Per Nergård (MVP)
Mar 5, 2013
  12923
(1 votes)

EPiServer localization xml files structure

In CMS7 there are a couple of new things that can be localized. I hadn’t had the time to check it out but a question in the forums   about localization of “GroupName” on page types got me curious.

Localization of page types and properties are the same as for earlier versions of EPiServer.

Blocks are new to CMS7. Thomas Krantz blogged about block localization over here but I will include it in the example below just for completeness. The example for blocks in the Alloy demo package ContentTypeNames.xml is incorrect at least in the first production release.

Groups then. The DisplayAttribute.GroupName is localized via heading elements. These headings localizes the tab names in edit mode.

I couldn’t find anything about ContentTypeAttribute.GroupName so I fired up good old reflector. It turned out that you can localize GroupName via specifying groups in the xml file.

I expected this to localize the labels for the different groups of page types  you get when creating a new page. This is not the case. What’s actually localized is the bracketed prefix on the page type when you view them in admin mode. I can’t see much use for this so I’ve checked with the support and they have an existing bug regarding that page type information localization doesn’t work so hopefully this will be fixed soon.

Below is an example lang file for reference.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<languages>
 
  <language name="English" id="en">
 
    <!-- Blocks -->
    <blocktypes>
      <blocktype name="PageListBlock">
        <name>Page List</name>
        <description>Blockbeskrivning</description>
      </blocktype>
    </blocktypes>
 
    <!-- Tab headings aka GroupName in Displayattribute for a property-->
    <headings>
      <heading name="Default">
        <description>Default</description>
      </heading>
    </headings>
    
    <pagetypes>
      <!-- PropertyNames -->
      <common>
        <property name="DisableIndexing">
          <caption>Disable indexing</caption>
          <help>Help</help>
        </property>
      </common> 
      
      <!-- Page types -->
      <pagetype name="ArticlePage">
        <name>Article</name>
        <description>Help</description>
      </pagetype>
      
      <!-- Groupname in ContentTypeAttribute-->
      <groups>
        <group name="Test">Prefix</group>
      </groups>
    </pagetypes>
  </language>
 
</languages>
Mar 05, 2013

Comments

Per Nergård (MVP)
Per Nergård (MVP) Apr 23, 2013 01:37 PM

Update: (It seems I can't edit old posts with live writer from another computer so a comment have to be sufficient).

if you wan't to localize propertynames on a per type basis the format is like this. The pagetype element name attribute can be both the name of a pagetype as well as a blocktype.




Caption
HelpText


janaka.podiralahamy
janaka.podiralahamy Nov 18, 2013 05:02 PM

i am able to see my changes on page types but not with blocks. can you help? thanks!

Please login to comment.
Latest blogs
AEO/GEO: A practical guide

Search changed. People ask AI tools. AI answers. Your content must be understandable, citable, and accessible to both humans and machines. That’s...

Naveed Ul-Haq | Feb 17, 2026 |

We Cloned Our Best Analyst with AI: How Our Opal Hackathon Grand Prize Winner is Changing Experimentation

Every experimentation team knows the feeling. You have a backlog of experiment ideas, but progress is bottlenecked by one critical team member, the...

Polly Walton | Feb 16, 2026

Architecting AI in Optimizely CMS: When to Use Opal vs Custom Integration

AI is rapidly becoming a core capability in modern digital experience platforms. As developers working with Optimizely CMS 12 (.NET Core), the real...

Keshav Dave | Feb 15, 2026

Reducing Web Experimentation MAU Using the REST API

Overview Optimizely Web Experimentation counts an MAU based upon the script snippet rendering for evauluation of web experiement. Therefore when yo...

Scott Reed | Feb 13, 2026