Multilingual website without any index file in the root folder

Question

My client has a very simple website with two different languages and I decided to make a separate folder for each language, for example:

domain.com/en/ domain.com/de/

But in the root folder there's no index file, only an .htaccess file that 301 redirects based on HTTP:Accept-Language. It works just fine, but the thing is that the page is indexed in Google but without a snippet and no language specified in the URL.

My questions are: Is this a good practice or should I add an index file in the root folder? Or is there any other way to tackle this problem?

Answer 1

This may not really be an answer to your question, but the best way to make a multilingual is in most cases by using some simple PHP.

Create a folder called languages and create the files lang.code.php. Replace code with, for example EN for English, DE for German, etc.

Create a language switcher with the following code:

<?php
$lang = "en";
if( isset( $_POST["lang"] ) ) {
    $lang = $_POST["lang"];
    setcookie ( 'lang', $lang, time() + 60*60*24*30, '/', 'YOUR_DOMAIN');
    header( "Location: /" );
}
?>

No customization is needed.

Place the following PHP code on the page where you want your language switch to be.

session_start();
header('Cache-control: private'); // IE 6 FIX

if(isSet($_GET['lang']))
{
$lang = $_GET['lang'];

// register the session and set the cookie
$_SESSION['lang'] = $lang;

setcookie("lang", $lang, time() + (3600 * 24 * 30));
}
else if(isSet($_SESSION['lang']))
{
$lang = $_SESSION['lang'];
}
else if(isSet($_COOKIE['lang']))
{
$lang = $_COOKIE['lang'];
}
else
{
$lang = 'en';
}

if( $_COOKIE["lang"] == "en" ) {
$lang = 'en';
}

if( $_COOKIE["lang"] == "nl" ) {
$lang = 'nl';
}

switch ($lang) {
  case 'en':
  $lang_file = 'lang.en.php';
  break;

  default:
  $lang_file = 'lang.en.php';

}

include_once 'languages/'.$lang_file;

For every language, add a new case. Change default to the value that your default language should be.

Then, add the following HTML code to the same page as you placed the PHP code ^:

<form action="language_switcher.php" method="post">
    <select name="lang">
        <option value="en"<?php if( $_COOKIE["lang"] == "en" ) { echo " selected"; } ?>>English</option>
    </select>
    <button type="submit" class="btn btn-warning btn-small">Submit</button>
</form>

Add an option for every language that your website should have. The code assumes that your PHP language switcher is called language_switcher.php.

A language file looks like this:

/*
------------------
Language: English
------------------
*/

$lang = array();

// Head

$lang['HEADER_TITLE'] = 'Portal';

// Menu

$lang['HOME'] = 'Home';
$lang['ADMIN'] = 'Admin';

Then, replace all the text in your website with:

<?php echo $lang['VAR']; ?>

where VAR will represent a value in the language file.

It looks harder than it is. Good luck!

Answer 2

As far as I know, there is no specific needs to put your files on root. If you think your users will get benefited with this practice, go for it.

My Suggestion:

Keep your default language on your root domain. For example your main target audience is En, keep English version at root.

For other language, create sub-folders.