URL & Routing

The URL & Routing settings tab controls how PerfLocale detects a visitor’s language, constructs URLs for translated content, and behaves when a translation is missing. Get this right and everything else in the plugin becomes easy - get it wrong and you end up with duplicate content, unexpected 404s, or SEO issues.

URL structure

Three URL modes, pick one at Settings → URL & Routing → URL Structure:

  • Subdirectory (default, recommended): example.com/de/. Single domain, zero DNS changes, full SEO value concentrates on one hostname.
  • Subdomain: de.example.com. Requires DNS + SSL for each language subdomain; useful when language sites are managed by different teams.
  • Domain per language: example.de. Highest SEO weight per market (country-code TLDs); requires configuring each domain in WP multisite.

Hide default-language prefix

When on, the default language has no prefix (example.com/about/) and only non-default languages get one (example.com/de/about/). This is the normal look for most multilingual sites - visitors in the default language see clean URLs, translations get their prefix. Turn off to force prefixes on every language (example.com/en/about/).

Language detection order

When a visitor arrives at the root URL, PerfLocale picks a language in this order (first match wins):

  1. Language cookie from a previous visit (name configurable; see Cookie Lifetime below).
  2. GeoIP - if GeoIP Redirect is enabled, look up the visitor’s country and pick the matching language.
  3. Browser Accept-Language - parse the visitor’s browser language preferences, find the best match among active languages.
  4. Default language - fall back when nothing else matches.

Each layer can be individually disabled. Turning them all off = no auto-redirect; visitors always land on the default language until they click the switcher.

GeoIP Redirect

Uses a GeoIP API (ipapi.co, IPinfo, ipstack, ip-api) to detect the visitor’s country. Results are cached per-IP for 24 hours so repeat visitors don’t trigger a lookup every page load. See GeoIP Redirect for provider comparison + API-key setup.

Excluded Paths

URL paths that should bypass language routing entirely - useful for webhooks, XML feeds, custom REST endpoints, or anything that doesn’t have a "language" in a meaningful sense. One path per line; glob wildcards (*) supported. The default list covers typical WP paths like /xmlrpc.php and /wp-*.php.

Missing Translation Action

When a visitor requests a page that doesn’t exist in their language, what should happen? Three modes:

  • Show content in default language - serve the source post under the requested URL. Fastest for the visitor; SEO-wise, PerfLocale wraps the content with data-nosnippet so Google doesn’t show the default-language snippet under the foreign URL.
  • Show 404 error - strictest option. No translation, no result.
  • Redirect to default language version - send the visitor to the default-language URL (302). The canonical option when you want a single canonical URL per piece of content.

Language Fallbacks

If the requested language doesn’t have the post, should PerfLocale try another language before applying the Missing Translation Action? Per-language ordered list, covered in detail at Language Fallbacks.

How long the language cookie persists (days). Default 365. Dropping to 30 or 7 is fine for sites with transient visitors; stretching beyond 365 provides no benefit since most browsers cap cookie lifetime to 1 year anyway.

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