Luckily, WordPress comes with these special characters built-in, which means you will not need any additional plugins to do so. However, it can be confusing to use these characters for the first time.

Today, I will demonstrate how to use language accents in WordPress for both the Gutenberg and classic editor.

Why Use Special Characters?

Special characters serve one purpose, to make your content look more professional. For example, let’s say you were trying to talk about the Nestlé company. If you notice, the last “e” is the special character “é.”

The official name of the company includes this language accent, but if you don’t know how to type accents in WordPress, the best you can do is “Nestle” which is incorrect. Of course, language accents are just one part of the special characters in WordPress.

You can add foreign money symbols like Euros (€) or Pounds (£) as well, which might be necessary for overseas business. A variety of common math symbols are also available to use.

Whenever you use a special character, it should always make your content more accurate.

Enabling the Editor

If you don’t have the toolbar available that displays the character symbols, you can activate it in WordPress.

Simply click the “Toggle Toolbar” button.

It’s also important to note that if you have TinyMCE Advanced installed, the special character button should be activated by default. If not, you can quickly add it using TinyMCE Advanced’s settings.

Gutenberg Method

Gutenberg is the default editor of WordPress. Unfortunately, the editor does not put this in an obvious spot. You might expect a special character’s icon to have a shortcut in the paragraph block, but it does not.

Instead, you need to add a Classic block. To do so, click on the “+” button and select the classic block.

This is essentially the classic editor in block form. Click on the special characters tool.

You will now see a full list of built-in special characters that you can select by clicking on.

Of course, there is a second way to add special characters. If you are comfortable writing in HTML, you can easily a language accent in WordPress.

Add an HTML block in Gutenberg. With HTML, you can add a lot of symbols into your content. Here is a helpful chart that you can use as a reference.

For example, a paragraph in this block would look like this:[ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ]<p>Today the Nestlé company is going green.</p>[/ht_message]

This will add the “é” character.

Classic Method

If you have chosen to disable Gutenberg, you will be using the Classic editor. Unlike Gutenberg, it is very easy to find special characters. The classic editor is actually two editors in one. It contains both the visual and the text editor.

Let’s start with the visual editor. If you looked at the Gutenberg method listed above, you will recognize that the classic block is actually just the visual editor in a block form. Thus, it is exactly the same method, but much more obvious.

Inside the classic editor, click on the Special Character tool.

Just like Gutenberg, simply click on the special character you want to use and it will be inserted into your page or post.

Alternatively, you can use the Text editor. The text editor allows you to type in HTML. This will allow you to type the HTML of the special characters using this chart.

Congratulations. You have successfully added language accents to your posts and pages in WordPress.

Only Use Them When Necessary

The entire point of special characters is to improve the quality of your writing. Thus, it is important to only use special characters when necessary. Overusing them will quickly diminish their impact and in many cases be unnecessary.

However, when they are used correctly, they are instantly recognizable.

Which special characters do you use the most? Do you think there should be a special character shortcut in a Gutenberg paragraph block?

The post How to Use Language Accents in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Now, WordPress does allow you to install and setup WordPress in other languages. For instance, if you are building a multilingual website and want it to be in Spanish, you would simply assign that language to the install and you are good to go.

But what if you want site visitors to be able to translate your WordPress website into the language of their choice? Luckily, there is a great plugin option to achieve WordPress website translation.

Let’s take a look at how to quickly and easily give users the ability to translate a WordPress website.

Why Translate a WordPress Website?

There are a number of reasons you may want to translate a WordPress website. Let’s just jump to the most important reason. You are a business owner and your audience doesn’t always share the same linguistics.

This is reason enough for WordPress website translation to be made available. Opening up your website to a broader audience can only help to boost sales and overall popularity of your brand.

There are a lot of great WordPress translation plugin options available. However, let’s take a look at Gtranslate and how to use it.

The GTranslate Plugin

Today we are going to translate a WordPress website by installing the Translate WordPress with GTranslate plugin. The GTranslate plugin uses the Google Translate automatic service and harnesses the power of that to make any WordPress site multilingual.

The plugin allows your website to be translated into 103 different languages, which covers around 99% of all Internet users. There is also a paid version with SEO options and other add-ons, but today we are going to go over the setup of the free version of the plugin.

The GTranslate plugin is used by over half a million websites around the world and is the best free plugin available for WordPress website translation. The plugin offers a ton of available options and will enable you to produce a website that is easy to understand by many.

Translate a WordPress Website

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Translate WordPress with GTranslate plugin.

Once the plugin has been installed and activated, click on Settings > GTranslate and you will be taken to the main setting’s page for the plugin.

Here you will find an assortment of useful setup options for the GTranslate plugin. These will include a list of options for layout, languages, plugin code and a shortcode.

Let’s take a look at some options.

The top part of the setting’s page allows you to pick a number of different settings for the widget including:

• Widget Look
• Translate From Language
• Analytics Options
• Browser Options
• Show In Menu Options
• Show Native Language Names

As you play around with the options for the widget, you will be able to see a live preview of what the widget looks like located on the right side of the page.

If you scroll down some, you will see all the flag language checkboxes. Simply check the boxes of the languages you want to enable for translation and they will be automatically added into the widget in the style you have chosen.

Note: You can also drag and drop the languages to reorder them the way you want. Otherwise, they will be displayed alphabetically by default.

Directly below the flag checkbox area, you will see a couple of options for widget code and the GTranslate shortcode option. It should be noted that the use of the widget code is for more advanced users only.

Instead, use the GTranslate shortcode in post or pages to put it where you want. Otherwise, you have the actual widget option available and also the option of showing the translation menu within one of your navigation menus.

GTranslate also has a very unique option not available in most plugins. They have a built-in live messaging system that you can use to get help or ask questions when needed.

Place the GTranslate Plugin On Your Site

To place the GTranslate widget in any area on your WordPress website click on Appearance > Widgets and that will take you to the widgets page in the WordPress admin dashboard.

Drag and drop the GTranslate widget into any sidebar area that you want to display it on your website.

Now go to the front end live version of your site to see the GTranslate widget in action.

As stated above, you also have the option to show it in a navigation menu or to show a floating version of the widget in different locations on screen.

Finally, you can also show the WordPress website translation plugin in any post or page by using the “[gtranslate]” shortcode.

Paid Version of GTranslate Plugin

If you are interested in some extra options, including a more SEO friendly version of this plugin, there is a paid tool. Some of the paid version advantages include:

• Search engine indexing
• Search engine friendly (SEF) URLs
• Human level neural translations
• Edit translations manually
• Metadata translation (keywords, page description, etc…)
• URL/slug translation
• Language hosting (custom domain like example.fr, example.es)
• Seamless updates
• Increased international traffic and AdSense revenue
• Works in China
• Priority Live Chat support

You can access the paid version directly from within the free installed version of GTranslate.

I hope this article has shown you how easy it is to translate a WordPress website. Do this to gain visitors and to allow people who are multilingual to enjoy your site.

Have you tried the GTranslate plugin before? Do you use another plugin to translate your WordPress website?

The post How to Translate a WordPress Website appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Actually, this isn’t all that difficult to accomplish. In fact, a simple plugin can make changing languages in the admin screen quick and simple.

This is a bit different than using something like Google Translate to convert the frontend of the website. While that benefits visitors, I’m looking more into the admin screen of WordPress.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to set English for admins in WordPress for multilingual websites.

Method 1: Using Simple Admin Language Change

First, let’s take a look at the Simple Admin Language Change plugin. It’s a very easy tool that simply offers a way to switch languages in the backend of your website.

Install and activate, “Simple Admin Language Change.”

Go to “Settings” from the left admin panel in WordPress.

Scroll to the bottom of the settings screen. Using the drop-down, select the “Admin Language” of the website.

Click, “Save Changes” at the bottom to keep the admin language change.

This will set the WordPress user language for admins as English, or whichever you prefer.

NOTE: According to the developer, this plugin conflicts with the SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle tool. This is an expansion of the Page Builder from SiteOrigin. The issue is that it prevents javascript popups on the Widgets page.

However, you may still get the plugin to work if you do not use those features.

Method 2: Using Admin Language Per User

The next plugin I want to show you is Admin Language Per User. This one is useful in a multi-user dynamic when those who log in speak different languages. For instance, you can set yours to English while an author can select a different language.

If people from around the globe contribute to your website, this WordPress language plugin can save on time and frustration.

Install and activate, “Admin Language Per User.”

The plugin adds a new feature to the profile of every user in WordPress. This means you can set the admin language per user instead of the entire backend.

You have a couple of ways to change the language. You can go into each account yourself and make the changes, or users can do so in their own profile.

For this example, I’m going to change the settings of a user on my test site.

Go to the “Users” tool in WordPress.

Click into any account you have on the site.

Scroll down until you come across the “Site Language” portion of the profile.

Use the drop-down list to change the language of the user. As you can see, I only have English as an option. However, if you’re running a multilingual site, you should see your installed languages available.

Click the “Update Profile” button on the bottom.

One of the reasons I like this particular plugin above the other is that every user can set his or her preference. And if you have a lot of people helping you build a magnificent multilingual site, it streamlines everyone’s experience.

Make it Easier on Yourself and Others

Setting English for admins in WordPress keeps the content focused while making the backend easier to manage. Whether you target marketing to one foreign country or several, it helps to keep site maintenance easier for you to understand.

What languages do you have associated with your website? What’s your favorite language plugin for WordPress?

The post How to Set English for Admins on a Multilingual Site in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

If you do want better translation accuracy for things like memberships, contracts, and service offers, you should really consider hiring a translator and using a multilingual plugin.

Using a rough translation like Google Translate is not ideal, especially for monetary transactions. Today, I will demonstrate how to add Google Translate to your WordPress website using the Google Language Translator plugin.

Why Set Up Google Translate in WordPress

Setting up Google Translate is very beneficial when your website is being accessed in other areas of the world. This can help increase the web traffic of your pages by making them accessible in multiple countries.

For example, it’s very common to set up a website that is only in English and that is not a bad thing. English is normally considered as a second language in many countries around the world and this is especially true for countries like India and China.

These two countries, in particular, have some of the largest populations in the world. And it should be a no-brainer to try and get your website working wherever there are people. Google Translate can help fill the void when someone does not understand a particular word or sentence structure. Many websites use Google Translate and so should you.

Today, I will demonstrate how to add Google Translate to your WordPress website using a Google language translator plugin. This plugin is very popular with over 100,000 active installs and is quite easy to use.

The process is very simple and just involves you selecting which language your website is in and which language you want it to be translated into. You can then place the translate option anywhere using a widget.

Let’s take a look at the plugin real quick and see what it has to offer.

Translate WordPress – Google Language Translator

Translate WordPress – Google Language Translator is a plugin that can help you set up Google Translate in WordPress. Simple as that. The plugin is part of the GTranslate family, which is a leading website translation services provider since 2008. It powers more than 500.000 multilingual websites worldwide.

The plugin is powerful and lightweight, so it won’t slow your website down. It is pretty straightforward and comes with a ton of translation features. These include:

• Free Google Automatic Machine Translation
• Suggest Better Translation Option
• Hide Google Top Frame
• Translates Site on the Fly
• Post and Page Translation
• Category and Tag Translation
• Menu and Widget Translation
• Themes and Plugin Translation
• Right to Left Language Support
• Floating Language Selector
• Language Bar with Flags
• WooCommerce Translation

As you can see, everything you need for site translation is right here built in this easy to install and use plugin. Let’s get it going together.

How to Set Up Google Translate in WordPress

Step 1: Install and Activate the Plugin

Start by clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for Google Language Translator in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Scroll down until you find the Google Language Translator plugin and click the “Install Now” button and activate the plugin for use.

Step 2: Access the Settings Page for the Plugin

On the left-hand admin panel click on Settings and select the Google Language Translator option. This will pull up the main settings page.

Step 3: Configure the Plugin Settings

The first thing you need to check is the box to activate the plugin, but it should be active by default. You must also select the current language of your website. The plugin should have it selected, but just in case make sure you have the correct one. In my case, it is in English.

Scroll down to the Layout Settings section. You have two main options to choose from. The first is to have it be translated from the original language, English, into any language or you can choose to specify the language.

By default, it will translate to all languages, but you can also choose specific languages you want it to be translated into as well. You should also select to show the flags for every language you choose.

Scroll down to the Floating Widget Settings section. Check the box to allow it to translate.

Click on the “Save Changes” button once you have changed all of the appropriate settings.

Step 4: Go to the Widgets Page

On the left-hand admin panel, click on Appearance and select the Widgets option. The widgets section of WordPress will allow you to customize your website’s sidebars and many other parts. This can give your website a unique look from other websites using the same theme.

Step 5: Add the Google Translate Plugin to a Widget Area

Find the Google Language Translator widget. Drag it where you would like to place it. Click on the “Save” button to add the widget to your website.

Congratulations, you can now view the translate button on your website. A visitor just needs to click on it and pick the flag for their language and the page will be translated.

Keep in mind the translation will not be perfect, but unless you are a native speaker, you will need to hire a translator if you want that kind of accuracy.

Share Your Website With the World

Most people know that “www” stands for World Wide Web and not everyone speaks the same language. In fact, the world has thousands of languages and it is important to be accessible to as many people as possible.

For example, the United States has a population of approximately 328.2 million people, while the world has a population of approximately 7.6 billion, and growing by the year.

It doesn’t take a mathematician to realize a website will do better if the entire world can use it and this requires people to be able to read what is on it. Of course, you may not have a way to accept payments from various places around the world so the decision is up to you, but the bigger the audience, the larger your web traffic will be.

Conclusion

it isn’t difficult to set up Google Translate if you have a solid plugin and an understanding of where to start. The steps above should allow you to easily set up the plugin. From there, you give your site users the ability to translate your website into multiple languages if needed.

Remember, Google Translate will not be perfect. These plugins can’t detect different dialects or different versions of a language. However, it will translate very well for someone looking at it. Don’t be afraid to use it, as it gives your site functionality that many around the world will be able to enjoy when visiting.

Did you choose all languages or a specific language to translate your website into? If you picked a specific language, why did you not pick all languages?

The post How to Set Up Google Translate in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

One of the best parts of WordPress is how it offers a great deal of customization. From a single platform, you can incorporate a variety of languages without rebuilding the same site over and over again. In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how that is done.

Why offer Multilingual Support on Your Site?

The Internet spans the entire globe. This is why it’s referred to as the “world wide web.” Visitors across the planet could be looking at your material right now. Unfortunately, you will miss an opportunity to engage these users if they can’t understand the content.

An eCommerce site that ships worldwide is a great example of needing multilingual support. Instead of focusing on a single society for sales, engaging audiences from other countries will expand business practices. As a result, the site has potential to increase sales depending on the location.

Even a blogger hosting a personal website could benefit from offering additional languages. As many blog owners rely on ad revenues and affiliate marketing platforms for income, engaging a wider audience equals a greater opportunity to make money.

Using Automatic Google Language Translator for Your Website

The fastest way to add multilingual support for your WordPress website is to use Google Language Translator. This is a quick and easy plugin that incorporates Google’s translation matrix into your website.

To use Google Language Translator:

Go to the plugins area of your WordPress dashboard and add a new plugin.

Search for “Google Language Translator.”

Install and activate the plugin.

Go to “Settings” in the WordPress admin panel and click the link labeled, “Google Language Translator.”

This plugin comes with a wide range of settings to choose from. You can add individual flags to your site to indicate translation or use Google’s drop down window. You can also modify the flag size, show the Google Toolbar, branding and even Google Analytics tracking for the translation.

NOTE: This plugin also comes with shortcodes that can be added to any post or page on your website.

Once you’ve made your selections, click the “Save Changes” button on the bottom.

Go to the appearance area of WordPress and click the link for, “Widgets.”

Find the Google Language Translator widget and drag it to your sidebar. You can change the title if you wish and then click the save button.

That’s all there is to it. Now, your entire website will use Google’s translator to convert the text.

Using Polylang to Manually Add WordPress Multilingual Functionality

Some people would rather have control over what is being translated rather than using an automated system. This can help remove confusion as sometimes words don’t get translated perfectly through software or automatic plugins.

For this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to add the Polylang plugin to your website. We’re using this plugin because of how many optional plugins can integrate with the system. For example, you can use a secondary plugin to connect Polylang to WooCommerce.

To use Polylang:

Search, install and activate the “Polylang” plugin.

NOTE: There will be a number of add-on plugins for Polylang. Make sure you select the one by Chouby.

Installing Polylang will add a new control within “Settings” of WordPress labeled, “Languages.” Click into this control.

The first tab you’ll notice is “Languages.” Using the drop down list, choose a language you wish to add to the website. For this example, we’re going to select “Español – es_ES.”

Full name: This will display the full name of the language selected. However, you can change this to anything you wish.

Locale: The locale will also automatically set when you choose a language. As you can have various dialects, you need to make sure you’re providing the correct translation for your target audience.

Language code: This is another option that will set automatically. Note the “es” represents the language as Español, ie. Spanish.

Choose the text direction. Most interpretations read from left to right. However, you can choose to set this to “right to left” in the event of some languages.

Flag: Notice the flag will set to the correct nation as well. This is the universal way to switch languages on the Internet and plays into how the widget performs, which we will cover in a moment.

Order: Set the order in which the language appears. Starting from “0,” you can arrange languages to appear in any order. For now, we’re going to leave it as the default.

Click the “Add new language” button on the bottom left.

Use the drop down for choosing a new language and select “English – en_US.”

Click the “Add new language button again. Now, the website supports both Argentinian Spanish and American English.

In the list of supported languages on the right, set the default language of the website by clicking its star icon.

You’ll notice an error message on the top of the Language settings page informing you there are posts, pages, categories and tags without a language assigned. Click the link in this message stating, “You can set them all to the default language.” This will save you a lot of time, especially if you have a lot of content on the website.

In the “Strings translations” tab, you’ll see how various parts of your website will translate into the selected language, in this case it’s Español. These strings can be changed at any time, but we’re going to leave them be for now.

Next, click on the “Settings” tab in Polylang. From here, you can control how the website behaves when a visitor arrives.

URL Modifications: Polylang allows users to change how the URLs are displayed for different languages. By default, URLs are set to use pretty permalinks while removing the language code. Click the radio button for, “The language is set from content.” This prevents Polylang from making changes to the URL addresses of your posts and pages.

NOTE: Changing how the URLs are set up could lead to breaking links later should the plugin be removed.

Detect browser language: This is self-explanatory. When someone visits the website, Polylang will detect what to display based on the preferences of the user’s browser. This is activated by default, so we’ll leave the setting as is.

Media: This plugin supports translating certain types of media as well. To get the full experience, leave this activated.

Synchronization: This option synchronizes the values between posts and pages with meta data content. For now, we’ll leave these blank. However, you may want to use them later on depending on your objectives.

Tools: Checking the box in the tools setting allows WordPress to remove all Polylang data when deleting the plugin from the website. Otherwise, WordPress will store that information permanently. This data may be useful should you decide to install Polylang again at a later date.

Click the “Save Changes” button when you’re done making your selections, if any.

Go to the appearance area of the WordPress dashboard and click the link for, “Widgets.”

Scroll down until you see the “Language Switcher” widget. Drag and drop it into the sidebar of your website. This gives visitors a way to change the language manually. This widget has a few settings you can change depending on how you want it to appear. For instance, you can check the box to display the switcher as a drop down menu.

Click the “Save” button on the widget.

NOTE: This plugin does not translate your content automatically. You will need to create new pages of each post and page with the corresponding language. This can be easily done as Polylang will show when a post or page needs a translated counterpart using a check mark or a plus sign in the “Posts” or “Pages” screen of WordPress.

Whether you want an automatic translation of the site or would rather do the conversion manually, it’s relatively easy for WordPress to be multilingual. This can save time creating completely separate sites for different languages while allowing you to engage an audience from all over the world.

What kinds of additions do you implement to connect with your audience? Do you find people from other countries visiting your content?

The post How to Quickly Build a WordPress Multilingual Website appeared first on GreenGeeks.