Setting up a dual language website

  • Chris

    (@chrishopkins)


    12 years, 9 months ago

    How can I set up a WordPress website in two languages? I do NOT need nor want a translation plugin. The client will add all text.

    The site will only be 6+ pages and needs 2 buttons in the header, one for English and one for Norwegian. Is it possible to have a different main navigation bar for each language? (using the menus function)

    Also, is there any way of having 2 blog/posts pages (one for each language)?

    Or, can you install WordPress twice (in folders ‘English’ and ‘Norwegian’) and then have a simple index/homepage to select which site to visit?

Viewing 5 replies - 31 through 35 (of 35 total)

  • You’ve probably already found an answer to your original question, but if it helps anyone else, I’ve done exactly that using q-translate as a plugin.

    Despite the name of the software, it doesn’t actually translate anything. What it does is set up the backend so that when you enter a post your first language, you can then click a tab to do the same post in a second language. It does the same for the menus. What it basically does is make sure that each part of the page has a corresponding element in each language. But you have to enter the copy twice (which is good, because you want it to be written properly).

    If a post or page only exists in one language, you can choose to have it not appear at all on the second language pages, or it can appear in its original language.

    I live in Finland but am constantly doing sites where both English and Finnish are of equal importance. I found q-translate to be the easiest way to work this out. The only thing you have to keep an eye out for is if WP does a big fat update and your plugin isn’t ready for it yet. Q-t seems to be one of those that is updated quickly enough that you don’t have any problems.

    In case anyone runs into this post, the answer to the original question is: Yes, you can have a wordpress site in two different languages. I’ve done it myself by installing WP as multisite. This link helped me a lot, along with this plugin.

    The plugin connects the two sites, but does NOT translate automatically. You need to complete the texts by yourself.

    This problem is easy to solve with HTML by placing a simple flag or language shortcut on the top of the page, to advice the visitors for the particular language.
    I would like to have the same in WP.
    Are there any WP sites where I can see it?
    Can someone give a link for this?

    Hello.

    There are other ways to have a blog in more than one language. The old way is described here the two-tree concept.

    https://www.cozmoslabs.com/228-multilanguage-solutions-wordpress-instalation/

    You can have 2 trees where the parent page is UK / PT / Whatever, and the child pages are the ones that you present to the public.

    By doing that you can check for parent page and display a different menu or whatever with a simple if statement.

    Besides it works better with the search engines, and if you define the permalinks as PostName, you will end up with a simple structure like site/uk/page.

    Hope this is of any use for anyone.

    Best regards
    X.

    I used the Bogo plug in to do this. Once you wrap your head around the logic of using multiple languages, it’s pretty simple. The key is to display a different language menu which in turn keeps the user in the “correct” language.
    Create variant language pages/posts
    Register new menu(s) for the additional languages (if your theme doesn’t have multiple menus)
    Because each language has locale meta in the url (domain.com/es/page), you can use a conditional to check locale and display the right menu:
    `$locale = get_locale();
    if ( ‘es_ES’ == $locale )
    // show this menu
    }else{
    //show this menu`

Viewing 5 replies - 31 through 35 (of 35 total)
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