Posted by Adrienne Boswell on 04/11/07 02:06

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Ikke <ikke@hier.be> writing in
news:Xns990FD6D72022ikkehierbe@195.130.132.70:

> Hi everybody,
>
> I'd like to set up a new site, which has to be multilingual (english,
> and my native language). However, the entire site will be written in
> html.
>
> Now I'd like to ask whether or not this is possible - I know it's
> possible to translate all the pages and use index-en.html and
> index-nl.html etc, or even use subdirectories, but I'm still faced
> with some problems.
>
> First, there is only one index.html - which language should I use
> here? Logic dictates that english is more popular than dutch, yet most
> of my visitors will be dutch.
>
> Second, is there a way to remember the language a user selected? I'm
> thinking cookies here - is it possible to use cookies without using
> JavaScript? And reading them? If I'm using JavaScript, I'll be
> limiting my audience a little, I'm afraid...
>
> Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions on this subject are very very
> welcome!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ikke
>

You could put a small paragraph or two in each language which briefly
explains what your site is. Offer links such as <a
href="en/somepage.html">Some Page in English</a> and <a
href="nl/somepage.html">Some Page in Dutch</a>.

You could also make use of a querystring and use the querystring
throughout the site, eg. somepage.php?lang=en. Then on somepage.php test
for the language value and serve the appropriate text.


--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
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