Asymetrical sites....

I need to have 1,2 or more asymetrical sites that mirror the original

[Abdar]

Strange topic I suppose but anyways here it goes.

I've basically be given the task of creating a new website for a university. It's going to be very big, have a web portal, blah blah ...

Well there's some politics that are running in the background that dictate that we are going to have to have a French and possibly another languages represented on the site.

I have no issue with other languages being on there except that I cannot run 2+ symetrical sites on my own. Most of the French must be translated and any other languages to go up will to. Lets not forget DB storage issues and trying to keep the site up to date and current while waiting for translations.

So it's been pretty much agreed that the French and other language pages can be represented asymetrically. I'm thinking a little "about us" stuff, some general admissions info, contacts and so on.

The thing that I'm thinking about is how to link these sites from the English side without the feel of them being lesser or at the least saying to them..

"Hey, we know your there, and so we have put this up to give you your general information in your language, but it's not a full mirror of the English site."

Has anyone kind of has this delema before? How did you deal with it?

Thanks for any help.

[globay]

Try to look at other university pages, how they solved the problems.

A database driven site could be adapted, to display the translation in the foreign, language, and if the site is not translated, display the original site.

[rogerd]

Hi, Abdar. Interesting problem. I can imagine various ways to do this, but I'd probably lean toward the following:

1) Decide on your index page - the English version (good from an SEO standpoint) or a language choice page (bad, bad).
2) Provide a "Francais" link on the English page, and bring up something as close to a duplicate of the English home page as you can. Even if you don't have the depth of content in each area, perhaps you could provide a French intro page and links to the expanded English content. For example, perhaps you have 80 news articles on the English site that you don't want to translate. In the French version, there would still be a "News" link (in French), and it would lead to a menu of any translated articles as well as a link to the complete English selection.

If you aren't translating everything, you run the risk of irritating those seeing reduced content. I think it's better to let these visitors know the English content exists, though, than to show only a fraction of the content and have them think that's all there is.