How do I set bilingual or multilingual Wordpress?

Here is another way of doing bilingual or multilingual blog using Wordpress (wp). This method is easier compared to the bilingual blogger building, the one I explained years ago in this blog.

Let’s plan our objective as an example. It’s so simple.

We will have a site with Wordpress hosting both in English and Spanish.

First, you must register for your selected domain name. After registration you should have a domain hosting service. I will not explain how to register and get a domain hosting service, which I presume you already have one. If you don’t have a domain name and domain hosting, you will find hundreds of them if you google it.

Select your domain name for English site. Let say your domain is www.myabcdomain.com  

This will be your main domain name. Let’s presume this domain (main domain) will work in English.

Now you should have a subdomain for Spanish site under your main domain name. Your subdomain name for Spanish site will be

esp.mydomain.com

If you want a third language domain for German, you can generate another subdomain that will work in German as

ger.mydomain.com  

Please note that each subdomain must have a separate wordpress instance installed on your hosting service.

Thus here are your domain and subdomains

www.myabcdomain.com  (domain)

esp.myabcdomain.dom     (sub domain)

ger.myabcdomain.com      (sub domain)

Then login to your hosting service.

Prepare your wordpress hosting environment (same template) separately for all your domain and subdomains. You will have three wordpress installation in same template and same picture content but will be in different language texts  accordingly.

After creating your wp site to your domain.

Login as wp admin

Go to Appearance then menu from the left side bar as seen in the picture.

In the coming page, click on the link “create a new menu”

Select a menu name. Let say “Languages”

Now your menu structure is ready which will be shown in the main page of your website upper corner depending on your word press template.

Now we need to add menu items for English, Spanish, German etc.

Select “Custom links”  item

URL  : http://www.myabcdomain.com

Link Text:  English

Click Add to Menu

URL  : http://esp.myabcdomain.com

Link Text:  Espanol

Click Add to Menu

URL  : http://ger.myabcdomain.com

Link Text:  Deutsch

Click Add to Menu

Check “Primary Menu” in the theme locations as seen in the picture on the right hand side.

Finally don’t forget to click Save Manu button when you finish all.

Thus your menu will be ready mostly in up right corner of your site for www.myabcdomain.com 

Now you should do the same for each subdomain. Login as wp admin in your subdomain esp.mydomain.com  and repeat the same steps starting from "Login as wp admin" till here.

At the end you will have 3 wp instances installed on your hosting account. You will pay one domain hosting. Subdomains are free. But you should make 3 instances of your site in 3 different languages or more.

I hope it helps. It is easy way of handling multilingual or bilingual websites with Wordpress.
If you have an intent to do it with blogger instead of Wordpress, Please check my other post How to bilingual or multilingual with blogger.

Read More