Multidomain/Multilanguage Setup

[Webrocker]

Hi,

I'm in the process of wiring (heheh) err, tinkering with the structure of a website that should have:

One basic structure regarding the main navigation and meta items, but depending on the "country" (which could be interpreted as a subdivision of the construct), which could be adressed via (sub)domains (like de.tld.com for Germany, ch.tld.com for Switzerland, it.tld.com for Italy etc), some pages' contents will be "country"-specific or only be viewable while in that country's (sub)domain, while others will have the same content for all countries involved. The selection of country/language combinations will be available on every page, in meta or footer area.

For this structure, multilanguage should be enabled, and DE, EN, FR, IT languages will be used.

But,  for example on the above mentioned "german" view of the website, only DE and EN translations should be used/selectable, but on a "Swiss" view, there should be DE, FR, and IT translations.

I know that I can tackle each of these feature-wishes isolated, but currently I am a little stuck as to how to bring this together in one install.

I think I need to make the "country" distinction virtual, have all the subdomains pointing to the same site, and use _one_ page-tree for the basic and common structure, plus an option on every page/content for which "country" this should be display-able. right?

then I can use the five translations on every field/content needed and "only" need to filter the unwanted ones out if the pages are viewed in the "wrong" country-(sub)somains… hm (don't ask, I'm in the process of clarifing why an existing translation of a content that is displayed across all "countries" should be hidden in some, but for now the answer to that is pending).

Or I could create top-level pages for every "country" needed, but then I need to rebuild the main structure over and over again, this seems not so feasible.

What I want to avoid: Having separate page-trees for every country, since this maybe will "pollute" the urls -- where do the pages/contents "live" that are shared across all countries?

I am not quite through with thinking of the pro and cons of the different possible ways, which currently to my knowledge are:

A) One PW install, one site directory: open question how to make the different "country" pages manageable, how to map the (sub)domains accordingly

B) One PW install, different site directories for each "country": since the "look" of the country sites is identical and only some contents and the amount of translations available vary, I think this is overkill. Plus, there's a lot of duplicate content needed (?). ON the other hand this would over the greatest flexibility should the site evolve and the "country"division drift further apart, content-wise.

C) .... next gen ProcessWire as announced in the recent blog post? Multiple Domains, one core, shared contents across the above… don't know if this will be production ready soon, and how to handle the new features… black box

I think I need some ideas how more seasoned pw-devs would start to tackle this, so any input (links, ideas, rants) is welcomed!

Thanks,
Tom