The plugin I write about today is one of the most important ones for my blog. I could live without many of the around 18 plugins I have on this blog. But as this blog is presented to you in two languages, I need a plugin to connect the two blogs in the best way possible. And for me personally, that best way is using a multisite.
What does MultilingualPress do?
It utilizes the WordPress multisite feature to allow websites (even multiple ones) in more than one language. In my case, the main site of my multisite is the English one, the second site is the German one. MultilingualPress then lets me connect any content (posts, pages, taxonomies, custom post types, custom taxonomies) with each other. If you have a larger multisite, you can even connect more than two sites with each other or you create “multiple sets” of websites that have different languages. It is really very flexible.
When I write new blog posts, I usually write them in English first, even though my native language is German – it helps me to train my English writing skills. After I’ve finished a blog post, I let MultilingualPress create a connected German blog post in draft. With the release of version 5.0, MultilingualPress now offers automatic translations. You can either use DeepL, Amazon Translate or the OpenAI API. The later two only offer premium versions, that’s why I use DeepL. They give you a free tier with 500,000 characters per month, with is plenty. So far in December, my first 11 advent calendar blog posts only used 34,536 characters, so I’m far from every reaching that free limit. The only things that is not available in the free DeepL version is “informal German”, which I use for my German blog posts. But since I turn the “tone” of my German blog posts into what I would write naturally, I change lots of text anyway. It still saves me a lot of time. I do use the Block Editor for my posts, and MultilingualPress handles the translation of blocks perfectly. The only thing that “breaks”, are code blocks, that don’t come back correctly from DeepL.
You can even have MultilingualPress translate comments. I have not yet tested this feature – and I need to clean up or move some comments into the correct language before that – but I will try this feature as well. I might also blog about the process, but that has to wait for next year.
Why do I use MultilingualPress?
In the early (bilingual) days of my blog, I was using qTranslate. But when MultilingualPress came around more than 13 years ago, I’ve migrated. I see a lot of benefits in using a multisite for multilingual pages. Too many to name them in this blog post. But if you’ve every tried to create a larger multilingual website with single site plugin solutions like WPML or Polylang, you probably know about all the issues you run into.
In my blog post two days ago about the Individual Multisite Author plugin, I’ve mentioned that I don’t actually need that plugin anymore. That’s because MultilingualPress also offers a module to translate user information. But I also haven’t tested this module, yet.
Conclusion
If you want a multilingual website where you can really translate every single bit, even plugin and theme settings, then using a multisite is probably the best approach. MultilingualPress does not offer a free version, but it’s worth every penny. OK, I have to admit, that I don’t pay for it, as I now work for the agency, that develops it. But I have used it more than 10 years prior to joining them.