Tunisia.com provides information and assistance to people wanting to visit or live and work in Tunisia. It’s not part of the government so its owner has to pay his own bills and this is achieved via advertising as Tunisia is a very touristic country with over 5 million tourists a year.
Tunisia is an Arab country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area is almost 165,000 km², with an estimated population of just over 10.3 million. Its name is derived from the capital Tunis located in the north-east.
At the moment this website, based on this wonderful place in Africa, has between 30,000 - 50,000 visitors per month which is increasing steadily as content and translations are added. Given that this site is niche (just about Tunisia), they are also tied to the interest in Tunisia itself, therefore, the more people who search for Tunisia, the more visitors for this site.
From .NET to Drupal
Previously Kristen Heavens, the site owner, worked in a busy web agency where they had their own .net CMS system. It was assumed that to be taken seriously you needed to have your own CMS.
However as projects director, he would see time and again the issues of having your own CMS system, no matter how good it was, it was always at risk of the head developer leaving his job and in those days that was easy for them to do.
Each new developer would have their way of doing things and would always find issues in the previous implementation.
During this time Drupal started to come of age and the appeal was immediate.
- A large community
- A standard starting specification
- Scalable battle hardened solution
So Kristen Heavens, for his own project, decided to choose Drupal. He is convinced that it has improved constantly and since he has an information website.
There is usually a module that does what he needs, so "I don’t have to re-invent the wheel", he states. Most importantly, if his developer quits he can pay someone who knows Drupal and doesn't need to learn the ins and outs of a custom system so he can rest assured that he’ll not be held ransom.
Tunisia is a bi-lingual country
In Tunisia people speak Arabic and French. French has no official status, but is widely used in the academy, tourist sector and trade.
Even the name Tunisia, comes from Tunisie born its French era.
Any website about Tunisia, especially focusing on tourism and business, should speak both Arabic and French.
Why Use Translation Management?
It’s possible to find good translators to French in Tunisia. The problem is, the cost of the translation is far from being the only cost involved in running a multilingual site.
The time required to copy/paste every bit of translation can easily build up and be more significant than the translation itself.
The Translation Management module allows running a multilingual site, with translators, for far less than managing it manually. Additionally, it made it easy for Kristen Heavens to quickly locate professional translators from ICanLocalize.
The open and direct channel for communication between the translators and Kristen helped produce fluent and natural texts in all languages. The translators also made suggestions about the original text and helped improve the quality of the site. Translating their travel guides with this module helped them get even more tourists and investors.
Other Modules
The web developer in charge of Tunisia.com, used the traditional modules: CCK, Imagecache, Ubercart, Fivestar, Views and FeedAPI.