Question

I have a multilanguage website (spanish, english, french) in PHP which main’s language is english.

If $_SESSION['idm'] is set to ‘en’ it loads a file with the translations.

I want to set it up this way:

if the user language is spanish

www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com -> es.mydomain.com

www.mydomain.com/video.php?id=3 -> es.mydomain.com/video.php?id=3

if user language is french

www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com -> fr.mydomain.com

www.mydomain.com/video.php?id=3 -> fr.mydomain.com/video.php?id=3

if not any of the above

www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com -> en.mydomain.com

www.mydomain.com/video.php?id=3 -> en.mydomain.com/video.php?id=3

How do I do that, and, is this good SEO wise?

Answer 1

in PHP:

// check if the current domain is the generic one
$req_domain = $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']; 
if ($req_domain == 'www.mydomain.com' || $req_domain == 'mydomain.com') {
  $subdomains = array ('fr' => 'fr.mydomain.com',
                       'es' => 'es.mydomain.com',
                       'en' => 'en.mydomain.com');


  // get the language from the session variable (if set), or use default
  $lang = 'en'; // default language
  if ( isset($_SESSION['idm']) && isset($subdomains[$_SESSION['idm']]) )
    $lang = $_SESSION['idm']; // selected language


  // redirect while maintaining the complete request URI
  header('Location: http://' . $domains[$lang] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
  exit;
}