# Redirect First-Time Visitors to Their Language Section

> Sends visitors who land on the homepage to the matching language section (such as /fr/ or /de/) based on their browser language, once; their choice is then remembered.

- Type: PHP
- Runs: Frontend cl
- Category: [Multilingual](https://wpide.com/library/category/multilingual/)
- Tags: redirect, browser-language, homepage
- Author: WPIDE Team
- Installs: 0
- Updated: 2026-10-28
- Page: https://wpide.com/library/i18n-browser-language-redirect/

## Code

```php
$wpide_sections = array( // Browser language => homepage path, e.g. 'fr' => '/fr/', 'de' => '/de/'.
);

add_action( 'template_redirect', function () use ( $wpide_sections ) {
    if ( ! $wpide_sections || ! is_front_page() || is_user_logged_in() || isset( $_COOKIE['wpide_lang_seen'] ) || empty( $_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'] ) ) {
        return;
    }

    $agent = isset( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ) ? strtolower( sanitize_text_field( wp_unslash( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ) ) ) : '';
    if ( '' === $agent || preg_match( '/bot|crawl|spider|slurp|preview|lighthouse/', $agent ) ) {
        return;
    }

    setcookie( 'wpide_lang_seen', '1', time() + YEAR_IN_SECONDS, COOKIEPATH, COOKIE_DOMAIN, is_ssl(), true );

    $header = strtolower( sanitize_text_field( wp_unslash( $_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'] ) ) );
    $first  = substr( $header, 0, 2 );

    if ( isset( $wpide_sections[ $first ] ) ) {
        nocache_headers();
        wp_safe_redirect( home_url( $wpide_sections[ $first ] ), 302 );
        exit;
    }
} );
```

## Notes

Map language codes to the paths of your translated homepages. Search engine bots are never redirected, so every version stays indexable.

## How to use it

Install the free WPIDE plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpide/), find "Redirect First-Time Visitors to Their Language Section" in its snippet library and add it in one click; or create a new PHP snippet in WPIDE (or any code snippets plugin) and paste the code above. More snippets: https://wpide.com/library/