|
/pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> |
Ten Major Tips to Develop a Multilingual Web Site to Work
If you are living in a country that its native language is something rather than English language, then you may like to develop your website to offer content in the language of your own country.
There are millions of websites on the Internet that are all in English language but there are billions of people on the earth that speak in a different language and are not familiar with English language.
However, most of the Internet users are basically familiar with English language and could use the Internet but there are many subjects that are hard to understand for those people whom their language is not English.
One example is websites related to pharmaceutics. There are tons of very difficult to understand phrases in the content. The other example is educational websites that basically should provide content in the local language not English language.
You may have many clients and business partners that wish to read your sales copy and product information in their own language.
So, having a website that provides the content in a language rather than English language is necessary for you. Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Dutch, France and many other languages are general samples of most used languages on the Internet. For you to start a multilingual website, it is vital to consider some tips before starting to design and develop your websites:
1- The Code Page
The best code page that you should choose for your web pages is Unicode. Unicode is a kind of numeric presentation of characters that is two bytes and so can contain up to 65535 characters to show. Until now, there have been no human being languages in the universe that have had more than these much characters. So, by using Unicode, you are able to show all characters of your language. To represent your web page as a Unicode page, add below line of code in the head part of your page:
2- Tools For Development
For creating web pages in Unicode format, you should have a tool to be able to type in your language. One of the tools that are widely used by web developers is Microsoft Front Page.
If this tool is installed on Windows XP then you have the most powerful set of software to create Unicode documents. FrontPage is a WYSIWYG tool for creating web pages and you can easily choose the language of your web page in options of the page and appropriate HTML tags would be automatically inserted in the code.
3- Nature of the Language
If your language is Right-To-Left like many of Asian and Middle East languages, for example, Arabic, Persian and Hebrew, you should tune your operating system to be able to switch from Left-To-Right to Right-To-Left typing method to be able to type from Right and from Left. If you are a Microsoft Windows user, you can configure your system for multiple languages and keyboards, each of them having different kind of input methods. For example, you can add Farsi as the second language of your Windows and then switch from English to Farsi by pressing a combination of keys and start typing in Farsi. Also switching from RTL to LTR would be possible by another key combination.
4- Navigation and Design Considerations
Some languages force to apply some changes in the design and navigation of your website. For example, if you have a vertical menu bar, you may put it in the left of your pages for English pages and in the right for Arabic pages because Arabic is a RTL language and people are used to start reading pages from right to left. However this is not a rule, but it is better to consider it in designing pages.
Other issue is the entrance page. If your website is in two languages, you may add an entrance page that makes client choose the navigation language of your website. This page could be a very nice graphical page with two options for choosing desired language and then enters the web site in that language. In some cases, you may consider one language as the base and eliminate entrance page. In this case, you assume most of the visitors may use a language that is dominant and they enter automatically the web pages of your web site that are in that language. However, visitors would see a small icon in web pages that lets them switch to the other language.
Other method is to use IP2Country services that can find the country of the visitor from its IP address and by adding some simple dynamic code to your pages, you would be able to switch to the language of the visitor. However, this method is not %100 accurate and you should consider some percent of fault in recognizing the country of the visitor.
5- Font Face Considerations
When you are creating your web pages in a language rather than English, you would be limited in using font faces. There are a few font faces in windows that are installed automatically and can show multilingual characters. If you like your visitors view your pages correct without any need to install fonts, you have to use those minor number of multilingual fonts. One of the best font faces is Tahoma that is somehow easy to read and contains all Unicode characters also is included in Windows.
6- Database Driven Web Sites
If your web site is a database driven and you have forms that clients may fill and be posted to database, there would be lots of very technical issues that you should consider to be able to collect and retrieve data in different languages. This part is beyond the aims of this article.
7- Search Engines
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a major issue for multilingual web sites and you should be aware that not necessarily all major search engines and directories handle multilingual web pages perfectly and your web site may not be listed in many of them. Google is a search engine that indexes multilingual web pages too. However there are some issues and difficulties but it works well enough for your web site to be indexed in your language.
8- Domain Name
No matter in which language is your web site, the domain name of your web site should be in English because at this time, having a domain name in other language is not a very easy thing to have and multilingual domain names are a new issue and is under development. There are some solutions but are not yet set perfectly. So, I suggest you forget those solutions and choose an English name for your web site.
9- Web Server And Hosting
However major web servers, like Microsoft IIS and Apache both support multilingual web pages, but I strongly recommend you to ask the hosting company for this issue and make yourself sure that there wont be problems for your web pages to be served by the hosting company.
10- Name Web Site Files
Never use Unicode characters in the name of your web pages. However your operating system, like Windows, lets your choose the file names in Unicode characters but be %100 sure that theses web pages would have serious difficulties both server side and client side.
In many cases, you won't be able even to upload your web pages to your host space and client's browsers also won't be able to recognize the name of page and would generate error. This is true for name of images, flash files, scripts and other pages. Just use English names.
However I have tried to cover major issues in developing multilingual web sites but this issue is something that needs experience and you should yourself discover many of new issues that are not included in this article.
About The Author
Mahmood Bashaash is the owner of SGNetway Company in web address of www.sgnetway.com which is focused on developing web sites and web applications and is the author of MahmoodB web site and newsletter that reveals hundreds of killer Internet marketing tips and tricks. To access his articles, visit: http://www.mahmoodb.com; mahmoodb@sgnetway.com
2 Key Ways to Make Your Site a Success
If one more business owner tells me their website sucks because they're just "too darn busy to deal with it", I'm gonna hurl. That's like saying, "I'm doing business in my dirty underwear because I'm too busy to get dressed." Realize it or not, your website (or lack thereof) is very often the first impression your prospect or peer will have of you. Now, it's no longer a matter of having a website -- it's a matter of having a great one.
How to Make Your Own Website For Free
If you like the Internet and surfing through the billions of web pages on it then you might be thinking that you also would like to have your very own web page. Well, fortunately you can create your own web page for free and have it online so the whole world can surf the web and see what your web page is all about. If you want to learn more about building your very own website for free, simply follow the steps below and in a short period of time you will have your very own web page!
Top 10 Webmaster Challenges
Webmasters deal with a myriad of complex design challenges every day. This article will discuss the top ten challenges and provide solutions and tips for solving each problem.
7 Killer Ways To Increase Your Online Sales
Every online entrepreneur I talk to is asking the same question, "How do I increase my online sales, NOW?"
Optimal Website Design
Optimal website design is the art of logical navigation.
Business Website Building Do?s and Don?ts
First, using a lot of web graphics, flash, banners and pictures on your home page may make it look fancy or cool; but it will slow down the loading time extensively. And lets be real here, most people that look at your web page will leave if it doesn't load in 3 seconds or less. Because most people are naturally impatient. If they click on a banner or link that leads to your home page, they expect to see it the second they click, all of it. Not too many people will sit there and wait for your web graphics, flash intro, banners or 30 pictures to load. Keep in mind that not all visitors computers will load pages as fast as yours may. Set your screen resolution at 800x600, or at least put a notice on your page what resolution your site is best viewed in, because people hate to have to scroll back and forth to read from side to side.
The Top Ten Benefits of Having a Web Site
Do you need a web site? Are you considering getting one but are unsure? Here we take a look at the main reasons why a web site could be beneficial to your organisation.
Non-Profits: Successful Online Strategies
More and more non-profit organizations are developing websites to help share information about their mission and programs. This involves strategic planning about the best way to present your image and message online. Once your site is up, your organization also has to be ready to keep information current and to maintain consistent outreach activities. If your group is planning a Web site, consider:
Preventing Repeat Form Submission Using PHP Sessions
We've all seen those messages on some websites warning not to click a button more than once or negative consequences, like paying a bill twice, may result. Sometimes we can cause these problems by hitting the back or refresh buttons. In this article I will explain a methodology whereby a site can ensure each form is submitted only once, thereby demonstrating that such warnings are unnecessary and, depending on the nature of the problems caused, worth repairing immediately. Let's begin by taking a look at the process we are studying: Form Submission. As pedantic as it may seem, it will be worthwhile to detail each of the steps in this process: Visitor requests a page from the server which has a form on it.Server retrieves form and sends to user.User enters data on form and submits to server.Server processes form data and returns resultant page. The scenario we now need to analyze is when the user re-triggers a previous form submission process. What we need to find or create is something which changes during the form submission process which does not depend on the specific form being submitted and which we can tell changed. That was a loaded sentence which fully details our solution, so let's break it down. Find or create something which changes during the form submission process,does not depend on the specific form being submitted, andwe can tell changed.
1 Simple Solution to All Internet Marketers about Their Website Design Needs
It is an undeniable fact that not everybody is keen and knowledgeable to create an above average looking website. It is also true that it is something learnable, but it might take a certain learning time span in order to grasp the minimum ability to create an over than average website. Everybody from any field, regardless of their objectives, realizes that a website presence is extremely essential for a bigger exposure, and pretty much common to see buyers chasing after the cheapest and the least time consuming offers.
Art, Artists and the Web: Part 3--What to Put on an Artist?s Website
What to put your the website if you are an artist.
Have You Got Your Ear To The Ground Or Your Head In The Sand?
What happened on your website yesterday? What about last week or last month? How about in the past hour? How many visitors come to your website as a result of using a search engine? How long do people stay on your website for on average? Which pages do your visitors go to?
Server Side Includes (SSI) with ASP
People often have identical sections of code spread throughout many ASP pages, typically code at the top of the page (usually referred to as the header) and the lower part of the page (the footer). Similarly, you may have code that performs a certain set of instructions that you are repeating across multiple pages. Consider an example:-
10 Tips For A Successful Website
Have you ever thought the secret behind the success of most of the famous sites. Do you ask yourself these questions. Why do they get so many clicks?Why they are making so much money and i am not?Why only few web sites succeed and most of others fail?Just stop questioning and start reading.
What Works and What not Works for Your Internet Business
"Build it and they will come."--Filed of Dreams (1989)
Do You And Your Website Have Credibility?
I recently received an unsolicited e-mail from some company offering me their search engine optimization services for $199. Even though I had absolutely no interest in the offer, just out of curiosity, I decided to check out this company with the various search engines.
Entangled in the World Wide Web
I am just a learner who likes to delve in websites as a hobby. Hobbies are what make life so enjoyable for me. I have tried many other things - watercolor and pastel painting, organic gardening, kayak making, dinghy sailing, kite making, origami, stock photography, cartooning, carpentry, rock collecting, snake rearing and many other unusual pursuits. Somehow, as time goes on, and for some particular reason, they gradually become just bits of historical and passing interests for me. Amidst these passing interests, the Internet comes along.
Your Website Reflects Your Business
Some left shoes are in isle 5, while the right shoes are in isle 3. Shoe hills are in random places. You can barely walk through the store without stumbling over a shoe.
How to Build a Database Driven Web Site
If you ever want to create a state directory, article directory, dating site or link directory, you need to know about creating database driven web sites. This may seem like a daunting task at first, if you have never done it, however I was in the same boat as you. It is not as difficult as you think.
Credibility - 10 Ways to Build it on Your Website
If you have your own business website and you are trying to sell something, then it is imperative that you are able to establish and maintain credibility. Why is this important? If you are going to ask someone to make a purchase from you, then you need to show them why they should purchase from you rather then your competitor on another site.