How to use default language code's instead of region bound?

[gijs007]

I've noticed that by default the English language in Joomla tags my content with a en-GB tag.

The audience of my website is English users from around the world, so I can't really use the "en-GB" or "en-US" language tag because they specify a region.

I've been looking around for people with the same problem and also came across the following tool: http://www.internationalseomap.com/href ... generator/
When I choose to leave the region to default and specify the language to English it generates a "en" language tag.

When I try to set this in Joomla I get the following error:

Error

Save failed with the following error:
The Language Tag should contain 2 or 3 lowercase letters corresponding to the ISO language, a dash and 2 uppercase letters corresponding to the ISO country code.
This should be the exact prefix used for the language installed or to be installed. Example: en-GB, srp-ME.

I have the same problem with other language tags, e.g. Dutch, which is mainly used in The Netherlands and Belgium. And French which is used in France and Canada, as well as other places in Europe and Africa.

I could target each region, but this would create a huge list of choices on the language selector tool, and it would require more maintenance work since I need to have a copy of article's for each region.

[imanickam]

The error you are noticing is generated when you define a Content Language. Do not change anything here. Provide the full language code (e.g., en-GB).

When I choose to leave the region to default and specify the language to English it generates a "en" language tag.

You can do this Joomla! by the following steps.

• Go to the Plugin Manager
• Enable the plugin "System - Language Code"
• Open the plugin "System - Language Code" for Edit
• You could notice a tab titled "Language Codes" and click on the tab
• For each of the language shown (e.g., en-GB), type only the language code (e.g., en) without specifying the region/country code (e.g., GB)
• Save the Plugin

Now you would notice that in the tag <link ... />, hreflang defined would refer the language without the region/country code.

[gijs007]

It seems that the Canonical Tag / hreflang Tags ignore this setting and use the settings from the language pack.

e.g. when I check my site with http://seorch.eu/ it reports links to the different versions of my website:
Language attribute: fr-fr, URL: https://www.elitegameservers.net/fr/
Language attribute: nl-nl, URL: https://www.elitegameservers.net/nl/
Language attribute: en-gb, URL: https://www.elitegameservers.net/

[imanickam]

Are you using the core features of Joomla! to build this multilingual site or are you using any other extension for building this multilingual site?

[gijs007]

I'm using the core features.

[imanickam]

Please post a copy of the screenshots of the link/tab Content Languages (from the Language Manager) and the tab "Language Codes" (from the plugin "System - Language Code")

[gijs007]

Please see the attachments.

[infograf768]

If you parameter the language filter plugin to display alternate meta tags and have changed the language code as you did above via the language code plugin, you will get something like this (I have changed en-GB to "en" in the language code plugin and left the other languages alone)

<link href="http://localhost:8888/testwindows/trunkgitnew/index.php" rel="alternate" hreflang="en" />
<link href="http://localhost:8888/testwindows/trunk ... ex.php/fr/" rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" />
<link href="http://localhost:8888/testwindows/trunk ... ex.php/de/" rel="alternate" hreflang="de-DE" />
<link href="http://localhost:8888/testwindows/trunk ... ex.php/it/" rel="alternate" hreflang="it-IT" />
<link href="http://localhost:8888/testwindows/trunk ... ex.php/es/" rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES" />
<link href="http://localhost:8888/testwindows/trunk ... ex.php/mk/" rel="alternate" hreflang="mk-MK" />
<link href="http://localhost:8888/testwindows/trunk ... ex.php/ta/" rel="alternate" hreflang="ta-IN" /

[gijs007]

"If you parameter the language filter plugin to display alternate metadata"
How do I do this?

My settings are in the attachment.

[imanickam]

The alternate meta tags are available in the Content Language (of the Language Manager).

Are you using any third party SEO extension?

[infograf768]

@gijs007
Your settings are fine. Please paste here the source of a page which has associated items.
@imanickam
I corrected above.
I was not speaking of metadata (Keywords and Description) which are indeed set in the content language concerned), but alternate meta tags which are set in the languagefilter.plugin

[gijs007]

Code: Select all

<link href="https://www.elitegameservers.net/fr/" rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR"><link href="https://www.elitegameservers.net/nl/" rel="alternate" hreflang="nl-NL"><link href="https://www.elitegameservers.net/" rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB"><link href="https://www.elitegameservers.net/templates/rt_oculus/favicon.ico" rel="shortcut icon" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon"><link rel="stylesheet" href="Affordable%20Game%20Server%20Hosting%20in%20the%20EU%20and%20USA%20-%20Elite%20Game%20Servers.net_bestanden/settings.css"

That's the relevant part of the code, perhaps it's caused by SH404sef, although I doubt it because I previously had an issue with the language tags which was fixed in 3.4.2 update. (https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/issues/6809) without changing SH404sef, so I assume this part of the plugins is parsed directly.

If you need the full code simply download the mainpage of http://www.elitegameservers.net with your browser (it's too big to paste here)

[infograf768]

I see

Code: Select all

<link hreflang="fr-FR" rel="alternate" href="https://www.elitegameservers.net/fr/game-servers">
<link hreflang="nl-NL" rel="alternate" href="https://www.elitegameservers.net/nl/game-servers">
<link hreflang="en-GB" rel="alternate" href="https://www.elitegameservers.net/game-servers">

Which is perfectly OK for a default site language en-GB

[gijs007]

I see

Code: Select all

<link hreflang="fr-FR" rel="alternate" href="https://www.elitegameservers.net/fr/game-servers">
<link hreflang="nl-NL" rel="alternate" href="https://www.elitegameservers.net/nl/game-servers">
<link hreflang="en-GB" rel="alternate" href="https://www.elitegameservers.net/game-servers">

Which is perfectly OK for a default site language en-GB

Are you saying it's not really a problem to have a region code in the country language tag?

[infograf768]

As explained above, you can change the hreflang if desired to anything convenient for you in the languagecode plugin, i.e. get:

Code: Select all

<link href="http://mysite.com/index.php/" rel="alternate" hreflang="en" />

[gijs007]

As explained above, you can change the hreflang if desired to anything convenient for you in the languagecode plugin, i.e. get:

Code: Select all

<link href="http://mysite.com/index.php/" rel="alternate" hreflang="en" />

But I've set it in the language code plugin to show as en, fr and nl. yet the tags from the language pack are used

See my (previous) screenshot

[infograf768]

Is the plugin enabled?

[gijs007]

Of course

[infograf768]

Then there is an issue on your site that I can't solve through the forum. It may be due to the orders of the system plugins, to a 3rd party extension or to your template.

[gijs007]

Yes, changing the order of the plugin to be just after the System - Language Filter plugin has solved this.
So it's not a bug after all

Thank you for your help imanickam and infograf768