How to create a bilingual website

  • I am trying to create a bilingual website. This is my first website and I am not experienced in this field. I have managed to create my website in English on the twenty ten theme. What I would like to do is add a flag at the end of the menu bar so that when clients click on it, they can see the website in French and have a French menu bar that would take them to the French pages (and there would also be an English flag on the French menu bar to take them back to the English website). As my business will be for translation services, I want to write all the contents of the French version (and not have this automatically translated).

    I have read a lot of threads but they all seem very complicated and they offer so many options that I am lost as to which one I should try.

    I am hoping to find something basic and easy to use. Ideally, I do not want to buy a second domain but I could do this if it is necessary. I have tried creating a sub-domain and added wordpress to this but I am not sure how to take it from there, how to duplicate the website on it so that I only need to change the text from French to English and how to then link the main domain and the sub domain. I also tried the plugins Qtranslate (but this does not seem to let me write the French version) and Multisite Language Switcher (but this does get activated).

    Any help would be appreciated!

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  • I think that you could use the multisite feature of WordPress. So one site would be example.com and the other sites example.com/french example.com/german and so on. I have this with purchon.com and then purchon.com/biology purchon.com/chemistry though it is all in English.

    Thread Starter dzmtranslate

    (@dzmtranslate)

    Dear Purchon

    Thank you for your email. I looked at your website and it was hard to see the feature since it is not about different languages. Could this add a button on the menu bar to take one website to another website (rather than adding a Link on each page)?

    I have created a subdomain called fr.example.com and copied the wordpress files under this sub-domain. I have also downloaed the multisite plugin on my wp-admin but when I try to activate it, it says that I need to create a network. The explanations to do this seem complicated though so I am still working my way through them. Any help would be appreciated!

    I just finished a simple bilingual site . Although small it was quit a struggle. WPML const money and make a site very slow and conflicts with lots of plugins..

    There is the free Polylang that in my experience is very easy to use, has hardly influence on the speed of the site. It’s great I would recommend it strongly!
    Polylang

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