Multi-lingual & Multi-domain HTACCESS

[babymaxi]

We have 1 instance of Prestashop 1.5.6.1 hosted on our main domain.com which is a multi-domain with the other domains sharing this same instance of Prestashop being domain.fr , domain.de , domain.it , domain.nl

 

In our old PS1.3 we could manage this multi-lingual, multi-domain via HTACCESS.

 

We tried to use the HTACCESS with our PS1.5.6.1 but didn't succeed. So we used the multi-store functionality.  

 

We are now told that we should have been able to do it with HTACCESS and that we shouldn't have used the  multi-store since all of our stores are identical, except for the language differences.

 

What should the HTACCESS structure look like for 1.5.6.1?

 

FYI below is the HTACCESS of our old PS1.3  which was working great:

 

RewriteRule ^lang-en/?(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^lang-fr/?(.*)$ http://www.domain.fr/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^lang-it/?(.*)$ http://www.domain.it/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^lang-de/?(.*)$ http://www.domain.de/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^lang-nl/?(.*)$ http://www.domain.nl/$1 [R=301,L]

 

Since the language URL structure of 1.5 is different, we tried the following, which didn't work. Does any have experience with Multi-lingual, Multi-domain, to help us out? 

 

RewriteRule ^en/?(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^fr/?(.*)$ http://www.domain.fr/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^it/?(.*)$ http://www.domain.it/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^de/?(.*)$ http://www.domain.de/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^nl/?(.*)$ http://www.domain.nl/$1 [R=301,L]

 

[El Patron]

For best seo, I would not use .htacess....

 

ps 1.5.6.2 will detect the browser language and act accordingly.

 

I (personally) do not think it's important that someone with a nl language be directed to a .nl url.

 

In other words does it really matter what url the visitor comes in with or uses?  They may be a nl speaker living in .de, they would naturally (via seo) see .de in their results...