Redirecting Root domain to subdirectory by IP addresses (country specific)

[joony2008]

We are using Wordpress Multisite.

so www.mysite.com is our English website

and www.mysite.com/sub is our Chinese website

Can I redirect Chinese visitors who type "www.mysite.com"  to "www.mysite.com/sub" ?

so we want to force redirection to www.mysite.com/sub if our website is visited by Chinese IP Address.

I've realized that this is called GeoIP Redirection. and our hosting company already has those database, I guess my job is just to simply insert some code in .htacess

My question is, would it affect our SEO later on? and what .htacess code is the best practice here?

[joony2008]

I guess no one has expertise regarding this IP redirection.

I had to use a plugin called

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/geographical-redirect/

[randfish]

Hi Joony - sorry for our delay! I believe that you can use ip detection to re-route Chinese IPs to the page you want. Just be aware that Google's crawling from Mountain View (even for their Chinese indices), so you'll need to provide links back and forth for manual/crawler navigation, too.

It shouldn't affect your SEO, and the plugin is a fine way to do it. You can also do it manually (lots of examples of how on places like StackOverflow, e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2316307/how-to-detect-a-users-language-through-their-ip-address which is a good thread and has numerous points of advice).

Best of luck!

[katemorris]

Also, be aware that in this global economy, the IP does not always determine language (think travelers and expats). Be sure to keep an eye out on conversions and bounce rates on the redirected visitors. It shouldn't be a big issue, but it is something to keep in mind.