Regional subdomains setup (ru.site.com, en.site.com)

Regional Subdomains Setup (ru.site.com, en.site.com)

Regional subdomains — one way to organize a multilingual or multi-regional site. Each region gets separate subdomain: ru.site.com, en.site.com, de.site.com. Search engines treat them as separate sites or closely related resources with hreflang attributes.

DNS Setup

; Each subdomain points to needed server or load balancer
ru.example.com.    IN  A  185.10.1.1   ; server in Russia
en.example.com.    IN  A  52.18.2.2    ; server in EU
de.example.com.    IN  A  52.18.2.2    ; same EU server
www.example.com.   IN  CNAME ru.example.com.

Nginx: Virtual Hosts for Subdomains

# ru.example.com
server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name ru.example.com;

    root /var/www/example.com/public;

    location / {
        fastcgi_pass php-fpm;
        fastcgi_param LOCALE "ru";
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

# en.example.com
server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name en.example.com;

    root /var/www/example.com/public;

    location / {
        fastcgi_pass php-fpm;
        fastcgi_param LOCALE "en";
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

Application (Laravel): Locale Detection

// Middleware: LocaleFromSubdomain
class SetLocaleFromSubdomain
{
    public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next): Response
    {
        $subdomain = explode('.', $request->getHost())[0];

        $locale = match($subdomain) {
            'ru'    => 'ru',
            'en'    => 'en',
            'de'    => 'de',
            'fr'    => 'fr',
            default => config('app.locale'),
        };

        App::setLocale($locale);
        Carbon::setLocale($locale);

        return $next($request);
    }
}

hreflang for SEO

// In template: alternative versions for search engines
$locales = ['ru', 'en', 'de'];
foreach ($locales as $loc):
    $url = "https://{$loc}.example.com" . request()->getPathInfo();
?>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="<?= $loc ?>" href="<?= $url ?>" />
<?php endforeach; ?>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://en.example.com<?= request()->getPathInfo() ?>" />

Redirect to Regional Subdomain

// Middleware: RedirectToRegionalSubdomain
class RedirectToRegionalSubdomain
{
    public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next): Response
    {
        if ($request->getHost() === 'example.com') {
            $locale = $this->detectLocale($request);
            return redirect("https://{$locale}.example.com" . $request->getPathInfo(), 301);
        }
        return $next($request);
    }

    private function detectLocale(Request $request): string
    {
        // Priority: cookie → Accept-Language → GeoIP
        if ($cookie = $request->cookie('preferred_locale')) return $cookie;

        $acceptLanguage = $request->getPreferredLanguage(['ru', 'en', 'de', 'fr']);
        return $acceptLanguage ?? 'en';
    }
}

Timeline

Regional subdomains setup with Nginx, middleware and hreflang: 2–3 working days.