Customized Multilingual Website using WordPress Multisite

 

Project Website: http://anizamova.middcreate.net/

This project is about creating a multilingual websites network through WordPress Multisite. So how is it different from ordinary WP websites and why we are choosing this mode to build multilingual website?

Here’s a graphic that best illustrates what is WP website and what is multisite.

Using WP Multisite, you can build a network of websites where each can be in a different language and style, while at the same time linked together and can be switched back and forth.  The websites are independant from each other and can be assigned to different administrators to maintain the content. Thus, it means using WP Multisite, the website can be better localized and target-oriented, allowing more customization of different language versions of the original website.

You can check our the presentation slides of this topic, and the Multilingual Multisite we made.

Here’s the general process of how Multisite network is created:

1. Install Multisite in WP
2. Create/ translate websites
3. Customization/Localization
4. Add language switcher

Install Multisite in WP

http://wplang.org/wordpress-multisite-multilingual/

To install Multisite on WordPress, we basically followed guides in the link and the instructions works most of the time.

One thing worth mentioning is that when you are following the instructions on the picture above and you can’t find .htaccess file, which is required to modify for Multisite, you can check hidden files to make them exposed, or create this file yourself.

Create/Translate Websites

Now, you can add content. So we populated our English, Chinese and Russian sites. Our model website was the website of The Russian Embassy in China.

If those sites’ contents are drastly different, you can add contents seperately.

If their contents are almost translations of each other, an easy way is to use cloning plugins to duplicate the original site (in our case is the English one), so you don’t have to do customization for each site, because all the customization and css codes are also copied at the same time.

The plugin we used to do that is called NS Cloner, and it only takes seconds to clone a site.

After cloning the site, you can install translation plugin such as WPML, so that you can easily get the content downloaded for translation. Using WPML, you can delete original content while keeping the translation. So is is quite suitable to be used for multisite.

Customization/Localization

After uploading contents to our Russian and Chinese sites, you can change the themes of them so they can look different. You can also add different contents so to better suit the needs of your target readers.

Here’s a look of our Chinese and English sites

* Note: on WordPress Multisite, plugins and themes can be activated in the whole network. If you only want to active a plugin or theme for a particular website, you have to deactivate network and reactive them in that site’s plugin page.

Add Language Switcher

After we build a website for each language, here comes the final step! à to add connection to these websites, so they can switch back and forth. The plugin we use to do that is Multisite Language Switcher. Our reference is from here: http://msls.co/install-config-and-use/

Here’s how it works on Multisite:

After you install this plugin, you should go to the General setting and the setting page for this plugin to customize language picker and choose the site language. If you want to exclude a site from this multilingual network, make sure the circled option below is checked.

A reminder is that the language switcher will be in a listed format for this plugin. If you want to have a dropdown menu of the languages, you can install MslsSelect plugin, which is made to transfer the language picker of Multisite Langauge Switcher into a dropdown menu. It works magically!

Remeber to add connections of pages and posts. You can do that in the page editing view and choose their corresponding translations.

To have an overview of what has been translated and what has not, you can go to the interface of all pages or all posts, where you can edit exhisting translation by clicking the yellow sign, add new translations by clicking the green sign (as shown below).

If you click add new translation, you will be directed to a page editing view in the website of another langauge. However, you need to be a network admin or the admin for both source and target site to add or edit translation.

To conclude, the translation functions in Multisite is kind of limited compared with ordinary WordPress function. But I do think WP is a great choice if you want to have a more targeted website and want to cater for the readership’s needs.