Now with .nl

Apr
20
Submitted by XL-Network on Fri, 2012-04-20 16:47

After being owner of xl-network.com for a bit more then 10 years I can, as of today, call myself owner of xl-network.nl. It all started with the fact that TransIP (where all my domains are hosted) had hidden a Easter Egg during Easter which entitled me to a free .nl domain. After checking it turned out that xl-network.nl was still available. So I claimed it.

My website is multilingual. The Dutch part runs on http://xl-network.com/ and the English part runs on http://xl-network.com/en. But for the new setup I planned to run the English site on http://xl-network.com/ and the Dutch site on http://xl-network.nl/. Setting this up in Drupal is a piece of cake, just change a few settings. But then you have a different problem. The old URL's are pointing to the wrong page.

The URL http://xl-network.com/en/about-me should become http://xl-network.com/about-me (without /en/). Removing the /en/ part could easily be done in the .htaccess. To redirect http://xl-network.com/over-mij to http://xl-network.nl/over-mij (from .com to .nl) would be more problematic. The webserver (Apache) doesn't know if the requested page is a Dutch or a English version. I solved this by creating a Drupal module that checks if the url (for instance 'over-mij') exists in the Dutch version. If so, it redirects you to that page. Give it a try by clicking a different language in the right column.

Also all the email addresses that end with @xl-network.com are also available for @xl-network.nl. I do however tend to maintain @xl-network.com as my primary domain for email because I'm registered at different sites with that email address.