Looking for experts suggestions/opinions! (Solved)

Actually I have my store which is bilingual French/English, but after a few years I'm starting to believe that having 2 separate store 1 in French and 1 in English would be better because I realise that a bilingual site causes some problems when I want to install new extensions, when I want to post the link for the rss feed, for seo, etc.

So I would appreciate expert opinion about what would be the best solution for me to have http://www.lesbricollesdecleo.com in English and http://www.lesbricollesdecleo.com in french?

1 - Multistore with 2 domain name?
2 - Multistore with 2 subdomain?
3 - Multistore with the already created one only in English by removing French language and create only 1 subdomain http://fr.lesbricollesdecleo.com?

I actually own 3 domain name but the 3 of them are different so I have no idea how I could use 2 of the 3 to get: http://www.lesbricollesdecleo.com (French) and http://www.lesbricollesdecleo.com (English)

Yesterday I tried to create 2 subdomain: http://en.lesbricollesdecleo.com and http://fr.lesbricollesdecleo.com
I added the theme for both and create some layout just to test them and it seems to work ok but what I'm wondering is:

1 - What do I have to do with my bilingual store? If I delete it will the subdomains still work?
2 - Having the names: http://en.lesbricollesdecleo.com and http://fr.lesbricollesdecleo.com will probably create some issues with all the links for Google, Bing, etc.?
3 - Which file do I have to change? (.htaccess, index, config) if so what do I need to change in those files?

Any help would be really appreciate because right now I'm getting really discourage trying to figure out what would be the best solution!

Regards
Cleo

Best solution! would be three seperate stores. No multistoring but ...... that can be really inconvenient regarding stock/product and order tracking/handling.

In multistore! use a SEO module so you have at least a SEO url unique per language.
I do not advertise but for example: SEO PRO PACK http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... on_id=6182

does it but there are others too giving you the possibility to set yourself or generate the SEO for each language seperately.

What we do is setup one shop as main shop; you decide which one.

We create hostingaccounts, with own IP's and SSL certificates for each substore too!
We use Directadmin; but it is possible with any controlpanel to set this up.
then configure all shops inside the main shop.
then we SSH to each substore public_html ( can be www on other hosting system than DA )
remove public_html and create a symbolic link "public_html --> our main store=main hostingaccount public_html directory.

This way you can have each shop it's own ip + SSL, it's own DOMAIN! and you can you e-mail on each domain as ussual......

To feed BING, Google the right SITEMAP! for each store unique you might need another module otherwise
the main store with all languages active would have all urls and you want them to be only available per language/store.
http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... on_id=2881
gives your control over your sitemaps and urls you can copy and paste seperately for each store.


Now there is only one thing left that as far as I know no module is available:
IF you leave all language in the header; that should be tweaked:
I am on your EN language shop and click the German language --> I should go to the same page but then in the GERMAN store on the GERMAN domain.

OR you remove the languages from the header; and hardcode them in the header only the languages to the other shops with simply links to the other shops.

Just ny 2 cents
i would use lesbricollesdecleo.com for the international english site en lesbricollesdecleo.fr for the french site.
these domain names do give a perfect targeted area.
.fr name is still availible

Thanks for the quick reply!

@takahashi1973
You are giving a lot of infos but it seems very complicate and expensive to accomplish! I already bought so many extension that I prefer to go with the easiest/cheapest solution!

@victorj

So you suggest that I use lesbricollesdecleo.com for my English site which is the one I've been using for many years (what I thought) and instead of using subdomain I can buy lesbricollesdecleo.fr for my French site?

And then I would use multistore?

Is it possible to remove the French language without messing my site?

Then I could upload the backup/files to the .fr site and remove the English language?

Regards
Cleo

Edited to add: Anyway I thought to let my 2 other domain go and they will end in a few months so I could buy the .fr one instead then.

Ps: I really like your suggestion which I haven't think of!

Update!

Ok I bought lesbricollesdecleo.ca because I'm in Canada and the .fr is for Europe/France

But if I use multistore the links for seo, rss, etc. will still use the admin language for both sites isn't it?

Or should I create a complete separate site? If I create separate site I will have 2 admin then!

See I'm still lost

Cleo

Ok, we are supposed to post how we solved our problem so...

What I did is: I paid someone to make it work for me !

Cleo

Ok, like I said above I paid someone to fix the problem I was having with the admin language for feed link etc. but lately I also solved the problem I was having: multistore with 2 domains name, 1 in French and 1 in English.

Now I have only 1 language per store!!!! And I did it all by myself without knowing programming

And I also added Auction!!!!

Cleo

@Cleo

Hi

Read your post dated Sep 16, 2014 & also visited your website to look at the "auction" system you are using - impressed Can you tell me which auction system you are using - URL? Thanks.

@paisleybay

Thank you for your nice comment

I am using webauction created by Steve Hannah with xataface. The script was created to be use for charity site, but it's working perfectly and very easy to install, customise, etc. the only problem with it (for me) is that there is no way yet to add a shipping module to it, and I didn't find a way to use it with the same db and oc, but I saw a post where Steve Hannah said he might be able to do it for someone if they agree to pay for the work.

I installed it on a separate domain and made some modification to make it look like it is part of my store
Right now it's not using my db and connect with my store so if something sell I have to make some modification by hand which is not a big deal for me because my store is not really busy right now so I don't mind.

If it ever get more busy I will probably ask Steve Hannah or someone else to do the modification for me.

Here is the link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/webauction/ and Steve Hannah is a very nice person and he always help everyone who ask a question

Regards

Cleo