Revision as of 15:07, 8 July 2014

The language files are provided unencoded to allow you to view the language strings that WHMCS uses.

However we do not recommend editing these files directly. They are often overwritten during software upgrades to introduce new and updated text.

Instead we recommend that you use overrides which allow you to customise the default variables with your own in a way which can be safely preserved through the upgrade process.

Usage Instructions

Steps for customising language strings via overrides are as follows:

1. Create the folder 'overrides' within the 'lang' folder.

2. Create or copy the language file you want to override. For example, to create an override for the English language you create ./lang/overrides/english.php

3. Open the newly created file in your preferred editor.

4. Start the file with a PHP tag '<?php' indicating PHP code is to be used.

5. Enter the variable(s) you wish to override. For example, if you wanted to change "Welcome to our members area" you would locate the proper variable within ./lang/english.php and place it into the overrides english file with your preferred change:

./lang/english.php

$_LANG['headertext'] = "Welcome to our members area.";

./lang/overrides/english.php

$_LANG['headertext'] = "Welcome home!";

6. For each variable you wish you change, repeat step #5. For example, a completed overrides file should look something like this:

./lang/overrides/english.php

<?php
$_LANG['headertext'] = "Welcome home!";
$_LANG['addtocart'] = "Add to Basket";
$_LANG['cartproductaddons'] = "Product Extras";

7. Save, and you're done!

Encoding

By default the language files in WHMCS use the UTF-8 encoding without a Byte Order Marketer character at the start. When creating language override files it is important to maintain the same encoding.

If you have chosen to change the system charset setting to something other than UTF-8 (eg. iso-8859-1) then the language override files will need to be re-saved with ANSI encoding without a Byte Order Marketer. Most text editors have this option (including Notepad).