Question

I’m building a website which will have a Spanish and Italian version.

In the past, when building a site which must be available in different languages, I’ve created a SQL Table like follows:

dbo.News
--------
ID int
EnglishTitle nvarchar(200)
SpanishTitle nvarchar(200)
ItalianTitle nvarchar(200)
EnglishContent nvarchar(max)
SpanishContent nvarchar(max)
ItalianContent nvarchar(max)

Then, depending on a query string (domain.com/NewsArticle.aspx?id=123&l=es) I would do something like:

Select Case Request.QueryString("l")
   Case "en"
      TitleLtl.Text = "SELECT EnglishTitle..."
   Case "es"
      TitleLtl.Text = "SELECT SpanishTitle..."
   Case "it"
      TitleLtl.Text = "SELECT ItalianTitle..."
End Select

However, I’ve found this really time consuming (especially if the client later asks for another language option as a second phase).

What is the best practice for doing something like this, allowing scope for extra languages?

I’m open to VB.NET and C# solutions, Cheers!

Answer 1

Simply read some articles, start from here:

ASP.NET Globalization and Localization

there are many features of .NET and ASP.NET to help you in localize and globalize your site without such time consuming and home-made solutions like yours above…