Paths and block visibility

Once the internationalization module is enabled, a language prefix is added to all paths and links. This path defines the interface language - localization - and the default language for content.

The language prefix is removed at the beginning of the request and is added again for internal links to be displayed. Thus, all paths will work the same as before for all the modules enabled.

Path Aliasing

Path aliases can be created as usual without using path prefixes and the system will work just fine. The only limitation is that path aliases must be different for each language. It is also possible to define path aliases using language prefixes. The path system will still work, but this can cause some issues with path handling.

Note that language prefix must be in both source and destination. Otherwise the reverse alias, linking a Drupal path with its alias before displaying it, won't work; the behaviour will be undefined. There are some known issues using this method, particularly with menu visibility and active links that may not be marked as such. Thus it is advised to use only paths without language prefixes and to use different path alias for different languages.

Block Visibility

When using paths for block visibility, language prefix may be used to restrict visibility to specific languages. For example,
en/* will mean all English pages
en/node/* means all node pages when browsing the site in English
Note: <front> can not be combined with languages to specify path, thus the path for the front page will depend on the actual site front page setting (i.e. 'en/node' or 'es/node' if the front page is 'node').

Site Front Page

There are two methods to specify different front pages per language:

• The first one is to add 'site_frontpage' to language dependent variables, and then define a different path for each language.
• The other option is to use the same path for all languages, but use different aliases like

* Note than when using a node listing page as the front page - like the default 'node' - this is not necessary, as the system will select only the right nodes for each language.