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Multilingual WordPress With Polylang
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- 2. Let’s talk abouttranslations • What kind of things need to be translated? • What options do you have? • How to setup Polylang? • How to manage translations? • Missing features and problems
- 3. So you aregoing to build a multilingual site… • Complete vs partially translated sites • Human vs machine translated sites • Integrated vs independent sites
- 4. What needs tobe translated? • Main content: Pages, posts, categories… • Plugins • Widgets: Labels, content and visibility • Navigations • Text strings in theme (“Next »”, “Page not found”) • Admin UI (for translators)
- 5. Multiple languages will makeeverything more complicated THE TRUTH
- 6. Translations from visitor’sperspective • UI to change language (flags, list…) • Content is separated by language • Show content only in selected language • Translations are linked: change a language, go to the translated page • Automatically detect visitor’s language and redirect to that language
- 7. Building multilingual sites withWordPress
- 8. Choosing your tools •WordPress doesn’t really have a built-in solution to have multiple languages at the same time • There is a built-in way to translate WordPress, plugins and theme (.po & .mo) • There’s no built-in UI to create and modify .po files • Doing translations by multi-site or without any plugin will make you miserable
- 9. Plugins to therescue • Machine translations • Google Language Translator (≈90k) • Bing Translator (≈2k) • Human translations • Polylang (≈100k) • WPML (≈400k) • qTranslate X (≈80k)
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- 11. Polylang • Simple, open-sourceand free multilingual plugin • Quick setup and easy to use • Lightweight • Translated content is saved as separate entries that are linked by (hidden) language taxonomy • Translated posts are edited in their own editors
- 12. Things you needto translate • Main content: linked translations and independent content • Plugins: uses .po files • Widgets: Set visibility, translate labels, uses .po files automatically • Navigations: translate navigation menus (no sync)
- 13. Things you needto translate • Text strings in theme: Translate in Polylang UI when strings are registered properly and/or use .po files • Admin UI: Users can select their preferred language (from site’s languages) • Media: Translatable or language independent • Slugs: You’ll need this add-on from GitHub
- 14. Tools for developers •Example functionality • Register, translate and retrieve strings • Get language switcher • Make translations or link translations in code • Retrieve posts in language or translated versions • Full documentation
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- 16. Install and activatethe plugin
- 17. Go to Setting> Languages and setup your main language
- 18. Language added, setcontent to default language
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- 21. Synchronization settings (copying isnot synchronizing!) (Also decide which custom post types and taxonomies you want to be translatable)
- 22. Add more languages(or do it later)
- 23. Add language switcher (widget,function or navigation links…)
- 24. Tips for setup •Don’t make media translatable (unless you really have to) • Avoid synchronizing if copying is enough • Browser language detection might be bad idea if the main language isn’t English • If you have used WPML you can import your multilingual content with WPML to Polylang plugin • If you import data you can map content to right languages with WP All Import
- 25. How to manage multilingualcontent
- 26. Filter content inadmin with admin bar language dropdown
- 27. Navigate to translationswith icons: plus icon - create new translation pen icon - edit existing translation checked icon - original language
- 28. New meta boxin editor screen
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- 30. Lingotek? • A mysterioustab in Polylang settings • Premium translation service that can be integrated to Polylang (with a Lingotek plugin) • Machine or human translation services can be bought and delivered through it
- 31. Tips for management •Check out Getting Started from Polylang documentation • It’s easiest to create translation when original post is complete (all the final meta data is copied) • Register strings to be translated in Polylang: easy to use and add new languages • There’s no perfect system to keep track of changes in all languages: you need to create habits and do checks • Test before updating in production (d'oh)
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- 33. Missing features • Cant’ttranslate options pages (including ACF options pages) • No built-in slug translation • Unintuitive media translation (there’s a plugin though that syncs attachments) • Doesn’t copy editor content to translation
- 34. Problems • UI willget messy if you have many languages (roughly 10 or more) • Not as thorough support for WooCommerce as WPML • You can build working store with Hyyan WooCommerce Polylang Integration • Maybe not for super duper complex multilingual stuff • You might need to consider WPML (or Drupal?)
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- 36. Polylang • Lightweight, freeand open-sourced • You can setup it without any technical knowledge and works with most of themes out of the box • Complete multilingual solution: translate content, use admin in selected language, use .po files when available • Might be clunky when there is loads of languages or the translation logic is really complex
- 37. But wait there’smore • My co-organizer Janne Ala-Äijälä will tell more advanced stuff on WordCamp Finland 2016 • Subject: Leveling up your Multilingual WordPress Site • More about workflow, weird characters, RTL support, translation performance…
- 38. Thank you! • I’mTeemu Suoranta, web developer from Aucor and organizer of Turku WordPress Meetup • You can follow me on Twitter @TeemuSuoranta • I like to hear your horror stories from WPML