Taking WordPress to the World : Options for a Multilingual Site | WordCamp San Francisco 2011
•
7 likes•10,487 views
Taking WordPress to the World : Options for a Multilingual Site Presented by Shannon Smith • Professional/Large-scale Track About 2/3 of the world population speak more than one language and most of the world doesn’t use the Internet in English. This presentation will cover what components are needed for a successful multilingual WordPress site. We’ll compare different set-ups, review key plugins and examine common pitfalls. Then we’ll look at advanced features like e-commerce and email marketing.
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (20)
Similar to Taking WordPress to the World : Options for a Multilingual Site | WordCamp San Francisco 2011
Similar to Taking WordPress to the World : Options for a Multilingual Site | WordCamp San Francisco 2011 (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Taking WordPress to the World : Options for a Multilingual Site | WordCamp San Francisco 2011
- 1. Taking WordPress to the World: Options for a Multilingual Site WordCamp San Francisco 2011 August 12, 2011
- 2. Shannon Smith CEO of Café Noir Design w: www.cafenoirdesign.com t: @cafenoirdesign
- 3. What We’ll Cover ✤ Introduction ✤ Strategies for Content ✤ 2 WordPress Set-ups ✤ Key Plugins ✤ Advanced Features
- 4. Introduction
- 5. Why design multilingual sites? ✤ 2/3 of the world population speak more than one language ✤ Most people don’t use the Internet in English ✤ Internet use is growing fastest where English isn’t spoken Photo: nevsred
- 6. Defining Multilingual ✤ Multilingual vs. Unilingual (but not English) ✤ Multi-lingual vs. Multi-regional Image: wpbeginner
- 8. Automated Solution ✤ One language with an automated translation ✤ plugin (Google AJAX Translation) http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google- ajax-translation/ ✤ Google’s “Add Translate to your website” http://translate.google.com/translate_tools
- 9. Partial Solutions ✤ Posts in alternating languages, interface in one language ✤ Posts in alternating languages, interface in multiple languages
- 10. Complete Solutions ✤ Different content for each language ✤ Completely mirrored sites
- 12. Technical Considerations ✤ Interface language ✤ Content language ✤ Language switcher ✤ Language persistence ✤ URL structure ✤ Alphabet ✤ Text direction Photo: jerebu
- 13. Political Considerations ✤ Use of flags ✤ Design and cultural considerations ✤ Default language ✤ Splash page
- 14. What About SEO? ✤ Make the language obvious ✤ Make the language discoverable ✤ Don’t mix languages ✤ Cross-link each page ✤ Automated translations should be blocked from ✤ Don’t use cookies to show search engines translated versions ✤ Choose URLs carefully ✤ Be careful using javascript ✤ Separate URLs ✤ Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s language Further reading: Google’s Advice on Multi-regional and multilingual sites http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=182192
- 15. URLs That Search Engines Like ✤ Subdomains: ✤ Separate domain names: ✤ de.example.com ✤ example.com ✤ en.example.com ✤ example.fr ✤ Subdirectories: ✤ example.com/en/ ✤ example.com/de/
- 16. Dual-Installation Method ✤ Two WordPress installations (can be MultiSite) ✤ Content can be identical or not ✤ Requires a language switcher plugin ✤ Stable choice ✤ Extra maintenance
- 17. Single-Installation Method ✤ One WordPress installation ✤ Content can be identical or not ✤ Requires a multilingual plugin ✤ Can be less stable ✤ Can involve less maintenance
- 18. Key Plugins
- 19. Single-Installation Plugins ✤ WPML ✤ Easy to use ✤ Easy to install ✤ Translates content, interface, plugins ✤ Sometimes buggy ✤ Other plugins (qTranslate) can NOT be easily uninstalled
- 20. Dual-Installation Plugins ✤ Bilingual Linker (2 languages only) ✤ Language Switcher (no longer supported as of 2010) ✤ Multisite Language Switcher ✤ Language packs
- 22. e-Commerce ✤ Magento ✤ PrestaShop (with or without plugin) ✤ WPML & MarketPress ✤ Other WPML e-Commerce solutions in beta
- 23. Email Marketing ✤ CakeMail ✤ Campaign Monitor (with 2 sub-accounts) ✤ PHPList
- 24. Other ✤ Forms and surveys: Wufoo forms and Gravity Forms ✤ Forums (multiple forums) ✤ Wikis (multiple wikis)
- 25. Shannon Smith CEO of Café Noir Design http://slideshare.net/cafenoirdesign w: www.cafenoirdesign.com t: @cafenoirdesign
- 26. Thank You Image: woodleywonderworks
Editor's Notes
- \n
- \n
- \n
- \n
- Some factoids\n
- WordPress 3.3 is expected to have an easier method of installing language packs.\nLanguage use, culture, georgraphy and politics do not overlap perfectly.\n
- \n
- Not reliable, not accurate, not very professional. \nBudget choice when translation is too expensive.\nHuman translation is always preferred.\nTool for a small personal blog.\n\n
- Tool for blogs where the writer speaks two languages, but doesn’t want to translate all the content.\n
- Professional business choice for business sites and enterprise blogs.\nRequires a translation team, or service. \nInvolves translating almost every page.\n
- \n
- Interface language : header, sidebars, plugins, forms.\nLanguage switcher : tool the user uses to choose the language.\nLanguage persistence: often uses cookies.\n
- Potential to offend.\nLanguage use and nations are not completely overlapping entities. \nDefault language is only appropriate where there is a majority group.\nSplash page/multi-language homepage where there is no dominant language: Canada, Belgium, Switzerland.\n\n
- Google doesn’t consider automated results reliable and warns that it can result in poor search indexing. \nAutomatic redirection: browser sniffing to determine the language on a computer or by geo-mapping IP address. \nCookies or javascript to make a language switcher work or to have language-choice persistence.\nAccessibility issues as well\n\n
- \n
- Extra maintenance is less with Multisite.\nMultisite is easy to set up.\nTheme choice is unlimited.\n
- Many theme options including all the Woo themes.\n
- \n
- Optional translation service.\nOther plugins add all the different language versions to the same database tables. If you disable the plugin, you need to remove the other languages from each entry by hand or clean the database.\n
- \n
- \n
- WP ecommerce and Shopp\nMutisite install\n
- \n
- \n
- \n
- \n