In a global world it is extremely important to speak several languages many people can understand. That’s not only important in reality. On the web you need more than one language, too, when you want to get attention from all over the world. For multilingual WordPress websites, several solutions have been developed. In this blog post we want to introduce our solution for multilingualism in WordPress: MultilingualPress. In doing so, we want to compare it with other well known plugins. Moreover we want to show that our multilingualism WordPress solution gets more and more popular.
And the fact that many international enterprise customers use our plugin speaks for itself, too. For example the biggest Swedish WordPress agency Angry Creative, who, as official Wooexperts, use our plugin in their projects for online shops on WooCommerce basis. Examples of their great projects are https://idealofsweden.co.uk/ with 12 languages https://imsevimse.com/. Both are high performing websites – besides their awesome programming skills and expertise, only possible with MultilingualPress.
MultilingualPress included into WP Engine Solution Center
WP Engine is an international WordPress Hoster. Their solution center is a directory in which they present third-party as well as their own solutions. These shall help customers to optimize the WordPress installation. WP Engine separated the solution center in categories like development, performance or e-commerce, enhancements and content. When WP Engine chooses new solutions for the solution center they check whether they are optimized in terms of performance and safety very carefully. Moreover, the solutions shall be innovative and supported by a company.
Why do we tell you something about WP Engine’s solution center? Well, on the one hand, it offers an interesting compilation of professional services for WordPress. And on the other hand, WP Engine added our MultilingualPress to their solution center. Hence the hoster approved that our solution for a multilingual WordPress is innovative and future-proof.
That’s how Multilingualism Plugins for WordPress work
But let’s go a few steps back: Why does the WP solution center recommend MultilingualPress and not another multilingualism solution? And why does WordPress need an enhancement to become multilingual?
The possibility to make WordPress multilingual is not provided by default. That’s why there are a couple of plugins that enhance WordPress installations in different ways. All have their reasons for existence.
As we cannot compare all the plugins, you can only find a short introduction into the functionalities of WPML, Polylang and MultilingualPress.
WPML and Polylang: How they work
WPML is a fee-based plugin. Originating from the primary language of your website, WPML translates articles, categories or tags. WPML can also implement multilingual versions of plugins. Moreover, WPML can make the WordPress admin area available in several languages. Depending on the license you choose, you can administrate multilingual versions of online shops on the basis of WooCommerce. A real benefit is the comprehensive translation management they offer. Freelancers as well as professional translation agencies are available for paying customers to translate their texts. The whole transaction runs via the WordPress dashboard. Of course, everyone can translate their texts independently, too.
Polylang is a free plugin. A fee-based version of this plugin allows a couple of enhancements. Polylang works similarly to WPML and translates, originating from one primary language, all desired contents. Likewise, it supports WooCommerce online shops. The difference between both plugins is the fact that Polylang has no translation management. Here, all users have to translate their texts themselves. Or search for someone who translates the texts.
All plugins making multilingualism in WordPress possible in this way have a couple of disadvantages. That’s because they potentially intervene into the process of WordPress. This can have bad effects on its smooth operation. Moreover, they slow down the whole website because due to the many language versions of each article or page, the website gets very complex. And it gets complicated when you don’t want to use the plugin anymore. Because then it gets difficult to separate each language page from each other.
MultilingualPress: The WordPress solution for multilingualism?
Compared to the already introduced plugins, MultilingualPress is like the pear between the apples. In other words: MultilingualPress works in a very different way. Thus a comparison isn’t that easy. But let’s give it a try.
MultilingualPress works on the basis of the core feature multisite. Not heard about that yet? No problem, here’s the explanation. The multisite feature enables to integrate several independently linked websites in one WordPress installation.
Our plugin profits from the multisite feature in this way: The desired language sites are independent websites. MultilingualPress connects the posts and pages of the different language sites with each other. As a result, our plugins has, compared to the other presented plugins, a couple of benefits.
- For example, performance issues are not relevant for us, as the link to another website doesn’t change anything about the speed of your own website.
- Moreover, you can design the language versions flexible in their designs, if you like. Or you can let them just alike – that’s your own decision.
- You can also add individual functions to each language version of your website. For example, you might need a plugin for legal security on your German website which is not relevant in other countries.
- You can duplicate pages and posts with all settings within your network. With MultilingualPress, you can even duplicate whole sites within your multisite installation.
- Another benefit is, that all your language sites remain unchanged in case you uninstall MultilingualPress. That’s because you created different websites that run on their own. There’s no lock-in effect.
- You can buy MultilingualPress 3 on https://multilingualpress.org. However, you still get the older MultilingualPress 2 version for free on WordPress.org. But we won’t further develop that version actively anymore and therefore will become obsolete.
MultilingualPress: The WordPress solution for MultilingualPress!
Yes, our plugin has no comprehensive translation service like WPML. But it’s not our intention to offer a plugin that does everything. Instead, we want to provide a technically clean solution for multilingual WordPress websites. A solution that is future-based. That is thought on a long-term basis. A solution that is based on WordPress’s code and complement it useful instead of changing it. And just by the way: We do have a professional translation service which we provide in cooperation with our partner Eurotext.
Our solution for multilingual websites in WordPress even convinced the WordPress team. We are proud that we have the only solution for WordPress VIP. Moreover, the WordPress team prefers our solution on VIP Go Hosting. For us, this is an accolade we feel very honored about.
MultilingualPress 3: Refactored, Ready for the WordPress future
With this brand new MultilingualPress version we put multilingualism in WordPress to the next level. MultilingualPress is based on PHP 7, is compatible with Gutenberg, the new WordPress editor, more intuitive in is use and even more compatible with WooCommerce for multilingual online shops. By the way: WooCoomerce recommends to use MultilingualPress 3 for multilingual online shops. You can find more information about MultilingualPress on our website https://multilingualpress.org.
This blog post has been published on November 7th, 2017. On September 5th, 2018, we updated this post.
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