question on multilingual site configuration

[guybr]

I'm using Joomla 2.5.28 on my home and initial pages, and VM 2.6.6 for the store, and I've got a total of 3 languages being serviced.

Since I'm using English as my default language for everything in VM (i.e. the product descriptions etc. are all in English for all 3 languages), is it possible to do the following: can I have all 3 languages take users to VM in English, but to the translated checkout plugins if they choose to purchase?

I'm asking for 2 reasons:
1) I'll be having serious duplicate content issues (for SEO considerations) if the same products texts appear 3 times - UNLESS someone can suggest a way to avoid that concern??
2) one of my languages is RTL and that's seriously messing up the VM store design in that language

[jjk]

Have a look at your source code in all three languages. If the canonical URL is the same in all languages you should not have a duplicate content issue.
Do I understand it correctly that you want to convert your RTL language to English?

[guybr]

Thanks JJK! i have to ask a newbie question: what does a canonical URL look like?
for example this is a link to the VM store homepage (no SEF): http://mysite.com/VMstore/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&view=virtuemart&Itemid=619&lang=he
and this is a link to a product:
http://mysite.com/VMstore/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&view=productdetails&virtuemart_product_id=867&virtuemart_category_id=37&Itemid=619&lang=he


Since my original post I did a re-re-think and it looks like I'll need to keep the rtl pages. But if on the subject, can you tell me why the pages with the RTL language are rendered RTL even though I deleted the callups for that css in my template index file? The problem is, it rendered *everything* RTL, including the positioning of modules - and that's what messing up the appearance. I'm unable to find where the Hebrew language file activates RTL for all elements on the template pages...

[jjk]

Concerning the canonical URL - a quick search in Google found this short explanation in Hebrew:
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%98_%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%91%D7%AA_%D7%A7%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%AA
A canonical URL is generated by VirtueMart automatically. You can see it if you select 'View source code' in your browser.

No idea how to solve your RTL problems, because I never tried it. Maybe you find something if you search for VirtueMart and RTL. Perhaps there is a Virtuemart forum in Hebrew?