WordPress Internationalization & Localization

WordPress has grown incredibly since its release in 2003. It is now the technology behind sites like the New Yorker, TechCrunch, BBC America and Fortune. According to w3techs, over 59% of web sites whose underlying content management system (CMS) they can detect are now built on the WordPress platform, or over 25% of all web sites around the world. That is up from 18.9% of web sites in early 2014.

Given its global popularity, the WordPress community has commensurately given a great deal of attention to internationalization. For the WordPress core itself, there are 152 language packs available on translate.wordpress.org. Beyond this, the WordPress community provides extensive support for internationalizing the tens of thousands of plugins available. The Meta Handbook has a guide for handling translations in both site themes and plugins. The Plugin Handbook has a whole guide on how to Internationalize Your Plugin, with a large number of basic, escape and date/time functions. The codex is always being improved, and new suggestions are quite welcome.

Beyond the code that drives WordPress is the content. One content localization extension you might want to check out is Transifex Live Integration, which allows you to manage localization and translation across your WordPress (or other CMS) sites by tying your site to the Transifex continuous localization platform. In full disclosure, e2f works closely with Transifex as a leading translation provider. We share a growing number of joint customers.

What is your content management system of choice? If you use WordPress, what are the challenges you face with localization and translation of your content or systems? We’d love to know! Send us your ideas and plans to projects@e2f.com, and let us know how we can help.