I have a multi-language site organised into directories (e.g., pages_EN, pages_FR, etc.), each directory containing webpages such as index.html, contact.html, and referencing common files in separate directories (e.g., "../images/picture.jpg") and external css and js files. This structure has allowed me to copy the code wholesale when adding a new language, only then needing to edit the prose content/text of each.
The problem is now that I'm ready to go live, my web host requires that I have a page called 'index.html' in a directory of theirs (called 'html_public'); this will completely break my page navigation. I can't put all of my language index pages in that directory (because they're all called index.html) and I can't re-name them (e.g., to 'index_EN.html') because of the aforementioned naming requirement.
Must I redesign the whole site? Is this convention common/the rule, or have I just picked the wrong host? If I have just a single (say, English) index page in 'html_public' with all of the others in their respective language directories, then I'm concerned that the content of those other pages might not be indexed. Does anyone have any suggestion about what to do here -- I thought I was structuring this site the right (i.e., simple) way, and now I find that I've got to put twists and turns in to get it online...
If answering, please don't suggest that I just add auto-translation to a single language site -- I'm polylingual, and I've seen how translation software mangles content.
