Multistore needed for multi language with Google Analytics?

[Nixnix]

Hello Prestashop-Community,

 

we have moved to Prestashop from another ecommerce software and it has taken months to get everything working. It has been a bumpy ride but we are finally live. 

 

I can not add our domains into Google Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics because we use multiple languages on our store. This means our root www.domain.com is never accessible, instead the users are always directly transfered to www.mydomain.com/fr/ (linked from www.mydomain.fr) or www.mydomain.com/es/ (linked from www.mydomain.es). Google just will NOT verify our domain because it seems to expect to have a verification code on the domain root, which simply is not accessible in Prestashop when we have several languages active.

 

Is moving to Multistore in Prestashop the solution?

As I understand it, I can set a base domain to a specific language only with multistore activated.

 

I am guessing this also has SEO advantages since each domain gets its "own" site?

 

We are very cautious because we are now finally live and we can't afford to mess anything up, we are already suffering badly from missed links from our old site (since we can not verify on Webmaster Tools yet, and we have not been able to 301 redirect all our old domain links).

 

I have read the documentation on multistore and googled it but I am still scared about activating it. Could it somehow mess up our current modified theme? In the header of our current site we have a language picker (fr, es, etc) which brings to customer to the subfolders mentioned above (/fr/ & /es/). What will happen to this if I activate multistore? Is this purely a theme thing? How is language/currency change handled in multistore?

 

So, activating multistore is the only/best solution for a multi-language shop, I guess?

Can I activate multistore, and if something goes wrong with our theme, just deactivate it and get back to where I was?

Is this the only way for us to be able to verify our store on Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics?

 

If the general advice is not to use multistore, can anyone help or link to a guide on how to verify a page with forced www.mydomain.com/language/ on Google Webmaster Tools...?

 

Sorry for the long post and all these beginner questions. Thanks in advance for your input, I am sure there are those of you with first hand experience in this.

 

We are using Prestashop 1.6.0.9.

 

Cheers.

 

[PrestaHeroes USA]

it is true that one can set default language by domain in multishop.  I'm a bit confused about your setup in that the 'main' domain can not be accessed and how your visitors are 'directed' to other domain names. (redirects get both a speed penalty and and seo penalty to boot).

 

Typical set up is your main domain, the language is detected by first language in the visitors browser.  Then one can add other domains in multishop that is for this example shared between it and the main domain, products, customers etc.  Then one can configure this 2nd nth domains default language amongst other things.  you can use multiple ccTLD's.fr  .es  for example but 'only' one gTLD .com/co/.net etc else you will receive duplicate content penalties.  

 

Note: ps supports multishop when you generate google stimemap as well. 

[adeep]

it is true that one can set default language by domain in multishop.  I'm a bit confused about your setup in that the 'main' domain can not be accessed and how your visitors are 'directed' to other domain names. (redirects get both a speed penalty and and seo penalty to boot).

 

Typical set up is your main domain, the language is detected by first language in the visitors browser.  Then one can add other domains in multishop that is for this example shared between it and the main domain, products, customers etc.  Then one can configure this 2nd nth domains default language amongst other things.  you can use multiple ccTLD's.fr  .es  for example but 'only' one gTLD .com/co/.net etc else you will receive duplicate content penalties.  

 

Note: ps supports multishop when you generate google stimemap as well. 

 

El Patron,

I have multistore activated, with one mainshop (language = 'es') and now I want to set the default lanuage of the first subshop to for e.g. 'fr', but I got the message 'you cannot deactivate the default message'. What is going wrong? Thanks for help.

[PrestaHeroes USA]

El Patron,

I have multistore activated, with one mainshop (language = 'es') and now I want to set the default lanuage of the first subshop to for e.g. 'fr', but I got the message 'you cannot deactivate the default message'. What is going wrong? Thanks for help.

 

 

back office-->localization-->localization-->then select the shop you want to work with-->select the default language for that shop.

[adeep]

back office-->localization-->localization-->then select the shop you want to work with-->select the default language for that shop.

 

El Patron, thanks for help. I've seen this and I've tried it, but it doesn't work. I want only one language per shop = default language, mainshop = 'es', subshop = 'fr'. The same with curreny.

Maybe I can deactivate the language and the currency selector?

 

Thanks again

adeep

[PrestaHeroes USA]

El Patron, thanks for help. I've seen this and I've tried it, but it doesn't work. I want only one language per shop = default language, mainshop = 'es', subshop = 'fr'. The same with curreny.

Maybe I can deactivate the language and the currency selector?

 

Thanks again

adeep

 

I think you can 'disable' language when you select a single shop.

 

But I suggest leaving it as I do not see any 'harm' having multiple languages per shop.  The more content the better.