Hi Mattias > a) Should the url for a document in different languages be the same or > different, ie "document.html/sida.html" vs > "document.html?langID=1/document.html?langID=2" I'm leaning towards the > second alternative since it's easier to manage but I could be wrong on this.
I'd lean towards the first alternative as it's unlikely that the every single page will be available in every different language (see later). > b) documents resides in a separate directory for each language , but should > the filenames for the different pages be the same or different? (my system > is built so that actual url of a page and documents are separated) > Personally I think it makes the most sense to have all the filenames in say > english but one could go the other way and have the filenames in each > language, I'm not sure of the cons and pros of this... For the sake of naming conventions it usually makes most sense to have all the filenames in english, e.g. everyone knows what index.htm is but not everyone knows what pagina_principal.htm is. Also it's impossible to have urls in non latin character sets. > Are there any other issues to keep in mind when doing multi-language sites? There are loads of issues with multilingual sites. From a strictly CMS point of view one of the first decisions you need to make is wether or not the different language sites are going to mirror each other or not. Experience suggests that you will not simultaneously have the exact same content available in every language you deal with. Also, there are plenty of issues regarding templates and wether or not you'll be able to use the same ones for different languages. Often it's easier to have different ones. Remember that some of the static elements of your pages will change for different languages, and if you have different amounts (or types) of content for different languages you'll want to have different page layouts. You don't mention wether your pages will have just latin characters or will use different character sets. These can raise a whole new set of issues with just about every aspect of a CMS. If you need to use unicode characters then you need to check that your database will work with them and that whatever tools you are providing/developing for people to edit content can also work with them. Thats not to mention the whole set of issues that come with right to left languages. This is quite a vague introduction and if you want to know more then you might check out the magazine "Multilingual Computing" which often runs articles about the multilingual websites and CMS's. Hope this is useful, Rob -- _______________________________________________ Get your free email from http://mymail.operamail.com Powered by Outblaze -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
