You’re on your way to upgrading your WordPress site from single-language to multilingual. In this guide, we will explain some best practices based on our extensive experience.
Given that WordPress sites are made up of many different components (a theme and many plugins), there is room for error that can cause businesses frustration. We want to make sure that your sites are multilingual-ready and don’t cause you unwanted hassles so that you can continue with your global marketing efforts.
Top considerations for building multilingual sites
● Don’t underestimate the scope and complexity of running a multilingual website. One common mistake that companies make is to skip steps and start translating before their site is technically ready. This leads to wasted time, budgets and business opportunities.
● Avoid having too many technologies running on your site. This causes dependencies on too many vendors and requires complex coordination. Therefore you should limit the number of plugins and integrations if possible.
● Make sure your site is updated and well maintained. WordPress sites require regular updates for the core platform as well as themes and plugins. This is for the security of your sites and allows you to take advantage of new features and fixes from their developers.
How to build multilingual sites that are easy to translate and run
1. Get the right people onboard
Like any other engineering profession, building good websites is a craft. Building multilingual websites requires additional expertise, which not all developers have.
If you’re already developing your site now, you can always involve an expert from WPML. It’s not a prerequisite, but in case you need it, this expert can work alongside your IT team to make sure that your site will translate easily and correctly. The additional cost of bringing in an expert will quickly turn into saving. Your entire project will complete faster and with fewer iterations.
2. Pick well known WPML-compatible themes and plugins
WordPress sites typically use one “theme” and a combination of “plugins”. The theme determines the visual appearance and the plugins add functionality. Make sure that both the theme and the plugins that you choose are ready for multilingual sites. If you’re in doubt, you can check WPML’s lists of compatible themes and compatible plugins.
3. Decide what parts of the site require translation
Often, you can go live with marketing campaigns in other languages without translating every page on your site. It’s great to translate everything, but you might want to work progressively.
WPML allows you to set translation priority for different pages on the site. This way, it’s easy to find those pages and send them all for translation in one batch. Later, when you add more languages, you already have the list of pages and you can send them quickly and efficiently.
4. Conduct tests to make sure that all works as expected
WPML offers a free review service for partner clients. Their team will review the software running on your site and analyze if any additional configuration or development work is needed. You will receive a customized document with the results of the audit (including some tips and suggestions). Use this link to submit a request:
Furthermore, before you send a large amount of content for translation, we highly
recommend that you do a test translation. This way, you can identify problems on a small
scale and correct them quickly.
5. Keep WordPress, the theme and all plugins up-to-date
Once your site is multilingual and translated, remember to maintain it on a regular basis. WordPress will give you notices when updates are available. However, someone needs to pay attention to these notices and respond to them.
If you’re running a mission-critical website, you should test updates on a staging environment. This allows you to see how changes affect your site before going live.
If you’ve hired a website developer per project, you can receive maintenance services from the developers on WPML’s list. There’s a special category for developers who specialize in maintenance services.
How to get WPML support if you need it
WPML has a great multilingual support forum that can be used for issues of a technical nature. OneDocument clients will get priority support as a result of the partnership with WPML. Should you have any concerns or doubts about the quality of the service you are receiving, please let us know and we’ll contact WPML directly.
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