Magento language button store view - magento

Question

I've an website in dutch. http://www.domain.com and an german flag button to http://www.domain.com/german.
i have made an store view called german with a local language german.
How do i get to view this store view on the link www.domain.com/german

Answer 1

There are few ways for doing this.
1) Enable store code in the URL.
Magento allows you to add a store code of your store view to the URL. For instance, if your Dutch store view has a code dutch and your German store view has a code german, then Magento will automatically load a correct store. domain.com/dutch will load a Dutch version and domain.com/german will load the German version of your website. The drawback of this solution is a store code added even for the main domain.
The config setting can be found in Admin Panel (aka Back Office, BO) > System > Configuration > Web > Url Options. There you will find "Add Store Code to URLs" option.
2) Edit .htaccess file.
If you want to avoid the drawback of solution 1) you can modify your main .htaccess file. Add an entry that will search for /german suffix and will load the German store code. Here's a small example (I'm not an expert in this matter, but it should be something like this):
SetEnvIf Host .*domain.com/german.* MAGE_RUN_CODE="german"
You can play around with .htaccess more. Search the web if you want to learn more about .htaccess stuff.
3) Modify index.php of the application
This is very similar to the solution 2), but you do this directly in PHP. Find
$mageRunCode = isset($_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_CODE']) ? $_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_CODE'] : '';
line in index.php and replace it with something like this:
if (!$_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_CODE'] && strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'], '/german') !== false) {
$mageRunCode = 'german';
} else {
$mageRunCode = isset($_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_CODE']) ? $_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_CODE'] : '';
}
4) Add a new entry to the Apache vhost.
Create a new virtual host (vhost) for domain domain.com/german and put there SetEnv MAGE_RUN_CODE "german".
In my opinion the best option is the 2). It is the most flexible and you don't have to change any code. For development workstation 4) would be also sufficient.
Please note that these are only examples and they may not work on the first shot. I'm writing this from my memory and I cannot really check them now. Hope this gives you a brief idea how to handle your situation.