: How can I view localized versions of my site? We are adding internationalization to our site. We are getting the client's IP address from the headers and looking it up against the IP2location

@Lengel546

I agree with what @The Disintegrator said, but I have had the situation where a client insisted on using geoIP as the primary targeting tool. In this case, set up a dev version of the site and switch the result variable so you can see it locally. For example, if you're in the states and you want to see what users in China will see, switch the "if user is in China" to "if user is in the US" and you can work from there.

That said, look into at least using browser headers for serving out languages. As someone who lives in a country that does not use my native language, it's somewhat annoying the way sites like Mozilla and Skype serve out pages based on IP and not browser headers.

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@Vandalay111

You shouldn't use geo ip as the primary way to switch locales. My primary language is spanish. If I travel to Germany and try to use a page who selects the locale based on the ip, I end up looking to a webpage in german...

The locale selection order should be


url (?land=es) - and persist with a cookie.
browser headers (Accept-Language: es; q=1.0, en; q=0.5)
geo ip


If you want to test a locale, the only thing you have to do is change the url.

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@Karen161

Honestly the easy way would be to manually change the IP your website uses in the backend code on a dev computer. Saves you money over getting other software and is generally easy enough.

Sure its a little rough, but it works

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@Dunderdale272

This worked for me in the past but the current version has mixed reviews:
download.cnet.com/Easy-Hide-IP/3000-2144_4-10714026.html

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