Non-english characters in web URLs

[Rene Pacis, Jr.]

Hello Everyone,

I am wondering, is it possible to have a URL contain non-english characters
(e.g. Chinese). For example, if I am creating a website, I would like to
have the URL formatted into something like this:
"http://www.mysite.com/<chinese characters>/".

This would also mean that the site users will need to enter the URL with the
Chinese characters.

Is this possible? If so, any recommendations on the
technologies/applications to use to make this possible?

Thanks in advance for your responses!


Cheers,
Rene

 

[Jens Peter Karlsen [FP-MVP]]

Yes it is possible. You will however limit your audience considerably
because only those running chinese windows would be able to use it.

Regards Jens Peter Karlsen. Microsoft MVP - Frontpage.

 

[Rene Pacis, Jr.]

Hi Jens,

Thank you for the response! Yes, it is a known risk that we will limit the
audience to the site since it will only be geared towards the Chinese users.
What technologies do we need to use to make this possible? Is there any
special server-side configuration?


Cheers,
Rene

 

[xfile]

Hi,

For your reference,

While a majority of net users are non-English speakers, using non-English
URL will not limit your audience, but to increase additional audience from
other countries, and many multinational companies (including ours) have used
one or two non-English domain names in addition to their English domain
name.

What you can do is to apply one English domain name (if you have not done
so) and then redirect other non-English domain names to the English domain
name.

Check with your ISP if they provide "multinational domain names" service,
and if not, search Google for the same term.

Please noted that when you received those localized domain name, it might be
in the form of a series of numbers and letters rather than the actual words.
This is normal as it will be interpreted by browser when your local
customers entered the domain name in their own language.

Also please noted, if your visitors are using IE 6, they will be redirected
to an annoying ViriSign page for downloading and installing add-in first.
They don't have to but every time they refreshed or entered the page, they
will be redirected to it again. IE 7 RC1, FireFox, and Opera are all
without such a problem.

So the conclusions are: (1) it will be www.mystie<chinese or other
characters>.com (2) You need to apply for multinational domain names and
set up to redirect those to the English one, and (3) You may want to wait
until IE 7 has been official released (as we are pending for the final
release and announce to our customers in other countries).

Hope this helps.

 

[Rene Pacis, Jr.]

I see. Thanks for the information! I'll see how we can use this approach.

 

[xfile]

Hi,

Glad to know it helps.

Just a side note forgot to mention, it would be best if you could also
provide multinational pages for different visitors instead of just a
localized domain name - that means once they reached your site with a
localized domain name, they could also select pages with their own language.