Setting up a multilingual user interface

The user interface culture determines the language of the Kentico administration interface, as well as other factors like numeric and date formats.

Managing site cultures

You can manage all cultures in the Localization application on the Cultures tab. To display only UI cultures, choose Yes in the Is UI culture filter and click Search.

When you create a new culture or edit an existing culture, you can define the following properties:

Preparing UI cultures

Kentico allows you to manage content in any language, including double-byte (eastern) languages, such as Chinese. All content is stored and published in UNICODE.

To have the administration interface displayed in a different language or at least with different culture settings (e.g. calendar and numeric format):

1. Open the Localization application.

2. Select the Cultures tab.

3. Edit () the culture you want to use for the administration interface.

4. Select the Is UI culture check box.

5. Click Save.

6. Create a copy of the <web project>\CMS\CMSResources\cms.resx file in the same folder and name it cms.<culture code>.resx (for example, cms.he-IL.resx).

   • This file stores the strings with translated text of the administration interface.

You can start translating the strings that are used to display text in the user interface. See Working with resource strings for more information.

Setting the default UI culture

The default UI culture can be set by adding the following key to the <appSettings> section of your site’s web.config file:

<add key="CMSDefaultUICulture" value="en-nz" />

The value of this key must be a valid culture code (in the example above, en-nz represents the English - New Zealand culture).

When the above mentioned key is used and the CMS.resx file contains the en-nz dictionary, the UI culture will be en-nz for users who have their Preferred user interface culture set to (default).

Applying a culture to a specific user’s UI

You can set the administration interface to a specific culture for each user in the system:

1. Open the Users application.
2. Edit () the user.
3. Select the required Preferred user interface culture on the General tab.
4. Click Save.

Users may also select their own user interface culture in the My profile application on the Details tab, by setting the Preferred user interface culture.

When the user signs out and then back in, the system displays the interface according to the new culture settings and with translated strings (once the translation is complete).