And I want to add that under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you (or your client) use one of those automatic internet translators.  If you want something translated, some human will have to do it or you'll get nothing but crap. 

And in case you need prove - here is the above translated by computer into German and then back into English"

Which reminds me - I recently had an email exchange with some guy who contacted me through Killersites who I believe may be from Africa - his New Year wish for me is to:  "Have a refreshing moment all the time." Sounds good to me and I'm working on it

As I'm not lazy, I'll translate both texts myself (or, better than that, I will ask the client to provide the English version of his texts). At least he is not a writer or something like that, with tons of text to translate.

I was just wondering about the necessity of having every single file in two versions. Maybe, in a future, when I improve my php skills, I'll have both texts located in a DB and I'll just use a little function to switch between Spanish and English (Gosh, why didn't that Esperanto language work..., that would be easier then...)

Thanks

Eduardo

I hold 3 language versions on my small website and the only way to manage content is to use php includes sets (so in al one folder with includes per each language):
for example:
english-folder:
header.php
content.php
footer.php
otherlang-folder:
header.php
content.php
footer.php
And then php script is used to  organize  index.php from those includes. If  you decide that Spanish version is a home page, use includes from the second folder, and create   index-en.php which will appear when your click on this magic button.

The problem with multilingual website is that once you build it, you (or the website owner)  must do its regular (and preferably adequate) updates for each language and this is really become too much work  to manage. It is all possible of course but depends on how organized the content is, how often updates are needed and how much time/money are spent on updates.
For small website like mine, to support few languages, the script from this article serves ok but I suppose you can (and may be should consider to) adapt some CMS for both languages if you build bigger website.

A CMS would likely be the best way I think.

First you would need either the index or a Splash page, here a splash page is OK.

The Splash page offers Spanish or English(?) and would be the default page for the CMS. Then you could create to categories or two separate "Sites" within the CMS.

Now the link sends you to the Spanish branch or the English branch. Exactly how to do this depends on the CMS you choose.

By hand, you would use a switch case with a logic that says, if the ID of the page is Spanish use this content, if English use that content.

The CMS version would be easier to maintain and quicker I would think if you are not really experienced with PHP.

The topic is a bit old but anyway...
If you really want to include two languages in only one copy of your pages use strings with content in two languages and switch between them from the url

For example:

...website/index.php?lang=english

$lang = $_POST['lang'];

if($lang = 'english' ) {
echo "This is the fragment of the content in english language";
} else {
echo "This is a text in non-english language that will be shown when entering website";
}

So, if there is no lang var in the link then the website will show its content in non-english language. You have to include "ifs" for every portion of text that will be shown and also for every link that takes you to another subpage.

Here how it works with one of websites I created:
www.damisrestaurant.com

Hope it helps.

Oops, just found a mistake in my previous post. You have to use super global $_GET instead of $_POST to grab a var from the link