zencart中基于位置的多语言显示

Question

I am developing a website in zen-cart. I have to display site in different languages based on the ip address of the viewer. So if the viewer is from France, the site should be in French. Also, the translation should be done automatically after identifying the location and shown in different folder.

For example, if a visitor is from Spain, the site would show foo.com/sp/ instead of foo.com/en/ for English. Do you guys know any good module for zen-cart which provides such facility? Any idea how to tackle this?

Answer 1

You don't need any "module" for the language detection functionality. Not if you can rely on the browser language. Zencart changes the default language of the store based on the browser language, which is the standard and most user-friendly way of doing it.

Of course, you need to install the Zencart language packages for the languages you want to support. If someone has a language different from the ones you have installed the default one will be used. Automatic translation will be a bit hard to say the least. I have done it in the past, using the Google Translation API, but it is far from perfect. Specially in an online store where you want the user to feel confident about what she is reading/doing while making an order.

Changing the URL is also a bit difficult. You can probably get the URLs you want by modifying the .htaccess of any of the various SEO-Friendly URLs contributions (or making your own of course):

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=231

http://tech-blog.borychowski.com/index.php/2009/03/htaccess/redirect-according-to-browser-language-mod-rewrite-and-http_accept_language/

Browser language based 404 pages with mod_rewrite how to