Multiple Version Of One Website

Hi,

I built a website for a client recently (powered by Wordpress).

They now want to build / clone a further 5 websites for each of the countries they operate in.

I was thinking of using a multilingual design / approach however the client wants to change a few other things on each website too:

- content on each page is different for each country
- products for sale / availability is differnet for each country
- the menu structure is different for each country
- slightly different home page layout for each country

I know i could probably achieve all of this with a multi-lingual plugin, however i know the client will want to change somethings (page structure) in the future for various different countries so i was thinking that it might be best to just clone the default site 5 times and set each country as a sub domain, and then tweak each of the sites from there:

www.domain.com - a simple page that asks you to choose your country (and remembers it)
uk.domain.com - for English customers
ire.domain.com - for Irish customers
us.domain.com - for American customers
au.domain.com - for Australian customers

What's your opinion on my approach? Thanks in advance for your help.
oo7mlAsked:
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Ray PaseurCommented:
The approach is reasonable.  Like most things in IT, there are many ways to get to the same end.  This article shows the theory of a path to a similar result.
http://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/8910/A-Polyglot-Web-Site-in-PHP.html
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oo7mlAuthor Commented:
Thanks Ray (knew you'd be first to respond :-)

Great article.

Considering i am thinking of this...

www.domain.com - a simple page that asks you to choose your country (and remembers it)
uk.domain.com - for English customers
ire.domain.com - for Irish customers
us.domain.com - for American customers
au.domain.com - for Australian customers

... what would you suggest using as the default site for all of the other countries?
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Ray PaseurCommented:
I would probably choose either an English language like UK or US, or the native site for the location of the business.  For most visitors, English will be workable in any of those dialects.  For non-English speakers, being able to choose a language will probably matter - enough to justify specific translation.

This suggests the country codes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166
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oo7mlAuthor Commented:
Sorry, i don't mean language, i mean what should be the default domain for every other country... essentially the default site.
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Ray PaseurCommented:
How about just domain.com (without any sub-domain)?  Many sites use domain.com, test.domain.com, docs.domain.com, api.domain.com, etc.
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oo7mlAuthor Commented:
Yeah i'd like to just use domain.com but then how do i offer the initial option to choose a different country... without using IP based queries, as i'd like users to have the manual choice.
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Ray PaseurCommented:
This might be a little WP-specific for me to know a perfect solution (easy in Laravel), but here's an idea:
http://iconoun.com/demo/polyglot/
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