How to make huge changes and still stay in search engines?

I'm reworking a multi-languages website...

[ROLAND_F]

I have a website in two languages mainly in french and a bit in english but I made a big mistake in the first design.
I made the front page ( [example.com...] ) a splash screen for language selection with each language in his own directory /fr/ and /en/

Now, I want to make content available right on the front page to get better pagerank .

What is the best solution?
1) Mix both languages on the front page with article summaries and keep each language in his own directory.
2) Put the language with most updates in the root directory of the site and put links to other languages in subdirectories with two letters iso codes.
3) Other?

Also I will need to move some files around the website and I've recently heard of mod_rewrite. I tried something I've seen on this forum to check if mod rewrite is active on my hosting server and instead of simply rewriting the url and making the redirection it forced a file download and the file was open in an other browser window. How can I make it work correctly and open the target page in the current browser window?

Regards,
R.

[Filipe]

What I find works best is to start with your largest market, and make the different language subdirectories available (assuming you're not a humongous company and won't just have www.example.uk, www.example.com, www.example.ru for each language).

We usually recommend having an english homepage, and then a set of links to other languages visible on the page. Have the homepage act as the actual english homepage (not as a splash page). This should help you increase your rankings as well as provide a better user experience.

[leoo24]

definetly the way to go, a splash page is just one more obstacle in the way of your visitors getting to you :)