Cannot Set the Default Menu Item for the language English (en)

[John Oxlade]

I may be having the same/related problem.
I'm using 3.8.11 and just added the German language pack etc.
I have a German menu and the language switcher is now showing the German flag now I have the German-default menu item. But clicking on the flag gives me a 404 error. The link it is coming up with is .../index.php/de-de/ whereas my default English pages are just "en" even though I have en-GB installed - so I would've assumed en-gb would be the url suffix - but it isn't.
The menu is there, the article is there but clicking on the German flag gives me a 404.
Is this the same error or something different?
I have tried SEF URLs on and off, same problem.
The English site continues to work fine with the insertion of "en" in all the URLs.

[John Oxlade]

I am also doing something else wrong because the English flag isn't showing up.
I can't seem to change the default "default" homepage to the English default (as suggested by the online docs), and in fact I cannot make another menu item the default now either.
I have managed to get it to display the German menu by logging in to the frontend, but clicking on the HOME menu item gives me a 404 error. It doesn't seem to be able to pickup the default German homepage even though it is set (with the German flag as DEFAULT) in the Menu.
If I am not logged in on the frontend I don't even get the menu displayed.
I get the feeling I am doing something fundamentally wrong here.

[John Oxlade]

It also seems that the German flag in the language switcher only showed up when I clicked on the default star in the menu and it changed to the German flag and not a gold star as normal for a single-language site.
But I can't do the same with the English menu (which I hoped would make the flag show in the language switcher) because when I try change the language on that page I get:
"Save failed with the following error: The Language parameter for this menu item must be set to 'All'. At least one Default menu item must have Language set to All, even if the site is multilingual."

[imanickam]

"Save failed with the following error: The Language parameter for this menu item must be set to 'All'. At least one Default menu item must have Language set to All, even if the site is multilingual."

This is the expected behavior.

Review of the document https://docs.joomla.org/J3.x:Setup_a_Multilingual_Site and the related links would be of help in understanding how to set up a multilingual site.

What could be done is to create a separate menu for the English language and create menu items assigned to the English language in that menu.

Alternatively, create new menu to hold the common Default menu item assigned to All languages, create a menu item and assign that menu menu item to All languages and make it as a Default Menu Item (this will be identified by a Golden Yellow Star). After this, in the menu where you want to keep the menu items assigned to English language, you could assign assign the menu item (that you could not previously assign to the English language) to the English language and make it as the Default menu item. Now the English flag would show.


Note:
In a test environment, you could install a fresh copy of Joomla! and while installing choose appropriate languages to install and choose the option to create a multilingual site. Do not choose to install Sample Data. A skeletal multilingual site would be created with a dummy article for each of the language installed. You can view how the site is setup by logging into the site's backend.

[John Oxlade]

Thanks. What I did was to create a new "main menu" and copied the home page from the English menu and made it the "gold-star" default, then I could make the home page in the English menu the default English menu.
Now the English flag shows up in the language switcher and the English pages work fine.
I thought (?) I had read through the article several times but obviously missed the point on that one somewhere. I didn't want a home page that said something like "chose English or German" and thought (hoped?) to just have the English menu as the default would work ... it didn't.
However, the other problem of the German pages giving a 404 error is still there.
But thanks, the English/German language flags show up fine now.

[imanickam]

What is your site's URL so that others can see what is happening?

I do not mind looking into your site's back-end when time permits. If you are okay with the idea, please send the credentials to access your site's back-end. Make sure to take a copy of your site before that.

Alternatively, you could create Akeeba Backup's archive file and give access to the file so that I can download the file and install it on my test environment. This way, you need not provide credentials to access your site's back-end.

[John Oxlade]

What is your site's URL so that others can see what is happening?

Sorry, I forgot to update this... I tried installing the Italian language pack, creating Italian menus and articles, and ... it worked. So I deleted all trace of the German language pack, categories, etc. and reinstalled them, and now it works fine.
I have no idea what was going on, but it works fine now.
I am still toying with ideas on how to have shared content - i.e. the same page/module on both the English and German pages, but that's another story (and I didn't describe it very well either).