Question

I have a site that I want users from 5 different countries to use. However, I want each country to reach the site on language specific url’s like http://www.deutchname.com and ww.englishname.com. The site will then server the language based on the domain name. Is this possible or do I set up several sites with the same databse? I’m running my site on an Azure web role.

Answer 1

When you create an application in Windows Azure, Azure provides a friendly subdomain on the cloudapp.net domain. However, in most cases you would like to access your website via custom comain, say, www.mysite.com. That ability is supported by both Azure Cloud Services as well as Azure Websites.

Custom domains are invisible to the end user i.e. a visitor of www.yoursite.com will never see the true host (say, yoursite.cloudapp.net).

The approach of having single deployment handling multiple domains or multiple deployments (each supporting single domain) talking to one database depends on architecture of your system architecture. Each solution has its pros and cons. Both solutions can be built in Azure Cloud service.

We are using the first approach i.e. single deployment handling multiple domains (and languages), and it works perfectly fine. There are some challenges but related to the system architecture (e.g. features visible on one domain and hidden on the others etc.) rather than Azure itself.

There is Configuring a custom domain name for a Windows Azure cloud service or storage account article which describes the process of setting up custom domain (via CNAME or Alias record (which is preferred) or via A record) for Azure Cloud service as well as verification process.