I using umbraco to create a multi territory website so I have nodes set up for each territory (not language) something like
England -- mysite.co.uk
Content
Germany -- mysite.de
Content
etc.
Language is then selected by user preferrence/browser (so for example even on the german site you may want to see articles in english albeit the articles on the germany version of the site).
I'm setting the Thread.Current.CurrentCulture and CurrentUICulture in the global.asax but it seems that umbraco is overriding this in the pages oninit using the language set on the hostname management screen. Unfortunately Umbraco seems to assume that hostnames are used to drive out language choices and so language is a required field on the hostname management screen. Is there any way to stop umbraco taking the language from the hostname section?
No, there is no way to stop Umbraco from setting the language based on your hostname. However, you could set it yourself in the PreLoad event.
As you noticed, Umbraco is setting the language OnInit, so you need to set the language yourself, but do it after Umbraco sets it.
Related
I'm working on a site which will have Dutch as its primary language, but I'd like the admin side of things to still be in English.
I've installed the site configuring it to use Dutch as the default language which means admin is also in Dutch.
I then go to Site Settings and activate En-Us but this automatically adds site aliases for both Dutch and English adding /nl-nl/ or /en-us/ to the URL.
All I want is for my site to be in Dutch, but for the Admin side of things to remain in English. Is this possible?
I've also tried enabling "Users May Choose interface Language" thinking that this applies purely to content editors, but this requires that both languages be installed which means we already have the issue where the site is in two languages with the language selector (flags) showing up.
I've set the admin user's preferred locale to English, but this makes no difference to the fact that the site is still in both Dutch and English.
I've changed the default Site alias removing the /nl-nl from the primary site alias which does work, but the user still has the option of selecting a language from persona bar (flags).
If you have only 1 language activated (Dutch) and you have the admin users preferred locale set on English, you have what you're looking for.
Cheers
Tycho
I currently have an English language Rails application that I am internationalizing to support Chinese(zh) translations.
The original URL structure is standard:
www.mysite.com, www.mysite.com/pages, ...
I've implemented the I18n using the standard Rails gem implementation, using the subfolder approach.
I now see the following:
Country-specific pages show as www.mysite.com/en, www.mysite.com/zh,
www.mysite.com/en/pages, www.mysite.com/zh/pages, etc.
The root URL, www.mysite.com, now displays the home page based
upon the last known language setting, i.e., if viewing Chinese
pages, going to www.mysite.com will show the www.mysite.com/zh
content (URL remains www.mysite.com). The same for English.
Will the new route, www.mysite.com/en, affect the link juice already attributed to www.mysite.com?
If yes, how do I redirect so that the English pages remain as www.mysite.com/ vs www.mysite.com/en/?
How do I ensure that going to www.mysite.com always displays the English homepage, regardless of current language selection, and www.mysite.com/zh/ is the only way to display the Chinese homepage?
note: Language selection is chosen by the user through a button in the header - no geolocation, browser language settings, etc.
Will the new route, www.mysite.com/en, affect the link juice already
attributed to www.mysite.com?
Using a consistent 301 redirect will not impact it much at all. Assuming your users come from Google, the new link will eventually replace the old link - and any minor penalties from redirects will dissolve as old backlinks fade and new ones reference the new 'main' page.
If yes, how do I redirect so that the English pages remain as
www.mysite.com/ vs www.mysite.com/en/?
You can host the english just on the root if you want. Or on /en/. But don't do both. This duplicates the content and confuses Google unless you use a rel=canonical to tell it which is the default. If you're running a multi lingual site - you want different directories for different languages. Set the language they choose via Cookie and you can redirect when the arrive to the correct page then.
How do I ensure that going to www.mysite.com always displays the
English homepage, regardless of current language selection, and
www.mysite.com/zh/ is the only way to display the Chinese homepage?
I've a better question - do you expect your users to always discover you via Google? If so, use hreflang codes either on your pages or sitemap (or both). This will ensure only the relevant language page comes up in a search from your targeted language region. You can broadly target 'en' rather than a region specific code and this will work.
I want that Google uses only English as interface language, despite the IP I am currently using is from a non English speaking country.
I can do so manually with the settings in the Google language settings, but I couldn't identify a GET parameter that is responsible for the Google Language interface settings.
I want to make raw Get requests with a networking library. So I cannot set the settings in the google user interface.
The search reference wasn't particularly useful: http://www.google.com/support/enterprise/static/gsa/docs/admin/72/gsa_doc_set/xml_reference/request_format.html
Thanks for any hints!
Found it:
Optional. The hl parameter specifies the interface language (host language) of your user interface. To improve the performance and the quality of your search results, you are strongly encouraged to set this parameter explicitly.
from https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/xml_results#hl
I'm currently writing an ASP.NET MVC 3 web application that supports multiple languages.
I already managed to translate all the routes so that calls like:
www.mysite.de/Kontakt and www.mysite.de/Contact will route to the same Controller/Action.
By design it is so that when calling www.mysite.de the language (stored in the session object) will automatically be set to a default language (here German). The navigation of the site is then dynamically setup accordingly.
The language in the session object can be changed by either hitting the "English version" link or when manually calling e.g. www.mysite.de/Contact. In this case it is recognized that the link (/Contact) matches a route that is
defined as English and so I change the language in the session object to English. Of course the content of the sites is also localized.
My question now is how does that cooperate with SEO, especially with Google?
I already add the Content-Language meta tag dynamically to each page. So I think that with a proper sitemap.xml should be sufficient.
Does Google recognize this correctly? Is it when searching Google in German that I get "Kontakt" as result and "Contact" when searching in English?
Another issue is what happens when the link is the same for different languages? E.g. the link to "Jobs" would/could be the same as well in English as in German.
I hope that the question is understandable as my issue is rather complicated.
Cheers,
Simon
Google does not only rely on you telling them what language your site is in, you only hint them.
The pages will be analyzed and presented as a page in "German" or a page in "English" based on the language of the content.
But your base assumption is correct.
Yes, if I search for your page in German, and Google has indexed the page as a page in German, Google will return Kontakt.
As for your second question, unless you provide another mean to change the language other than the path (query string or language in browser setting), those links will only be in your default (German) language.
If you would like them to appear in english, use a different, additional URL: Jobs-EN that you only have in your SiteMap.xml (and route, of course).
Another issue is what happens when the link is the same for
different languages? E.g. the link to "Jobs" would/could be
the same as well in English as in German.
You might consider having the language as part of your URL, for example:
www.mysite.de/de/Kontakt
www.mysite.de/en-us/Contact
www.mysite.de/en-gb/Contact
Scenario
The web server gets a request for http://domain.com/folder/page. The Accept-Language header tells us the user prefers Greek, with the language code el. That's good, since we have a Greek version of page.
Now we could do one of the following with the URL:
Return a Greek version keeping the current URL: http://domain.com/folder/page
Redirect to http://domain.com/folder/page/el
Redirect to http://domain.com/el/folder/page
Redirect to http://el.domain.com/folder/page
Redirect to http://domain.com/folder/page?hl=el
...other alternatives?
Which one is best? Pros, cons from a user perspective? developer perspective?
I would not go for option 1, if your pages are publically available, i.e. you are not required to log in to view the pages.
The reason is that a search engine will not scan the different language versions of the page.
The same reason goes agains option no 5. A search engine is less likely to identify two pages as separate pages, if the language identification goes in the query string.
Lets look at option 4, placing the language in the host name. I would use that option if the different language versions of the site contains completely different content. On a site like Wikipedia for example, the Greek version contains its own complete set of articles, and the English version contains another set of articles.
So if you don't have completely different content (which it doesn't seem like from your post), you are left with option 2 or 3. I don't know if there are any compelling arguments for one over the other, but no. 3 looks nicer in my eyes. So that is what I would use.
But just a comment for inspiration. I'm currently working on a web application that has 3 major parts, one public, and two parts for two different user types. I have chosen the following url scheme (with en referring to language of course):
http://www.example.com/en/x/y/z for the public part.
http://www.example.com/part1/en/x/y/z for the one private part
http://www.example.com/part2/en/x/y/z for the other private part.
The reason for this is that if I were to split the three parts up into separate applications, it will be a simple reconfiguration in the web server when I have the name of the part at the top of the path. E.g. if we were to use a commercial CMS system for the public part of the site
Edit:
Another argument against option no. 1 is that if you ONLY listen to accept-language, you are not giving the user a choice. The user may not know how to change the language set up in a browser, or may be using a frinds computer setup to a different language. You should at least give the user a choice (storing it in a cookie or the user's profile)
I'd choose number 3, redirect to http://example.com/el/folder/page, because:
Language selection is more important than a page selection, thus selected language should go first in a true human-readable URL.
Only one domain gets all Google's PR. That's good for SEO.
You could advert your site locally with a language code built-in. E.g. in Greece you would advert as http://example.com/el/, so every local visitor will get to a site in Greece and would avoid language-choosing frustration.
Alternatively, you can go for number 5: it is fine for Google and friends, but not as nice for a user.
Also, we should refrain to redirect a user anywhere, unless required. Thus, in my mind, a user opening http://example.com/folder/page should get not a redirect, but a page in a default language.
Number four is the best option, because it specifies the language code pretty early. If you are going to provide any redirects always be sure to use a canonical link tag.
Pick option 5, and I don't believe it is bad for SEO.
This option is good because it shows that the content for say:
http://domain.com/about/corporate/locations is the same as the content in
http://domain.com/about/corporate/locations?hl=el except that the language differs.
The hl parameter should override the Accept-language header so that the user can easily control the matter. The header would only be used when the hl parameter is missing. Granted linking is a little complicated by this, and should probably be addressed through either a cookie which would keep the redirection going to the language chosen by the hl parameter (as it may have been changed by the user from the Accept-language setting, or by having all the links on the page be processed for adding on the current hl parameter.
The SEO issues can be addressed by creating index files for everything like stackoverflow does, these could include multiple sets of indices for the different languages, hopefully encouraging showing up in results for the non-default language.
The use of 1 takes away the differentiator in the URL. The use of 2 and 3 suggest that the page is different, possibly beyond just language, like wikipedia is. And the use of 4 suggests that the server itself is separated, perhaps even geographically.
Because there is a surprisingly poor correlation of geographic location to language preferences, the issue of providing geographically close servers should be left to a proper CDN setup.
My own choice is #3: http://domain.com/el/folder/page. It seems to be the most popular out there on the web. All the other alternatives have problems:
http://domain.com/folder/page --- Bad for SEO?
http://domain.com/folder/page/el --- Doesn't work for pages with parameters. This looks weird: ...page?par1=x&par2=y/el
http://domain.com/el/folder/page --- Looks good!
http://el.domain.com/folder/page --- More work needed to deploy since it requires adding subdomains.
http://domain.com/folder/page?hl=el --- Bad for SEO?
It depends. I would choose number four personally, but many successful companies have different ways of achieving this.
Wikipedia uses subdomains for various
languages (el.wikipedia.org).
So does Yahoo (es.yahoo.com for Spanish), although it doesn't support Greek.
So does Gravatar (el.gravatar.com)
Google uses a /intl/el/ directory.
Apple uses a /gr/ directory (albeit in English and limited to an iPhone page)
It's really up to you. What do you think your customers will like the most?
None of them. A 'normal user' wouldn't understand (and so remember) any of those abbreviations.
In order of preference I'd suggest:
http://www.domain.gr/folder/page
http://www.domain.com/
http://domain.com/gr/folder/page
3 or 4.
3: Can be easily dealt with using htaccess/mod_rewrite. The only downside is that you'd have to write some method of automatically injecting the language code as the first segment of the URI.
4: Probably the best method. Using host headers, it can all be sent to the same web application/content but you can then use code to extract the language code and go from there.
Simples. ;)
I prefer 3 or 4