Regional subfolders setup (site.com/ru/, site.com/en/)

Regional Subfolders Setup (site.com/ru/, site.com/en/)

Regional subfolders — alternative to subdomains. site.com/ru/, site.com/en/, site.com/de/. All versions on one domain, simplifying DNS, SSL and link weight transfer. Google recommends this approach for most cases.

Nginx: Routing by Prefix

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

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

    # Pass locale prefix to app
    location ~ ^/(ru|en|de|fr)(/.*)?$ {
        fastcgi_pass php-fpm;
        fastcgi_param LOCALE $1;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME /index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    # Redirect from root to default locale
    location = / {
        return 302 /ru/;
    }
}

Laravel: Routing with Locale Prefix

// routes/web.php
Route::group([
    'prefix'     => '{locale}',
    'where'      => ['locale' => 'ru|en|de|fr'],
    'middleware' => ['set.locale'],
], function () {
    Route::get('/',                 [HomeController::class, 'index'])->name('home');
    Route::get('/catalog',          [CatalogController::class, 'index'])->name('catalog');
    Route::get('/catalog/{slug}',   [ProductController::class, 'show'])->name('product');
    Route::get('/about',            [PageController::class, 'about'])->name('about');
});

// Redirect from / to /{locale}/
Route::get('/', function () {
    $locale = app(LocaleDetector::class)->detect();
    return redirect("/{$locale}/");
});

Middleware: Setting Locale

class SetLocaleFromPrefix
{
    public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next): Response
    {
        $locale = $request->route('locale') ?? config('app.locale');
        App::setLocale($locale);
        URL::defaults(['locale' => $locale]);  // for named routes
        return $next($request);
    }
}

URL Generation with Locale

// Generate: route('catalog', ['locale' => 'en'])
// → /en/catalog

// Convenient helper
function lroute(string $name, array $params = []): string
{
    return route($name, ['locale' => app()->getLocale(), ...$params]);
}

Sitemap with Regional URLs

<url>
    <loc>https://example.com/ru/catalog</loc>
    <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="ru" href="https://example.com/ru/catalog" />
    <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/en/catalog" />
    <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://example.com/de/catalog" />
    <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/en/catalog" />
</url>

Timeline

Subfolders setup with routing, middleware and sitemap: 2–3 working days.