We've recently finished internationalizing a website and are ready to begin the, im sure, arduous task of localization / translation. The site is written in ASP.NET, and im looking for recommendations from people who have done it. CMS or Resource Files? If resource files, is there a recommended management tool? Budget, within reason, is not a factor.
+1
A:
Resource files for sure. I recently finished a localized website and the tools in ASP.NET for localization are great.
Basically, you have two choices. Implicit or explicity localization. Implicit means the website reads the culture selection of the web browser and serves the correct language and explicit means the user chooses which language they want by clicking on flags or similar technique.
Everything I needed for the project was learned right here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fw69ke6f%28VS.80%29.aspx
Sonny Boy
2009-11-23 15:53:48
Cool - thanks for the input!
NickAtuShip
2009-11-23 22:41:58
As a follow up, why resource files over CMS?
NickAtuShip
2009-11-29 23:18:42
The ease of implementing them into my code is my only reason. To me though, that's a big reason. Depending on the culture and UI culture settings of the current thread, the correct localized string is automatically returned. The resource files are strongly types, so that makes things easier as well.
Sonny Boy
2009-11-30 15:53:08
A:
If there are business users who management content on the site then you'll need to think about a CMS.
If it's purely developer driven then resource files should be fine.
Tim Goody
2009-11-26 18:08:47
I guess my question would be better asked are there advantages to resource files over a CMS, when a CMS has the advantage you mentioned...
NickAtuShip
2009-11-29 23:18:10
I guess resource files are compiled and so should be faster, however with good use of caching a CMS would likely be as fast after the initial hit.
Tim Goody
2009-11-30 13:12:05