Hey guys! I'm designing this multi-lingual site with php + mysql. I'm using a 2 letter language code following the domain name to identify the language the content is delivered in. For example,
www.domain.com/en - English
www.domain.com/th - Thai and so on...

All URLs (am utilizing mod_rewrite) take the general form,
http://www.domain.com/2_char_languag...page_slug.html

Here's my problem scenario:

When person A visits the site by keying in www.domain.com/lang_code, I can directly serve the pages in the desired language.

If person A keys in just www.domain.com (without any language code), I redirect to the english page by default - but I'm in a dilemma as to what redirection header to serve for this URL. I had read about a '300 Multiple Choice" header and that's what I have implemented experimentally.

Here's the code:

PHP Code:

header( 'HTTP/1.1 300 Multiple Choices' );
header( 'Location: ' . DOMAIN . '/en' ); 


Is this the correct way to do it?

I had thought of using a 301 earlier on - but that didn't strike quite right.

Has anyone worked on such a case and can throw some light on this?

Thanks,
m^e

The way I did it was use cookies to see if the user set the language, if its no set, use the default language. If set just include language files which had the definitions of words.

@Sarvar: Yup! That's exactly the model I'm following behind the scenes.. but the issue I have isn't about storing or redirection according to a particular user preference. It's more about proper redirection while traversing xxx.com --> xxx.com/lang_code.

It's not a 301 for sure, coz that would imply xxx.com = xxx.com/en (in my case). to a search engine crawler... which is not quite correct, if you know what I mean!

Awaiting more feedback on this

Thanks,
m^e

I have no idea why you are using 301 headers. Can't you just redirect them with header()?

This is how I did it. Hope it will help:
Person clicks on language => header("Location: switch_lang.php?lang=en");
Then switch_lang.php stores a session with lang=> header("Location: ".$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']); which will go back to wherever the user clicked the link from.

Every page will include a function to get session lang and include appropriate language file.

So when I click on the language, the page just refreshes once; changing the language.

From what I understand the 300 code is correct for your situation. It communicates to search engines and others that the page the user is being redirected to is not the only choice and should therefore not be mistaken for "httP://yoursite.com/"

The 301 essentially says that the two are synonymous which isn't true here.

Sarvar's method is a bit more maintainable especially when you have numerous languages but the most versatile would be to store your various translations in the db and not hard coded files.