Adrian Mateljan

If you play with language variants in RedDot CMS, sooner or later you will come across pages in SmartTree that display with the above title - “Page does not exist in language variant ENG.” Don’t worry - it just means that the page exists in one of the other language variants and not the one you are currently viewing.

Well, mostly. What if you can’t find the language variant it exists in? What if you aren’t even *using* language variants? In these cases, the message is, at best, misleading. But never fear - the reason, and the solution, are very simple.

The reason is that RedDot CMS cheats (in my oppinion) in the method that it determines whether a page exists in a given language variant (and remember, you are always using at least one language variant!) Simply put, it checks the page headline. If the page headline exists, it shows it. If it doesn’t, it shows the message above. Obviously if we create an English language variant page, and no one has translated it into our Dutch language variant, the Dutch language variant version has no title, and RedDot correctly shows the above message.

So what is the issue? Well, if we *remove* the headline of a page (edit via form, delete the contents of the page headline) - RedDot can not distinguish this from a page missing in a language variant, hence the above message. The solution? Make sure all pages have a headline! You can fix an existing issue by simply adding the headline back in via the page properties. If the page truly does not exist in the language variant, you will not be able to edit the filename (it will be greyed out.)

Now you may be wondering why anyone would remove the page headline in the first place. Well, I can name two scenarios:

1. A clever author (perhaps without delete or disconnect permission, perhaps unaware of how to) has realised that deleting the page headline removes the page (or component from the page.) (If RedDot CMS doesn’t think the page exists in this language variant, it will not display it.)
2. An author has decided that their page (or component of the page) would look better without its title, and removed it the only way they know how - by deleting the headline.

The first scenario requires user training (or the removal of headline editing permission - but that may be overkill.) The second usually points to a deficiency in your template - consider adding an option placeholder to allow your authors to choose whether the headline is visible or not. Unfortunately, the headline placeholder does not allow you to make it mandatory - so it is still possible for it to be removed - so user training may still be required.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 11:17 pm and is filed under RedDot CMS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.