Magento Multi Website, Store, Currency, Country & Locale Configuration

Question

Just hoping if someone can point me in the right direction with this one.

Basically, I need to have a website in multiple countries with their localized content and the target countries native currency. So, the base currency has to be the one of the country the website would target. Now this is what i cannot figure out.

Should i have each countries website as a subdomain on the primary domain with its own website / store view and base currency or should I have separate install for each country under a subdirectory on the primary domain.

The second tricky issue is that a few countries are english based with different currencies (us, uk, au, ca, nz, sg), so I am thinking a single install for these countries as only the base currency would change (website). Whereas, a few countries (eu ones) will have the same currency but different languages, so a separate install for these looks viable. (herein, only the store view would change).

The main issue are the number of url rewrites and the load on the db. I am hosted with Simple Helix so there tech is stable and fast enough to support this structure.

Would appreciate if you can guide me in the right direction with the engineering of this store.

Answer 1

I would avoid separate installs if at all possible (so long as there is enough shared content to justify the stores living in one instance). You can store every unique setting for a website's config scope that you would be able to store on a separate install.

As far as subdomains - why not use the country's TLD instead (IMO looks cleaner)? i.e. yourstore.com yourstore.au - then GeoIP redirect to appropriate TLD for users

Magento offers several options for translating or localizing store views - and if you're worried about DB load it may be best to do this via .csv translation - just be cautious when creating your translate .csv files as Magento can be quite particular about how these files are encoded and formatted! (see: http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/groups/166/useful_tools_to_work_with_translations - I typically use OpenOffice)

Also - big gotcha! in regards to translations - strings you want to translate must be passed to the frontend via Magento's automagical translate method:

<?php echo $this->__('Email to a Friend') ?>

note the __

So long as you're not adding custom frontend/server side validators, translation should be fairly straightforward.

In regards to performance, load test, load test, load test. You might find a need for a cluster setup (i.e. one server for adminhtml/database, a load balancer to handle geoip redirection/load balancing, a frontend server for each locale, and global CDN)

Here are a few more localization resources I've found helpful in the past: https://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/tutorial-multi-site-multi-domain-setup http://www.magentocommerce.com/translations/ http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/comments/magento-in-multiple-languages-translations-getting-started

and one that can be SUPER useful in localizing custom extensions (shout out to the Demac crew): http://www.demacmedia.com/magento-commerce/mini-tutorial-adding-store-view-selection-to-your-modules-adminhtml/

This can also be helpful when trying to display content tailored to a certain locale: http://www.techdilate.com/code/magento-get-current-store-details/

Best of luck in your localization endeavor sahilbr!