin panel. Clear all caches there and... Well, that's it. You should now be able to work with your site. Have fun!

Again: If someone already posted this before - sorry. I really wish I had seen it, as I was REALLY frustrated and every forum thread I read only added to my frustration because almost nothing there helped. A comment by Andre R. to someone also slightly frustrated reminded me of the "Site URL" in the frontend "Site settings". This was the key I needed to make it work. So, I hope this will help someone out there, people on shared hosters may like it - perhaps...