Suppose you have a multilingual Joomla 4 website with a different domain name for each language.
Here is a nice and easy solution to implement that. It works also with Joomla 3.
Indeed atm and afaik there is no solution for Joomla 4:
- on the Joomla Extensions Directory or on github: there is no 3rd party plugin (yet). See below
- in the core: multisites and/or multidomains were mentioned at some point as potential features for Joomla 4.2, but in the meantime nothing has happened so
- it is definitely not for J4.2 (release date: 2022.08.16, ie exactly one year after J4.0)
- there is even no news about when this could happen
In practice there are only 3 little Steps:
- add a few lines in your .htaccess file (so obviously it only works with Apache servers. If your server runs Nginx, give a try to this tool to convert the rules)
- add a first Regular Labs ReReplacer rule to adapt the
<head>section of your page - add a second Regular Labs ReReplacer rule to adapt the
<body>section of your page
Steps 2 and 3 make sure that all links within Joomla are correct (note that they can be combined if you wish by using some regex). But this does not prevent a human being or a robot to reach manually a "wrong" combination of domain name and language tag.
In that case, Joomla would simply display the page keeping the "wrong" domain name... but obviously we want to force the right domain name (ao to avoid hurting your SEO for different reasons like Duplicate Content or Redirections). That is what Step 1 does.
Let's take a real life example, where 3 domain names of the same site are respectively:
- EN: healthybelgium.be
- FR: belgiqueenbonnesante.be
- NL: gezondbelgie.be
In our System - Language Filter plugin
- the Option
Remove URL Language Codefor the default language is set to No. With other words, what we want to get as url for the Homepage in each language is the following:- EN: healthybelgium.be/en
- FR: belgiqueenbonnesante.be/fr
- NL: gezondbelgie.be/nl
- the Option
Alternate Meta Tagsis set to Yes, which is better for SEO. If you set it to No, obviously you don't need Step 2
In Joomla 3 there were a couple of plugins allowing to do that:
- 'Language2Domain'
- available on https://github.com/pe7er/plg_system_language2domain
- it is made by Peter Martin and based on 'Language Domains' https://github.com/yireo-joomla/plg_system_languagedomains by Jisse Reitsma aka Yireo
- IIRC it takes care of everything, namely the equivalent of the 3 above-mentioned steps
- by default it removes the language tag after the domain name
System - Language filtermust be disabled- a Joomla 4 version should be released one day but not in the short term
- 'GJ Multilanguages Domains'
- it is not available anymore on the Joomla Extensions Directory
- IIRC it was only taking care of step 1 (so if you use it on some site you should definitely reproduce the steps 2 & 3 described here if you don't want to hurt your SEO)
- it does not remove the language tag after the domain name
System - Language filtermust be enabled
[ edit 2023.04.25 ] I discover a new plugin released end of 2022 for Joomla 4 allowing to manage multiple domains. I haven't tested it myself yet, but here is the link: https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/languages/multi-lingual-content/n3t-language-domains/
# REMINDER
# - RewriteCond applies only to the RewriteRule that immediately follows
# - [NC] makes the test case-insensitive
# - [OR] combines rule conditions with a local OR instead of the implicit AND
# - 301 means that a new page has taken over permanently and 302 redirect means that the page has been moved temporarily.
# If this is intended to be permanent then change the 302 (temporary) redirect to 301 (permanent) only once you have confirmed that everything works as intended, so as to avoid potential caching issues.
# - L stands for last
# - in Regex ^blabla(.*)$ means that what you search
# - is between ^ and $
# - and is therefore blabla(.*) where (.*) means literally *any chain of characters*
# With other words, ^blabla(.*)$ simply means that you search for *something starting with blabla followed by anything else*
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
# FORCE HTTPS
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
# FORCE WWW
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
# FOR MULTILINGUAL WEBSITES HAVING A DIFFERENT DOMAIN NAME FOR EACH LANGUAGE
# The Conditions and Rules hereafter allow to have a different domain name for each language of a Joomla website (where SEF is enabled obviously)
# It corrects the domain name if it does not match the language tag
# Note: on top of that, we also need to use Regular Labs ReReplacer (Free or Pro) within the website to put the correct domain name
# - in the <body> because all links are Relative
# - for all the links in the Language Switcher. Example: for each language
# - change <a href="/en/
# - into <a href="https://www.healthybelgium.be/en/
# - and elsewhere in the content (there could be direct links to Articles or Menu items from another language)
# - in the <head> because all the links are Absolute
# - for all the links to the Associated pages like <link href="https://www.healthybelgium.be/en/" rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" />. Example: for each language
# - change https://www.belgiqueenbonnesante.be/en/
# - into https://www.healthybelgium.be/en/
# switch domain name to English if language tag is en
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)belgiqueenbonnesante.be$ [OR,NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)gezondbelgie.be$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^en(.*)$ https://www.healthybelgium.be/en$1 [R=301,L]
# switch domain name to French if language tag is fr
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)healthybelgium.be$ [OR,NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)gezondbelgie.be$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^fr(.*)$ https://www.belgiqueenbonnesante.be/fr$1 [R=301,L]
# switch domain name to Dutch if language tag is nl
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)healthybelgium.be$ [OR,NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)belgiqueenbonnesante.be$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^nl(.*)$ https://www.gezondbelgie.be/nl$1 [R=301,L]
</IfModule>
In Regular Labs ReReplacer, create a new rule, limit the Search Areas to the Head and replace
https://www.belgiqueenbonnesante.be/nl/,
https://www.healthybelgium.be/nl/,
https://www.belgiqueenbonnesante.be/en/,
https://www.gezondbelgie.be/en/,
https://www.healthybelgium.be/fr/,
https://www.gezondbelgie.be/fr/
by
https://www.gezondbelgie.be/nl/,
https://www.gezondbelgie.be/nl/,
https://www.healthybelgium.be/en/,
https://www.healthybelgium.be/en/,
https://www.belgiqueenbonnesante.be/fr/,
https://www.belgiqueenbonnesante.be/fr/
Explanation: we have to put the correct domain name in the <head> because all the links are Absolute
- for all the links to the Associated pages like
<link href="https://www.healthybelgium.be/en/" rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" />. Example: for each language- change
https://www.belgiqueenbonnesante.be/en/ - into
https://www.healthybelgium.be/en/
- change
In Regular Labs ReReplacer, create a new rule, limit the Search Areas to the Body and replace ("treat as list")
href="/nl/,
href="/fr/,
href="/en/
by
href="https://www.gezondbelgie.be/nl/,
href="https://www.belgiqueenbonnesante.be/fr/,
href="https://www.healthybelgium.be/en/
Explanation: we have to put the correct domain name in the <body> because all links are Relative
- for all the links in the Language Switcher. Example: for each language
- change
href="/en/ - into
href="https://www.healthybelgium.be/en/
- change
- and elsewhere in the content (there could be direct links to Articles or Menu items from another language)
Note: in a previous version of this document we were Searching for <a href="/fr/ for example. But recently Joomla has added aria-labels to the Language Switcher. So that string in the code has become <a aria-label="Français" href="/fr/>. This is why we have simplified our Search & Replace above by href="/fr/"