Multilingual site and domains

Question

I have a multilingual joomla site setup and would like to use a different domain for each language.

So instead of "englishsite.com/en/" and "englishsite.com/fr/", I would get "englishsite.com/" and "frenchsite.com/". And the domains and language would switch with the Joomla language switcher module.

Could this be done with Chameleon component, or .htaccess redirects? Should I use something like Falang for translations instead of Joomla Core setup?

Answer 1

(I'm not familiar with Chameleon, but from what I see after a quick look, you could be able to make it work.)

However, the Joomla Documentation has an article regarding a similar example, with a couple of different approaches. You should take a look at it.

The following should work, although I haven't tested it (based on option #3 from the link above):

Basically, you set up your cPanel with a main domain (englishsite.com) and an addon domain (frenchsite.com). Then you could tweak the following code to fit your needs, and add it to your templates index.php AT THE VERY BEGINNING:

<?php
$domain = $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"];
$requri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
if (($domain == "www.englishsite.com" && $requri == "/" || 
   $domain == "englishsite.com"))  { 
   header("Status: 301 Moved Permanently");
   header("Location: http://www.englishsite.com/en"); 
}
if (($domain == "www.frenchsite.com" && $requri == "/" || 
   $domain == "frenchsite.com"))  { 
   header("Status: 301 Moved Permanently");
   header("Location: http://www.frenchsite.com/fr"); 
}
?>

Make sure you enable SEF urls for your site (Global Configuration -> SEO settings).

Finally, go to the plugin manager and locate the plugin System - Language Filter. In the plugin settings, set "Remove URL Language Code" to Yes.