Global site with localisation support
Development and Programming
Hi
We’re looking at using EE for a global brand site that can be localised. This means rather than local translations, the site can support variations in the templates and site map.
So for example, the site must allow for the French version to have different pages (and possibly some different templates) from the English version. The site content would be managed by country managers, who must be restricted in their access to only manage their own country’s content.
the solution we’re looking at would mean the www site (www.domain.com) would have a country and language selector and an age confirmation (it’s an alcohol brand). Once completed the user would be redirected to a subdomain (e.g. fr.domain.com) to display the local market’s site.
If the country has more than one language, the user would be prompted to select a language on the www site before being redirected (e.g. ca-fr.domain.com or ca-en.domain.com for Canadian French/English). This ‘gateway’ page would set a cookie with the user’s information.
Each page on the site would check for the cookie and if it doesn’t exist the user would be redirected back to the gateway (unless the user agent identifies itself as a search engine). I understand this could be achieved through a multi site license.
My question is, will this work and is it the best approach? I’d like the solution to be open, so if a particular country manager wanted to go a completely different direction with the site it’s possible without interfering with the overall architecture.
If anything, should I consider a multi-language add-on such as http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/multi-language-support/ to allow one country with different languages to avoid having to manage multiple sites? I don’t think such an add-on would be suited to manage different countries because of the requirements I outlined in the 2nd paragraph, but it might work just for managing the translations within a single country?
Any thoughts or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Ben
From a quick read I think you are really looking at individual sites vs. one translated site. The minute you need different pages your needs are more than a translation tool will do.
I’d suggest looking into using EE’s MSM feature, one site per language. You can share templates across sites where it makes sense yet keep localized content per-site. This would also allow per-site member groups for admins.