Sitecore 9.3 item regionalization - Removing a default language version (english) but keeping translated version of page

Question

We have a client website that has English (/en/) as a default language, and we've created other languages in preparation for translation and globalizing the site. We've turned on item level language fallback and field level language fallback. We've also turned on "Enforce Version Presence". One of the client requirements is to regionalize certain pieces of content so that only certain items show up within certain language/regions.

For our Spanish language, English is our language fallback and it is working correctly.

With Spanish (Mexico) selected, I've created a product page in Spanish (Mexico) (/es-mx/), and I can see the version just fine, however it also creates an English version (because it's the default language of the site?) and I can't find a way to remove the english version successfully.

I've Unchecked Enable Item Fallback and checked Enforce Version Presence, as well as made the English version unpublishable. I've been able to switch to the Web database and remove the English version, and everything works as expected, /en/product-page comes back as a 404, while the /es-mx/product-page displays as expected.

The moment I try to publish the Spanish version of the page, the English version gets re-created within the web database even with the English version marked as unpublishable, and it's now accessible through /en/product-page.

Is it possible this is a bug, or is this working as intended and I have to custom develop an alternate solution to get around this (item resolver pipeline?).

Edit: ** For clarity, I can successfully remove the English version when I'm on the master database using the standard select English language and click Remove - it even says the version is missing like it should, but once published the English version is NOT removed, and if I were to remove it manually in the web database (for testing purposes only), publishing Spanish only adds the English version right back.

Removed version from master & Published:

Web still has english version:

Something interesting I just noticed: When I re-select the master database (within desktop), and navigating back to the product page using the content editor, the english version now exists within the master database.

If I repeat these steps:

1. Make sure english is selected, remove english version by clicking Remove (I can verify in the language dropdown for the item that there is ONLY the spanish version, and I get the yellow notification "Current item does not have a version in English: English"

2. click save

3. navigate to a different item

4. navigate back to the previous item - I can confirm that there is still only one Spanish version and no english version

5. click the publish -> publish item dropdown

6. select "Republish" and all of the rest of the checkmarks are checked (subitems, related items, English, French, Spanish) (I tried smart publish too with same result)

7. navigate to another item

8. navigate to the previous product item

9. The English version has returned in the master database and I can see the English version in the list of language dropdown versions. ???

Something is causing the english version to return.

Answer 1

Ideally, as standard practice, we do not modify anything directly in a web database, Once you publish items from the master database it overwrites your web database changes.

You can remove the language version with the below steps:

1. Go to the VERSIONS tab from the menu ribbon.
2. Select language from the dropdown to switch language.

3. Go to the item you want to remove version. let's say home item.
4. Click on the item Remove button to delete the current version or click on the down arrow beside the button if you want to delete all the versions of specific items.

Check your role permission to access the appropriate menu. I'm having Admin access.

You can verify the below points to make it work.

1. Make changes to enable enforceVersionPresence at the configuration level like enforceVersionPresence = "true".

In cases where there’s no version available for the requested language, this option allows you to tell Sitecore NOT to return an item. This will end up redirecting the user to a 404 (not found) page.

Check this article for more details: https://www.valtech.com/en-in/blog/language-fallback-in-sitecore-8.1/

<site name="mysite" patch:before="site[@name='website']"
            virtualFolder="/"
            physicalFolder="/"
            rootPath="/sitecore/content"
            startItem="/home"
            database="web"
            domain="extranet"
            allowDebug="true"
            cacheHtml="true"
            htmlCacheSize="50MB"
            enablePreview="true"
            enableWebEdit="true"
            enableDebugger="true"
            disableClientData="false"
            enforceVersionPresence = "true"
            />

2. Enable Item Fallback and Enforce Version Presence at the template level (standard values) as those are shared fields.

3. Validate English item has 0 languages by clicking the language dropdown on the selected item and publish it.

Refer this for Language Fallback details; https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sitecore-how-configure-language-fallback-why-md-arifuzzaman-arif

Hope it helps!

Answer 2

I think you need to check how you have configured the enforceVersionPresence attribute. So as per the Sitecore documentation, Do not enable the enforceVersionPresence attribute on the shell or any other default site. You must enable the attribute on each of the relevant websites.

And then you need to enable enforce version presence on an item or a data template.

Refer this article.

https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/92/sitecore-experience-manager/enforce-version-presence.html