Bilingual website best approach

HTML or PHP?

[vivalasvegas]

I am building a website for a friend and at some point I will have to translate and publish all pages in a second language. I have never built a bilingual website before and I am only familiar with html/css (no php). I could build a directory and place all translated pages in it (bilingualsite.com/secondlanguage/page1.html and so on). Is this good/common practice or should I hire a programmer to build this website in php? I will have around 30-40 pages.

Thanks.

[jinxed]

Im not sure what you mean by this.

Do you mean because creating the website in PHP would be alot easier/quicker to develop?

[vivalasvegas]

Not really, but I think updating content/adding new pages is easier.

As I said I don't have experience with building bilingual sites so maybe there are issues I would run into using one approach or another that I am not aware of now. I would of course prefere using the first method because I can do it myself, but this shouldn't be the only reason.

[jinxed]

I'm not sure the fact that the website is bilingual would make any difference as to whether you created the site with either approach.

I would go with what you feel most comfortable with...

[Dave_Hybrid]

html vs php ie; static vs dynamic, is that what you mean?

If you're asking if it will be easier to translate/update a html vs php (static vs dynamic) website then yes, the php/dynamic router will be a better option imo.

Changes to the website later on are much quicker and easier.

[lucy24]

You're looking at an investment: time rather than money. If you're only making the site once and then walking off, never to look at it again, it will obviously be faster to do what you already know how to do.

But if you are taking long-term responsibility for the site, you can expect it to change and grow over the years. That's when the time investment of learning php will pay off.

Do as I say. Not as I do.

[vivalasvegas]

Thanks for your advice. I took it and am paying a web design/programming company to build the website using a CMS they built. It wasn't just the bilingual issue, I also thought that my friend would be better off adding the content himself and this CMS makes it easy.

[jinxed]

Sounds like a wise choice, and increases the maintainability.