Creating a Multi-Lingual Website

Subdomains? Folders? GET?

[teamcoltra]

There are many ways of doing a multilingual webpage, but i was wondering what works best. Please note I am not talking about using an Auto Translater. I have language packs using the DEFINE system in php. However, I would like to know how I should go about actually implementing the languages, and HOW to do it.
I see many websites with es.WebSite or whatever, and that to me looks the slickest. I figure I could do that and then have a .htaccess file or something, but my question is how exactly should I go about implementing multiple languages easly using subdomains (or if I have to folders or GET (like site.com/index.php?es)

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], idfer!

nice post!

[lammert]

Idfer, very good advice and a warm welcome to WebmasterWorld!

always give the user the option of switching languages on every page.

This is a very good advice which I would like to extend to "...switching languages on every page to the equivalent page in the other languages". If you are on www.example.com/en_US/someuri.html, the German language link should bring you to www.example.com/de/someuri.html. Unfortunately there are quite a number of websites around that redirect to www.example.com/de/index.html instead, which is definitely easier to implement because you just need a fixed link in your header or menu, but you may well loose visitors. Visitors coming via search engines often don't know the site structure and how they can easily navigate back from the central index page to the product or content page they viewed in the other language . Those visitors will hit the back button and leave.

[teamcoltra]

I don't think it would be that hard to make a script that does /en/someuri.php and will allow it to go /de/someuri.php

Here is my my question, with htaccess, because I like pretty urls, and I like to do new things...

Would it be okay and would it work to do
mysite.com/index.en
mysite.com/index.de

and change the extension to the language? wouldn't that technically make it more navigatable, keep the url short, and still provide other languages?
it would still technically run in /de/ and /en/ but i would just make those names appear in the end of the URL.

Or would this be in some way bad?

(I am noticing however, that through all the ways listed the /language/ method is preferred)

[bill]

Would it be okay and would it work to do
mysite.com/index.en
mysite.com/index.de

and change the extension to the language? wouldn't that technically make it more navigatable, keep the url short, and still provide other languages?

That's fairly non-standard and will probably confuse visitors more than anything.

I really don't see how you can tie a ccTLD to a language.

My markets are somewhat unique in that respect. Where I'm working language=country for the most part. (Japanese = Japan, Chinese = China, etc.) I'm well aware of the issues with countries that have multiple languages. In those cases the advice I've read here over the years trends toward the subdirectory approach.

What SEO advantages does a separate tld have over using a separate directory? www.example.com\fr vs www.example.fr, won't you be better off cost and SEO wise to go with the former.

My initial experience with this many years ago with Japanese sites dealt with the SEO aspects for various search engines and directories that would refuse to list or index sites that weren't on a .jp domain. That was quite an incentive to move to local domains for me.

Aside from that, simply tracking local user behaviour shows a tendency toward local ccTLDs, not only in the SERPs, but in the way they enter URLs in the address bar. Look at the default behaviour of IE for different language versions when you place a keyword in the address bar and hit Ctrl+Enter. The auto-completion patterns there can be of interest.

[teamcoltra]

Would it be okay and would it work to do
mysite.com/index.en
mysite.com/index.de

and change the extension to the language? wouldn't that technically make it more navigatable, keep the url short, and still provide other languages?
-------
That's fairly non-standard and will probably confuse visitors more than anything.

But do visitors really pay attention to if its a subdomain, a folder, or something new like .en?

I know when I visit sites, I click the little link button that says "en" (or US or British flag) and it just works, and I honestly don't care how they do it... and I am a "web guy".
So I doubt average joe smo internet user really will notice, or care for that matter.

[bill]

So I doubt average joe smo internet user really will notice, or care for that matter

So why bother doing it at all?

[lammert]

mysite.com/index.en, mysite.com/index.de, That's fairly non-standard and will probably confuse visitors more than anything.

Actually this IS standard. It is the preferred way how URLs should be named when using content negotiation. If content negotiation is switched on at the server side, a request for mysite.com/index will be automatically translated to a request for the file index.en or index.de, dependent on the language settings in the browser of the visitor.

Read the thread about content negotiation I linked to in an earlier post though, because if you set it up wrong, you will confuse the search engines.

[phranque]

i haven't found an authoritative reference on the best (seo) way to redirect to the negotiated content.
if someone requests www.example.com, and the language is specified as a subdomain, subdirectory or url parameter, is it best to 301 or 302 to the "language" version?