In order to be kind to our friends that do not speak the language we have written our plugin in, it is always a good idea to fully localize your WordPress plugin. This means make it “ready for translation”. If you are one of those that is blessed with the fluency of more than one language, then you can also translate it, but for the majority of us, localizing will be enough. Making your plugin ready for translation is actually a pretty simple task, but, unfortunately, has very, very little good documentation on how it is done. So I’d like to take you in depth on the topic and actually demonstrate how it is done.
Photo by elenathewise: http://photodune.net/item/hands-globe/190070
For this tutorial, I’m going to start from the beginning and actually show you how to setup your plugin for translation (this means localizing it). I’m going to do this by translating part of one of my plugins, Full Screen Background Images Pro. To help you out, I’m going to provide basic instructions after the video in text form, but the majority of explanations will take place in the video.
How Translation Works
While it may sound very difficult and time consuming, making a plugin ready for translation (and even translating it) does not take long, nor is it difficult. It works by storing all of your plugin text into a “catalog”, which acts as a reference and has all of the text translations stored in it. When WordPress is set to display in a language other than the default (English), the catalog is used to look up the appropriate translations for each piece of text. The translation is then displayed instead of the original text.
You must be logged in to view the rest of this content. Register or login from the sidebar.
Great tutorial!
You are AWESOME! I love your tutorials and plugins. Can’t wait to see what’s next!
@Jason – Thanks! Keep your eyes open because there’s something pretty cool coming in a few days
plugin or tutorial?
Speaking of tutorials. . .I know you were working on adding an update system to your CodeCanyon plugins. . .did you get one up and running?
That would be an AWESOME tutorial!
@Jason – There are a few new plugins coming really soon. One should be out later today, and several more over the next two weeks.
I did get the update system running. It’s currently active in Easy Content Types and Full Screen Background Images Pro. I do like the idea of doing a tutorial on it, so I probably will next week
That would be so awesome!
Did you end up using this: http://codecanyon.net/item/wordpress-plugin-update/270593
Or did you create something on your own?
No, I used one that was originally built for themes. You can read about it: http://codecanyon.net/forums/thread/a-wordpress-plugin-update-notifier-script/50850
Nice! I’ll check it out.
Thanks!
Great tutorial, thanks for all the developpers not doing it yet. Internationalization should be also a priority when creating a plugin or a theme. You’re giving an oportunity do do it the right way
Yes, it should definitely be a priority. Glad you liked it.
Just started development this year and was a little baffled about how to do this since diving into WP dev. Thanks for the great tutorial. Will be sure to link to it when I get my personal site up and runnning. Nice name btw.
Nice name yourself
Hey Pippin nice video my friend! We are in the process of translating our premium plugins and I have to say your tutorial literally saved me hours of research. Thank you!
Great!