Hexo multi-language with Minos

Apr 19 2018 web>hexo 5 minutes read (About 702 words)

I want to build a hexo blog with full site multi-language, search a lot and try, but no one perfect. Today it’s done, finally I can white down a tutorial for your reference.

What I seek

Full Site Multi-language

Choose English as the default language, and translate full site into your native language, all items one to one correspondence.

dengcbWelcome to my GitHub

Why use Minos

Hexo hasn’t multi-language kernel, though you can install official i18n plugin, but only get some translated shell, all the content in different languages still mix together. Minos is a simple and powerful theme, and support the multi-language thoroughly with lastest release.

How I try

Passing Pit

Official i18n Plugin
Set i18n_dir: :lang in _config.yml, you can generate an i18n slug, just that. All multilingual posts still mix. Note: the setting also needs in Minos.
hexo-generator-i18n
This plugin can get multilingual pages, but not posts or tags, because hexo kernel doesn’t support.
hexo-multilingual and its generator
This is a real plugin that changes the kernel, you should uninstall all official generators first. But the author is too busy to fix some issues. And this plugin always start ‘en’ in default slug.
Other Tricks
Such as build two sites and different route; or rewrite the core code. I think it’s not what I want, drop it.

Meeting Minos

View a lot of themes, choose Minos at last, not the popular NEXT theme. Because I want the classical website to be less colorful, less drawing, just words or ascii codes. So Minos wins. I hope more hexor can choose Minos like me.

When using Minos at first, it doesn’t support multi-language yet. Its 1.0 version has been released more than 2 years. Author just want to update to 2.0, and plan to support i18n fully. I test this days and feedback some issues, the latest release finally achieve the full site multi-language support today (post、page、archive、category、tag、search、switcher etc.). Now I can tell you how I build site with Minos.

Convention best

What we need
Is variety needs, or simple to use. If former, the full site multi-language still needs time, Minos is not the silver bullet. If later, congratulations, you can do it today with least configurations. Such as, you set config to: permalink: :category/:title/, then slug as: /nothing/zh-cn/hello-world/, that’s the conflict between convention and configuration.

Let’s agree

Use default config, try not to whim

language:
  - en
  - zh-cn
permalink: :title/
i18n_dir: :lang
new_post_name: :title.md
category_map:
  无他: nothing
tag_map:
  随笔: anything

Install minimal plugins, less is better

{
  "name": "dengcb.github.io",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "private": true,
  "hexo": {
    "version": "3.8.0"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "hexo": "^3.8.0",
    "hexo-deployer-git": "^0.3.1",
    "hexo-generator-archive": "^0.1.5",
    "hexo-generator-category": "^0.1.3",
    "hexo-generator-index": "^0.2.1",
    "hexo-generator-tag": "^0.2.0",
    "hexo-pagination": "^0.1.0",
    "hexo-renderer-ejs": "^0.3.1",
    "hexo-renderer-marked": "^0.3.2",
    "hexo-renderer-sass": "^0.3.2",
    "hexo-renderer-stylus": "^0.3.3",
    "hexo-server": "^0.3.3"
  }
}

Install Minos from root

git clone https://github.com/ppoffice/hexo-theme-minos.git themes/minos

at themes/minos, new 3 config files

_config.yml _config.en.yml _config.zh-cn.yml

in _config.zh-cn.yml, set site name and menu
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# Site
title: 长斌

# Menu
menu:
归档: /zh-cn/archives
分类: /zh-cn/categories
标签: /zh-cn/tags
关于: /zh-cn/about
Create posts, and follow the structure
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_post/
hello-world.md
zh-cn/
hello-world.md
about/
index.md
zh-cn/
about/
index.md
CNAME
favicon.png
Copy post to source/_post/<lang>/

Copy page tosource/<lang>/

That’s the Convention best, create the structure, then generate full site multi-language, done.

Generate, Test, Deploy, enjoy it!
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hexo clean
hexo g
hexo s -s
hexo d

Thanks

Special Minos author ppoffice who designed and coded Minos such excellent theme. After I feedback, he continues to code and modify, realize all ideals I have set for hexo theme.

Next, I will post a blog how send the site to IPFS system.

#tutorial