Sitecore set/change default language from 'en'

Question

Can anyone recommend the best way to change the default language in Sitecore 6.1. On a fresh install, the typical language for all items is 'en' English, witha nice little USA flag and all.

However, we are setting up a system which is targeting en-AU and en-NZ. When I rename the main 'en' language item in any database, every other item is left without a version in the "correct" language. I recall in the past that renaming this item causes an update across the whole system, but that didn't seem to be the case when I tried it today.

Is there an easy "Sitecore" way to convert all default items to the primary language en-AU? I've considered running a sql update script over the database, but am hoping there is a neater way of doing it.

Answer 1

I don't think that changing anything about the en-language is a good idea. A lot of internal Sitecore objects are based on that language and you could risk loosing labels and help texts in the Sitecore UI.

We usually create all templates, renderings and layouts in the en-language and then create the content items for each language.

Instead you should set the language property in web.config for your site.

Here is an example that we are using from one of our multi-language solutions:

<site name="website_no" hostName="www.site.no|site.no" language="no" />
<site name="website_en" hostName="www.site.com|site.com" language="en" />
<site name="website" language="sv" />

The last line catches all requests not caught by the two first ones.