Website in 2nd language - need new domain ? 
Author: Liliane G.
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Hello
I have a general question about website creation. Just finished my very first site in German and would love to translate in English as well. Now I wonder if I need a new domain or if the same domain will allow to create multi-lingual sites and let the visitor click on a language symbol and then it links to the English version. If this is possible on same domain how would I need to do this?
Thanks in advance
Liliane
Posted on the
Liliane,
I would personally recommend creating a separate site for your english version.
It could be a sub-domain of your current domain e.g. en.yourdomain.de or you could secure the .com or whatever other suffix you want for your english domain.
Regards,
PJ D
Author
Oh I see.. So I will need to see if I can do de.mydomain.xx and en.mydomain.xx or fr.mydomain.xx and if this works I simply link each others language pages on the first page and then the visitor gets directed to his preferred language site.
Thanks a lot.
Exactly!
To make it easy, you could integrate flags of the languages you wish to integrate into your website header or footer image (I personally would recommend header as footer is sometimes out of sight).
Once you have created the flags, you could add transparent *.png images over the top of each flag and set a hyperlink to the homepage of the desired language. (this can be done under general settings / edit graphic template).
You should create individual sites for each language, however to make life easy you could just duplicate your german site and change everything to English, and then do the same for French and so on.
This way you maintain consistency with your weblayout etc.
Hope this helps?
Any questions, feel free to ask!
Author
PJD
thanks so much. I will try that once I have a minute. The flags for language selection was also my idea. What I do not quite get is the part with the "transpartent" *.png .. actually the transparent part is a bit a mystery but once I will start I might find out. :) It is so much fun to experiment with this program! Best buy ever :)
Author
Now I really have a stupid question. Sub-domains created for use with other languages, even 2nd domain would be available but all with the same hosting company.
How in the world can I force WebsiteX5 to publish content on 1 domain only? It is nice when everything is done automatically but this now generated the same content on all domains/sub domains automatically :(
Where do I need to change the path? How can I select which content is supposed to go on with domain / sub domain? sorry I am lost here but I have never uploaded anything before so I am struggling to understand this procedure.
Thanks in advance
Liliane,
I would create new sites for each language.
I do not know who is your service provider, however with godaddy I can create a sub domain e.g. de (for german) within the cpanel, which creates a sub folder titled de within my public_html folder.
Here I would upload my de version of website. You can select the appropriate folder in the upload to website page.
Then I would hyperlink the german flag to this sub-domain.
can you create the sub domains within your hosting packet?
Regards,
PJ D
Author
Hi PJ D
Yes I can create subdomains and link them to whatever I want. I can also create new folders when I login through my hosting service. What I do not get at this stage is why the same content is added to whatever subdomain I create even after uploading. Even adding a complete new domain with my hosting service showed instantly with the content of the first domain. Looks that standard folder is applied to all domains even added afterwards. I will try to create new folders for each domain and subdomain, upload respective content into these folders and then try to link the proper content to each domain and sub domain. The language links will be 2nd priority now first goal is to load sites with different content. Let's hope this will bring the result I am looking for. I will see if I can find info on what these folders mean when I login to my hosting service as to me it could be Chinese and I would understand about the same :( Maybe I need to read the Confix manual first..lol
Thanks for your patience with a newbie.
Liliane,
At this stage just create the homepage / startseite for a couple of languages.
Do not work on creating the whole site, get the homepages working first.
I am sure that the issues you are confronted with are nothing serious. Are you uploading to the folders for each sub domain?
PJ D
Author
Hi PJD
I think I got the idea. I created a folder for the German version which at present is in the main folder \HTML and not in a subfolder so that is why it will display on all domains and subdomains. If I create a folder for the German content and a folder for the English version then I only need to point out which domain goes to which folder.. I think. At least to my logic..will test that. Will try to create a new folder for German version and point it to one of my domains and see how this goes. To my logic this should work.
Thank you