TonyLoco23
10-16-2008, 01:52 PM
I am building a website that will allow users to select a Country at the home page.
For each English speaking country, about 70% of the pages will be the same, it's only about 30% of the pages that will display different info based on the country.
The same will be the case for all spanish speaking Countries, i.e. most of the pages will be simply translations of the english, but there will be a few pages that will give out specific info on that country.
What is the best way to structure the design of this complex website? Here are some alternatives:
Method 1) At the beginning when the user clicks the country they are in, a system variable stores the country they selected, and then they are taken to the specific language home page. Then when they navigate to a page that differs based on the country, the code will check the system variable and take them to the particular country page they need (using response.redirect)
The Downside of this method is if the user is inactive for a period of time the system variable might be lost, also it uses more memory, for every user a variable will need to be stored in memory for their country.
Method 2) Have seperate pages for every single country, so for every country I would create a new folder with the country name and store all the pages in that folder and then when the user clicks his country he/she will be taken to a whole new set of pages in a different root folder (i.e. the "about us" page for the uk will be identical to the one for the US but it will be in "http:\\blahblah\uk\aboutus.asp" instead of "http:\\blahblah\usa\aboutus.asp".
The downside of this method is that I will end up having tons of seperate pages stored in sperate folders, and maintaining them may become a bit of a hassle.
Method 3) Instead of having the user select their country at the beginning, they will just select their language, then when they navigate to a page that needs to be different there will be a drop down box that will allow them to choose their country.
The downsides of this are that firstly, my client for whom I am building the site specificaly told me to design the first page with a country selection, so i would have to persuade them that this is more efficient. Also it may get a little repetitive that the user keeps being asked to select their country when they may feel they already did that on one of the other pages.
Having written all this down I am thinking option 2 is actually the best. What is the industry standard for this sort of thing?
To put things in perspective here, the site will eventually have about 100 countries on it. I have already been given the data for the first 6 english speaking countries.
For each English speaking country, about 70% of the pages will be the same, it's only about 30% of the pages that will display different info based on the country.
The same will be the case for all spanish speaking Countries, i.e. most of the pages will be simply translations of the english, but there will be a few pages that will give out specific info on that country.
What is the best way to structure the design of this complex website? Here are some alternatives:
Method 1) At the beginning when the user clicks the country they are in, a system variable stores the country they selected, and then they are taken to the specific language home page. Then when they navigate to a page that differs based on the country, the code will check the system variable and take them to the particular country page they need (using response.redirect)
The Downside of this method is if the user is inactive for a period of time the system variable might be lost, also it uses more memory, for every user a variable will need to be stored in memory for their country.
Method 2) Have seperate pages for every single country, so for every country I would create a new folder with the country name and store all the pages in that folder and then when the user clicks his country he/she will be taken to a whole new set of pages in a different root folder (i.e. the "about us" page for the uk will be identical to the one for the US but it will be in "http:\\blahblah\uk\aboutus.asp" instead of "http:\\blahblah\usa\aboutus.asp".
The downside of this method is that I will end up having tons of seperate pages stored in sperate folders, and maintaining them may become a bit of a hassle.
Method 3) Instead of having the user select their country at the beginning, they will just select their language, then when they navigate to a page that needs to be different there will be a drop down box that will allow them to choose their country.
The downsides of this are that firstly, my client for whom I am building the site specificaly told me to design the first page with a country selection, so i would have to persuade them that this is more efficient. Also it may get a little repetitive that the user keeps being asked to select their country when they may feel they already did that on one of the other pages.
Having written all this down I am thinking option 2 is actually the best. What is the industry standard for this sort of thing?
To put things in perspective here, the site will eventually have about 100 countries on it. I have already been given the data for the first 6 english speaking countries.