On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 14:30:11 -0500, Ketan Vakil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Is it an okay plan to take an existing English website programmed in ColdFusion and basically duplicate it across a few other languages (French, German, Italian, Spanish) either in their own directories like /english and /espanol, or at localized domains like .com, .com.es, etc... ?
What workflow issues have people run into going with this method?
Updates of website will be difficult. Every change will need many times more work to update and synchronize all versions. When you forget to update one language it may stop working and you won't notice that, unless you do x times more testing.
You should think about keeping only text strings in an external file and having one language-independent version of pages. I can't help with CF, but in PHP it is usually done by including a file that defines associative array (key=>value pairs being some_id=>"translated string")
Do you use the ip-to-country database to do the auto redirects to localized URLs?
That won't work, people may use proxies, etc. Just parse Accept-Language header (but really parse it; don't assume it to start with suitable language code).
It is good to have domains or subdomains with translated versions. If you have host-based localized versions you don't need to change paths on your pages plus search engines will index all languages (they won't if you use accept-language detection alone).
-- regards, Kornel Lesiński
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