multisite with different languages

www.ads-software.com itself is a multisite installation. fr.www.ads-software.com is a sub-site under www.ads-software.com. If you look at its URLs, except for unique French content, they are also in English, exactly what you’re trying to avoid.

I think the English URL issue is related to poly-language plugins, not multisite per se. You can select French to be the language of choice on any sub-site, provided the super-admin has installed the French language pack. If you then create French content in that sub-site with French name slugs, the permalinks would then also be in French (sans diacritics though)

It’s also possible to create an independent single-site installation parallel to the multisite. It can reside in a server sub-folder and be requested directly, or a subdomain could be mapped to the sub-folder with VirtualHost.

Thanks bcworkz, I was hoping to be able to change the default language (temporarily) at root level so I could install a French theme and then activate this just for the French subsite. But this doesn’t seem possible. I guess I’ll need to investigate creating an independent single-site installation but am worried that the webhost will charge extra money for this. Thanks in any case ??

If you’re just adding a sub-domain there is typically no extra charge, but it’s conceivable certain budget hosting plans charge extra. If you instead access the single site via a sub-folder I cannot imagine there being an extra charge, provided you don’t exceed your allocated resources. Of course I could be wrong in specific cases, but in general this holds true.

You would need to install the files yourself, host provided one-click install buttons will likely not work for a sub-directory installation. You can still use the same DB, just use an alternative table prefix in wp-config.php.

If you installed this site in sub-folder “fr”, you could access it with an URL similar to example.com/fr/bonjour-le-monde/. It’s no different than if the site was part of a multisite sub-folder style of installation.

hi again

Thanks for your reply.

I had to buy a new domain name but this was only 1 euro a year so i decided to splash out!

Then i managed to install the FR version of wordpress in the subsite. But the Astra theme is only available in English. V annoying. Surely there must be some themes already available in the 2 separate languages? I’d be grateful for any pointers here…

All themes in the WP repository that are being translated to French are in the translate.www.ads-software.com site. Each listing includes how much of the theme’s strings have been translated.

FWIW, this site indicates Astra is 100% translated to French (for fr_FR, there are other French locale variants that may not have been completed). What gives you the impression that there is no French Language pack available for Astra?

Thanks as always for your quick reply. I can’t find these translations anywhere. Maybe they’re not available for free. I’ve just had a long conversation with BARD who had to admit in the end that I would need to install a translation plugin then translate the EN version of the website. But I have no EN site: I want to start from a French template and build it in French. Why am I asking these questions in an EN forum you wonder? Because I’m EN and someone else is providing me with the FR text for the website. But I did take a look at the FR wordpress free themes: Thèmes WordPress?: Récents Gratuit | www.ads-software.com – and I can see they’re all in EN ??

Only Astra’s user interface text is translated, not your content. Its language pack for French is installed automatically when you select French as the site’s language. If you’ve done that, the translation .po and .mo files are in /wp_content/languages/themes/. The initial .pot file is part of the theme’s installation files. There is never any cost for anything available here at www.ads-software.com.

By convention all themes and plugins in the WP repository are initially in English and get translated into various languages by volunteer translators. We always start with English because it’s the most common language known to multi-lingual speakers. There are more people who could translate English to say, Estonian, than there would be from French to Estonian or Portuguese to Estonian.

It’s fine to create site content in French. You don’t need a poly-language plugin if French is to be the only language used by the site. You do need to select French as the site’s language (in General Settings). However your individual login can select English as your preferred language (in your profile settings). Your UI text will then be in English, even though site content will remain in French. Other users will see a French UI unless they too select a different language in their profile.

I’m really sorry, you’re saying that none of the content of the themes is translated? But that’s the essential, surely? The general settings of my subsite are in French – as you can see from the menus: https://nebulous.be/murillo/elementor-618/. But the ASTRA theme is completely English. Though I can see from Filezilla that it’s installed the French language files in the language folders of the root and subsite.

I installed the same starter template as I did for the EN version of the website, thinking by some miracle that it might suddenly turn FR, but no: it’s exactly the same and I see no way of changing it: https://nebuleuse.be/index.php/home-2/

Just to repeat (sorry, I just want to be 100% clear!). I was looking for something where if you installed the theme then it would set up a basic French content and structure (which I would then change) and with French URLs. As it did for the EN ASTRA theme when I installed it: https://nebulous.be/murillo/about-us/ etc. But instead it seems to me that everything has to be translated from scratch including URLs? I have managed to find a FR forum now (https://wpfr.net/support/forum/support-de-wordpress/) which I’ll take a closer look at tomorrow.

Thanks for you help in any case ??

I think we have different concepts of what we think a theme’s translated content is. The phrases translated for a theme are almost exclusively only seen in the back end. Very little, if any of the theme’s phrases are visible on the front end. The search button text perhaps might be the only front end theme phrase. You can see what phrases are translated in the theme’s astra-fr-FR.po language file. It’s a plain text file, you can open it in any text editor. msgid lines are the original English, msgstr lines are the translations.

The theme will not translate your content, virtually everything seen in the front end is yours. In a multisite network, every site’s content is unique. If you create French content in a French sub-site, it’ll appear in French. If you create English content in a French sub-site, it’ll remain in English.

More information:

Multilingual WordPress

Hello (@sbaxt77),

I just wanted to say that I use Astra in French on my blog and I’m developing another site with static pages in French with Astra (admin in French again) at the moment. I think that Astra runs in French on my admin side because I installed WordPress in French.

I manage a different blog for my husband that’s in both French and English in the articles, but I installed WordPress in English for the admin side.

So it seems to depend on your choice of language when installing WordPress.

I have to say that I have no problems writing in either English or French on either site, it really doesn’t seem to make any difference to the front end.

I hope this helps.