How to build a bilingual (or multilingual) website
Hello y'all, I searched the forum and blog posts on our website community here but didn't find any information regarding bilingual websites, so I'm writing this post to share my discoveries with you, to save you guys some time and trouble in case you are trying to build a bilingual website and are having trouble looking for information on this topic.
Disclaimer: I'm not really much of a techy so I opted for the easiest, most user-friendly solution I could find. There are free alternatives out there, such as the qtranslate plugin, but those required a little more technical know-how in order to set up, so, in the end, I opted for WPML (the Wordpress Multilingual plugin), which, unfortunately, is NOT free -- but you don't need to get the expensive $79 full plugin. The $29 option is what I downloaded and I found that it's more than enough for our purposes.
I made this video to guide you through the process step-by-step--> Video Tutorial on How to build a bilingual website
If you are interested in purchasing or finding out more about WPML, here's a link to their website (You can't download the plugin directly from the dashboard as you'll need to purchase it and create a password first!): WPML link
If you don't want to write the translated content yourself, WPML has translation services and they have an excellent getting started guide: http://wpml.org/documentation/getting-started-guide/
GOOD LUCK! :-)
baci (In Italian that means "kisses")
~ Chiara
Recent Comments
5
I'm glad you found a solution. If you have a need, there is a way using flags that you can direct people to sections of your site.
Basically you duplicate the site page and translate it. A national flag on the main page directs people to either of the main sites in whichever language. Custom menus then direct people to their language pages.
Hey Chiara, nice of you to present this alternative. I was also thinking on making a bilingual website ( English-Spanish), which I believe, at first, to be a good idea. Trouble is that when non-english speaking people opted in, most of the content where they could be sent to, particularly WA, will be in english, like most other sites related to online marketing, therefore, the value being offered would not really help/serve their purposes. I think I will not go this way entirely but instead, possibly prepare some kind of a mirror site pointing to selected programs/sites/content that would offer such market with what would really serve them in their language. I am not a fan of automated translating machines/software because most of the time the resulting translation does not carry the desired meaning, sometimes such translation become totally hard to understand.
Will go into WPML and your tutorial to learn further. Congratulations for this first blog, and I see you are already prepared to start getting referral´s commissions, way to go !
Thanks again and molto baci !
Hi, I agree with you about automated translating and even though it's a little more tedious and takes a little more time, I prefer writing out the content myself. With WPML rest assured you're not forced to go with the automated translation (In fact, I opted out of automated translation.). If you're doing a lot of affiliate marketing, I don't know how you would go about a bilingual website, I'm just a newbie, 2 weeks old here :-) but perhaps the solution would be to tailor the content in each of the languages so it isn't exactly the same content... it's all about the user, in the end, who you're catering to and what's the best fit, I think!
baci!
I wish I could post my website as an example but being a newbie, it's not up and running just yet! :P
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This is a very helpful & useful guide. Grazie!