How to make two languages on website

[Castorpoluks]

1.Create subdomain and put in that folder all pages on new language:
eng.example.com
2.Create folder english
www.example.com/english/index.html and put redirection via .htaccess on main home default page
or some other way

[tedster]

Hello Castorpoluks, and welcome to the forums.

Either approach can work for you on a .com domain hosted in the US. If you want to target specific English speaking countries, then you mioght also want to consider ccTLD domain names for specific countries such as UK, Australia, South Africa and so on.

We had a pretty discussion about this last year that we keep in the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page:

Geolocation and the multi-language site [webmasterworld.com]

[MLHmptn]

Or you may just want to incorporate Google's free language translation service so as to save you loads of time. Maybe just put a link to the translation languages like such with a dangling carrot or something of the sort.

For French:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.example.com/&langpair=en&hl=fr

Spanish:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.example.com/&langpair=en&hl=es

German:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.example.com/&langpair=en&hl=de

Italian:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.example.com/&langpair=en&hl=it

Portugese
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.example.com/&langpair=enŠpt

HTH!

[edited by: MLHmptn at 5:48 am (utc) on Nov. 28, 2008]

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:53 am (utc) on Nov. 28, 2008]
[edit reason] use example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]

[piatkow]

the best approach really depends on why you want two languages.

Are you targetting a bilingual country such as Belgium or Canada, do you want to serve different countries with different languages such and Spain and Portugal or a multi national site with variations for different language blocks such as Spanish in South America?

[conor]

We like to seperate languages on to diiferent cc.tlds and if they are not available use subdomains.

So If you are aiming at UK in Englsih, Mexico in Spanish and Spani in Spanish you could use

domain.co.uk or .com
domain.com.mx or mx.domain.com
es.domain.com or domain.es

[Castorpoluks]

Hello again.thx much on your replay
my target is Serbia and website is by default on that language.English i need only for couple valuable links that request that, like yahoo for example.Strange thing is when my designer cope same page with same css and give the same name index.html and just put in english folder so then diffrences between home page on serbina and main on english was:
www.example.com/index.html
www.example.com/english/index.html
Google drooped my index page and i didn't rank well anymore.Fact is that i have 130 links targeted on main page and all is clear but why google dropped me from search i don't know.

[g1smd]

Using locally hosted TLDs is usually the best route, but it all depends.

Sometimes separate subdomains or separate folders might be OK instead.