Multilingual website - any hints how to do it?

[skycruiser]

I'm creating a multilingual website (german / english) and looking for a solution for the following problem:

I want to keep the advantage of a navbar as a repeating object. But on the german pages a german navbar shall appear and on the english pages an english version. Now Im wondering what would be the easiest way to solve this problem. One idea could be to create two separate websites (two different .xar files) within the same folder and place a language button which switches to the other version in each case.

Or does somebody have another, simpler idea how to handle a multilingual website?

Thanks for any suggestion!

[gwpriester]

Save your site with a different name (for example, English Version). Make the appropriate language changes. Publish one version to a folder in your server. For example, if your main site is in English, then name the folder for the other site german. Name the site that is being published to the folder the same as the other site, index.htm or index.html. Have the flag icons on your home page and link each to the appropriate site.

If the main site is in English then the other site will be linked to the folder. If your site is mysite.com then the link to the German site will be mysite.com/german/

Does this make sense.

[Big Frank]

i did this a few years ago but the principle would be the same for a modern design

http://kestrell.net

it would be more elegant to do it with php with includes or a database with a variable to determine the language version displayed, eg.

 http://mysite.com/index.php?lang=de

but if you have zero experience of doing this using xara placeholders it's probably best to stick to static html
but the other side of the coin is it's fun to learn new techniques that open up new possibilities

[Acorn]

Two separate sites, published to two folders: /site/en/ and /site/de/. This approach can be extended to other languages - A2 bigraphs - http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/ctycodes.htm, noting EN isn't one but usually covers UK/US/AU/CA/NZ/GI and other English-speaking countries.
On each page of each site have the (EN and DE) icons/flags set up to jump to the corresponding page on the other site(s).

Acorn

[skycruiser]

Thank you all for your opinions. As I am not a PHP specialist and currently have not the time to learn it I will go with the two language folders (this is what I also had in mind). Seems to be the easiest and quickest way for me

[gwpriester]

[iannicholson]

There are a couple of options here..!

One, is you can have Google Translate translate your page. You can add the Google Translate plug-in to your site to translate your pages, but you will have little control over the layout.

Alternatively, save your website for each language, and publish each into its own subfolder. You can have maps on the top of your page that directly link to the index pages in each language subfolder.