In recent years, you can clearly notice how the Internet affects many businesses for better or worse; Whether in the formation of new competitors who are exposed to the market through search engines or increasing the sales of the business through internet marketing and promotion on Google .
As part of the dynamic globalization of companies and businesses on the Internet, you can see a growing demand for building language-based websites – or in the professional language Multi Language.
What is a language based website?
A language-based website, we are a website built using a dynamic content management system that allows editing and adding pages in any language without limiting the number of languages or their direction of writing (right to left, or left to right*).
Building a language-based website is not a trivial task, and the process must be followed from the initial stage of building the website. A language-based website will often include completely different systems and construction from a website that is not designed for this, and it is possible that additional time will be required to build a website in this way; But the additional work required at the beginning of the project when establishing the site; Pays off in the long run and allows website owners to add languages to their websites at any time without the requirement of additional cost or technical work by a professional.
Most of the websites built today are not based on a language system, so usually when adding a new language to the website, a website building company is required to duplicate the website and do a lot of work in order to change the direction of the language and the direction of writing from the original language in which the website was built. so; Make sure that your website building company works with a language-based content management system; which allows at any time the addition of a new language, the editing of an existing language and the management of the contents in any language present in the system.
How can you ensure the correctness of building a language-based website?
In order to ensure the integrity of your website when programming and building a language-based website, you should pay attention to some parameters that you can examine and ask the website construction company in the process.
database
The first parameter was the database of the website – Ask your website builder if your database is prepared to receive data in a language-based array? And is it dynamic in a way that allows the addition of languages without the need for changes in the database structure?
If the answer you received is "no" – Keep in mind that in the future adding a language to the website will involve changes to the database and often a higher than usual additional fee.
UTF-8 code
The second parameter you will need to check in the process: the website code. Ask your website builder if the website code is written in global encoding – such as UTF-8 (professional encoding that allows interfacing to any language*).
You can often find that websites are written in UTF-8 or WINDOWS-1255 encoding – It should be noted that WINDOWS-1255 encoding only supports Hebrew and English; If in the future you want to add a new language such as Russian or Arabic, the website building company will be required to code the website from start to finish – A process that can take a long time after building the site (because the coding process comes at the initial stage in the process and then the site code is added to it*).
Content Management System
The third parameter that must be checked in the process of building a language-based website: a content management system. When choosing a company to build your website, check that it uses a language-based content management system. This test will ensure that you can manage your website in all languages through one content management system and you will not be requiredSwitch between several content management systems in order to manage several languages on one site.
It can be seen that many companies actually duplicate the website and change its design templates to a different language – By doing so, they save programmer work but harm the customer's convenience and the website updating process.
DigitalST provides website development and construction services through a language-based content management system that allows you to enjoy full control over all parts of your website, in any language and at any time. DigitalST's unique and advanced content management system will allow you to create, edit and manage languages at any time without the need for additional ownership or a professional.