When you create or edit a product you can choose which locales (of the locales supported by your store) you want the product to support. When you set a product to support a locale it means you will enter localized content for that product.
Localized specific content only appears to shoppers in the locale for which it was entered, and you do not have to enter localized content for all supported locales. What you enter for the product on the default locale will be see in all supported locales until you override this and change what has been entered.
Note: Whether a product supports a locale does not affect whether a shopper in that locale can see or purchase the product on your store. The only way shoppers in a specific locale will not be able to purchase a product is if you restrict the purchasing ability to the locales supported by the product. See Limiting Purchases to Supported Locales below.
Ideally, you should localize a product when it is first created but you can localize a product after it has been created and even after it has been deployed to your store. When you are viewing a product you can click between the locales to enter localized content. If the fields and options on a locale tab are disabled it means that the default locale settings are being used for the supported locale. See "Overriding the Default Locale" below for more about how this works.
Limiting Purchases to Supported Locales
You can limit which locales can purchase a product to only the default and supported locales you have set for a product. This essentially hides the products from shoppers in all other locales on your store.
You can restrict which locales can purchase a product when you are creating a new product in the Product Wizard or when editing a product in the Product Editor. Simply select the "Restrict Product Visibility and Purchasing to Locales Below" check box that appears when you select/add supported locales to have the product only available for purchase in the locales that are supported for the product (including the default locale).
Moving Between Locales in the Product
When you create a product using the product Wizard, you choose which locales you want the product to support in Step 2 of the Wizard. When you reach Step 6 (the Product Settings step) you will see locale tabs near the top to indicate which locales the product is supporting. It is on those tabs that you will enter the localized content for the product.
When you edit a product using the Product Editor, you can see which locales were selected for the product in the middle pane near the top of the page.
What You Should Localize for a Product
What you localize for your products is up to you but your decision should be based the product and the locales you want to support. For example, if the locales you are supporting have certain regional or cultural differences, you may want to localize the product to account for those differences. Most people localize the product names, product descriptions, keywords, thank you page text, and email text but there are many other attributes you can localize such as the SKU, return type, product images, download file, search engine optimization settings, and so on.
Overriding the Default Locale
When you create a new product, what is entered for the product on the default locale (name, description, product image, and so on) is automatically copied to all supported locales until you select to override this. You will not be able to enter any content for a supported locale until you override the connection to the default locale. To override the copy from the default locale, view a supported locale and select the check box.
Once you override the default locale, you can enter localized product content in supported locales. Keep in mind that once you have enabled the override for a supported locale, you cannot reverse the override so that content on the default locale is copied to that locale.
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