Do you want to create a multilingual WordPress website?
WordPress is the most used platform to create a website. Almost 35% of the websites on the internet are functioned using WordPress. It is understandable that many of the audience serve multilingual languages.
What is a Multilingual WordPress Website?
The multilingual website provides content in more than one language, for example, English, Spanish, French, German. It might offer language selection and present the content in a single language at a time or automatically redirect users to the language based on their region.
Businesses or corporations create a multilingual website to reach out to the large audience and develop smooth communication with international customers. Besides that, government institutions, public services, NGOs, tourism-related companies, language schools, and many other businesses can take advantage of the multilingual site. Providing content in a different language may multiply the site traffic and potentially increase the result.
Create Multilingual WordPress Website
In this article, we will learn to create a multilingual WordPress site in a simple and easy way. With this, you can translate your WordPress posts, pages, categories, pages, and themes into as many languages as you wish.
Step 1: Select a multilingual WordPress plugin for site
By default, WordPress doesn’t have any features or functionalities to translate the site content into various languages. But, there are different WordPress plugins that can be used to translate the website into multiple languages. While choosing the plugin, you need to be careful and select the one that helps you to easily manage all the transactions without making it difficult for the users.
In this tutorial, I have used a perfect multilingual WordPress plugin along with the step-by-step guide on how to arrange it on the site.
Polylang
The plugin comes with feature-rich functionalities that you need to create a multilingual site.
- It allows you to translate pages, posts, categories, themes and other post types.
- It allows you to set up the SEO friendly URLs for all language.
- Works perfectly with all the WordPress themes and plugins.
- A customizable language switcher is provided as a widget or in the navigation menu.
Now that we have described the functions of these multilingual WordPress plugins, let’s head towards using them on our site to build a perfect multi-language website.
Step 2: Installation and Activation of Plugin
As of Polylang, it is the best WordPress translation plugin that you can use. You can write the posts, pages and create categories and post tags as usual, and then define the language for each of them. It is a completely free WordPress plugin with 500,000+ active installations. Over the top, it is free and fully responsive.
Install and activate the plugin on your site. Follow our step-by-step tutorial guide to Install a new WordPress Plugin.
Once the plugin is installed, activate the plugin.
Step 3: Select the Languages for the Site
After you activate the plugin, you can see the Language menu on your WordPress dashboard admin page.
In order to configure the plugin,
- Click on Languages>>Languages
The language setting of the page is divided into three tabs: Languages, Strings Translation, Settings. The first tab ‘Languages‘ is the page where you can add different languages.
First of all, add the default language and select all other languages you want to use.
- Choose language.
- Give the name(The name is how it is displayed in your site).
- Select the language code, text direction, flag and the order.
Repeat the same way for as many languages as you want to add. After you have chosen the language, click on the next tab ‘Strings translations’. On this page, you need to translate the site title, tagline, date and time format, and widget title.
Next,
- Select the Languages>>Settings
On this page, you can set the URL setting for languages and also set up the SEO-friendly URL.
After you make all the changes on your site, click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.
Step 4: Translate content of WordPress website
Apart from the homepage, you also need to change the language of the content. Make sure that all the posts, pages, categories, and sections of the website appear in the selected language.
It is quite easy to translate the content in WordPress website using Polylang plugin. You just need to add a new or edit the existing page/post. On the post/page edit screen, you will see the language meta box.
The default language of your website will be selected automatically, so, first, you need to write the content in the default language and later change it in other languages.
In order to translate the content,
- Click on the + button right next to the language and add the content for that language.
- Redo the same procedure for all the languages.
- Publish or Update the post/pages after the changes.
Step 5: Translate the Tags, Categories and Custom Taxonomies
If you want to make your site a complete multilingual WordPress website, it is necessary to edit and translate even the tags, categories, and custom taxonomies along with the content. You can easily translate it.
- Click on Posts>>Categories
On the page, you can see all the categories of the website. Add or Edit the categories on the default language and click on the ‘+‘ icon to translate into each language.
You need to follow the same steps for tags and custom taxonomies.
Step 6: Show/Display Language Switcher on your WordPress Website
In order to select the language, you also need to have the language switcher on your website. Adding it allows visitors to select the language and view the site accordingly.
- Click on Appearance>>Widgets
You will see the Language Switcher widget on the page.
- Simply Drag and Drop the Language Switcher widget to the to your sidebar, footer or any widget-ready area.
- Display it as a dropdown menu or use language name with flag.
- Save the changes.
Now, when you view your site, you will see the language switcher option on the sidebar area of your website.
Wrapping Up:
In this way, you can create a beautiful Multilingual WordPress Website in no time with the help of the plugin. Now, get ready and start doing the same on your site too.
Also, follow our tutorial to learn more about WordPress!