"Unpublishing" a Language from a site

Question

There are currently five languages defined in a v7.2 site: en, en-GB, fr-FR, de-DE, en-AU, and zh-CN. Marketing has decided they no longer want to translate to fr-FR and would like to remove it from the site, however not lose all of the links.

The site will be upgraded to 8.x soon (most likely 8.2) and we'd like to utilize language fallback to have the fr-FR fallback to en-GB. Conceptually, we know how to set this up on the languages and templates, but how to we bulk "unpublish" all of the fr-FR versions of our items?

Update:

The intention isn't to completely remove the language versions, just unpublish them so they are no longer in the web database. Looking at the publishing restrictions fields, they are all shared.

Answer 1

Because you want to keep the content in the Master database, but you do not want to publish it to the web database, this may be a good opportunity to use Workflow.

If you're using Workflow on these pages

Here's how to fix your issue:

• Establish which Workflow your fr-FR pages are using.

• In that Workflow, create a new Workflow state called "Archived" or "Disabled".

• Make sure the Archived State's Final field is not checked off.

• Use C#, Sitecore Rocks, or Powershell to set the Workflow State value of all fr-FR Item versions to the "Archived" state created above.

Example Routine:

public class Example
{
        public void Process()
        {
            var database = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("master");
            var language = Language.Parse("fr-FR");
            var items = database.SelectItems("/sitecore/content//*");

            foreach (var item in items)
            {
                var localized = item.Database.GetItem(item.ID, language);
                SetWorkflowState(localized);

                var olderVersions = localized.Versions.GetOlderVersions();

                foreach (var version in olderVersions)
                {
                    SetWorkflowState(version);
                }
            }
        }

        private void SetWorkflowState(Item item)
        {
            item.Editing.BeginEdit();
            item.Fields[FieldIDs.WorkflowState].Value = DisabledWorkflowStateId;
            item.Editing.EndEdit();
        }
}

I'm sure a powershell ace will add the equivalent in Powershell here.

If you're not using Workflow Yet

You must first set the Workflow for these Page Templates in their Standard Values, then you can proceed as above.

Don't Forget to Publish!

You'll probably want to run a full-site smart Publish to remove the fr-FR language content from the site - Keep in mind that you only need to publish the fr-FR language, which should keep your smart-publish burden down.

Answer 2

I think this is possible with SPE. Something like this should work:

Remove-ItemLanguage -Path master:\content\home -Language "fr-FR" -Recurse

Perform this on a CM server and publish the site to move the changes to the web database and the CD servers.

It's probably also a good idea to rebuild your indexes and link database after doing this.

It might also be a good idea to set your language fallback already before publishing and rebuilding indexes, this way you only need to do that once.

Answer 3

You could loop through items in your tree and restrict publishing using Sitecore PowerShell.

$item = Get-Item master:/sitecore/content/home
$item.Editing.BeginEdit()
$item["__Never publish"] = "1"
$item.Editing.EndEdit()

Some useful links: https://community.sitecore.net/technical_blogs/b/sitecorejohn_blog/posts/fields-that-control-publishing-restrictions-in-the-sitecore-asp-net-cms

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31950065/in-sitecore-powershell-can-you-make-an-item-unpublishable

https://sitecorepowershell.gitbooks.io/sitecore-powershell-extensions/content/appendix/commands/Get-ItemField.html

Answer 4

An alternative using only the UI... What if...

1. You delete de language. it will delete all the content in that language. It will take a while.
2. Publish the languages folder with subitems. It will delete the french content from web database. Again, It will take a while, depending on your content.
3. Create the language again, set up fallback and publish. If I understood the requisite you would then keep your links.

This post seems to confirm my point (thanks @dymitro)

Answer 5

In addition to other answers, you can do this manually by removing language versions directly from Sitecore databases, followed by rebuilding all caches and indexes.

1) Execute the following queries on your Master and Web databases:

DELETE
FROM [VersionedFields]
WHERE [Language] = 'fr-FR'

DELETE
FROM [UnversionedFields]
WHERE [Language] = 'fr-FR'

2) Clear item caches on all instances using the page /sitecore/admin/cache.aspx

3) Rebuild the link database on all Sitecore instances. You can do that from the control panel.

4) Rebuild search indexes on all Sitecore instances. You can do that from the control panel.

Be sure to test this thoroughly in a test setup, since modifying Sitecore databases directly may sometimes break your site.

Answer 6

One option would be to execute a script on web database. Following link explains what code to be executed

public void RemoveLanguageVersion(string rootItemPath, string languageName)
        {
            Language languageRemove = Sitecore.Globalization.Language.Parse(languageName);
            Item rootItem = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(rootItemPath, languageRemove);

            if (rootItem != null)
            {
                using (new Sitecore.SecurityModel.SecurityDisabler())
                {
                    //Remove language version from root item               
                    rootItem.Versions.RemoveVersion();

                    //Remove language version recursively from child items of root item
                    foreach (Item child in rootItem.Axes.GetDescendants().Where(l => l.Language == languageRemove))
                    {
                        child.Versions.RemoveVersion();
                    }
                }
            }
        }

http://www.bugdebugzone.com/2014/06/remove-specific-language-version-from.html