Re: Changing language on the Debian site is too cumbersome

set up per-lang virtualhosts
 such as www-en.debian.org, www-de.debian.org, etc.
 (of course using en.www..., de.www.... will also be OK here)
 and set different prefer-language env variable.

then as long as all internal links are relative (not http(s)://...),
 following links will stay under the same vhost
 so their preferred hosts are kept,
 which means his prefered-lang-selection will always be kept there.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/en/env.html:
| prefer-language
| This influences mod_negotiation's behaviour. If it contains a language tag (such
| as en, ja or x-klingon), mod_negotiation tries to deliver a variant with that
| language. If there's no such variant, the normal negotiation process applies.

this way only vhost config is needed to achieve;
no change is needed in the contents.
no additional cost is needed.

note that you can test this locally using /etc/hosts or local dns daemon :)


> Each static page that is for a specific language could have the links in it
> contain the language code, so that when a link is clicked, the visitor
> is taken to the corresponding language-specific page instead of the general one.
> Or would this not work?

this will not make sense;
when a page is not translated, translators need to link to .en pages at the time;
then, when pages become translated, they need to change all links
 that point the translated pages afterward.
it is much pain to change them as those are reverse-link,
 people need to search and ...

yes, it can be done by a script,
 but it is just loss of resources for almost no benefit.