My manual 📖

Seriously? Yes, it’s true. You must install me first so I can start to do my thing. Go to the download page to get my most recent version.

Let’s go and download wpMula

Well done, first you have downloaded the plugin files in a zip. Now it’s time to extract the files and put them in the right place. There are multiple ways of doing this.

1. Upload the zip of the plugin to your WordPress site.

You can do this under ‘Plugins’ and then go to ‘Add new plugin’. At the top of the screen you will see a button ‘Upload plugin’. After you click on this button you will see the screen below.

You can find the ‘Add New Plugin’ page under ‘Plugins’ in your dashboard (or network dashboard).

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https://example.com/wp-admin/plugin-install.php
https://example.com/wp-admin/network/plugin-install.php

2. Use FTP(S) or SFTP

First unzip the plugin files to a directory. Then connect to your site with a FTP client. Navigate to the plugins folder in your site trough the FTP client.  Then drag the ‘wpmula’ folder to the plugins folder. Usally you will find the plugins folder under “/wp-content/plugins/” inside your WordPress installation.

Go to the plugins page of your site, under ‘Plugins’ in your WordPress dashboard. If you already have a multisite, its best to network activate wpMula under the network settings. In the list of plugins I (wpMula) should be visible, like this:

Click on “Activate” and I am activated in your site.

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https://example.com/wp-admin/plugins.php
https://ecample.com/wp-admin/network/plugins.php

Before you can use my functions you need to activate your license. The following notice will appear in your screen, click on the ‘Activate license’ button to go to the correct page. There will be a form to fill in your license informatie. You can also find this page through the admin menu under ‘wpMula’.

Enter your information here: Email address, license code and product.

If your license information is correct then I will be activated in your site 🙂

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https://example.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=wa-wpmula

If your site is not already a multisite, we need to install it. The multisite function is a core WordPress function, so it is very stable. I need it to make your site multilingual. There are two ways of installing the Multisite:

1. Automatic, make your site writable and I’ll take care of it for you.

If you see the following button and text I can install it for you. Just click ‘Setup multisite and login again’ and your site will become a multisite. After the installation you will be required to login again. This is normal, don’t be scared 🙂

2. Install it manually

Click on the same button but now you have to follow the WordPress steps. This is a little bit more complex, but if you know what you are doing you should be okay. Basic steps are:

• Deactivate all the plugins in your site
• Go to ‘Tools’ and then ‘Network setup’
• Install the multisite and set the correct values in your ‘.htaccess’ and ‘wp-config.php’
• Login again
• Reactivate all the plugins in your site

Here is a great guide to install a WordPress multisite.

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https://example.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=wa-wpmula

After this proces your site should be a multisite. To check this you should see ‘My sites’ in the top left screen of your WordPress dashboard.

Under the ‘wpMula’ menu in your site there should be more menu items like ‘Site management’ and ‘Add translation’.

The next logical step is to install the new languages in WordPress you need for your site. There are two ways to do this:

1. Through my main settings (wpMula)

Click on the wpMula menu item in your admin bar on the left. Then choose a language and click on update, it’s that easy 🙂

2. When you add a new translation to your site

When you add a new translation to your site, you can also choose any (new) language. In the next chapter I will explain how you can add a new translation to your WordPress site.

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https://example.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=wa-wpmula

To add a new translation to your site you can go to ‘Add translation’ under ‘wpMula’ in your WordPress admin menu.

https://example.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=add-translations

First determine the URL of the translation you like to add to your site. Usually you choose the prefix of the country/language. For example see the list below for some languages.

1. German
This will be ‘de’ : example.com/de

2. French
This will be ‘fr’ : example.com/fr

3. Spanisch
This will be ‘es’ : example.com/es

4. English
This will be ‘en’ : example.nl/en

5. Dutch
This will be ‘nl’ : example.com/nl

The list above is the logical way to do it. But if you want to be creative and do something else, go your own way 🙂

The language you choose here will be used for the front-end of the site. This can be a different language then the language you choose on the back-end. Your visitors will see the site in their language, but you can view the back-end in your own language.

Choose your admin language in the new site under ‘Settings’ and then ‘General’.

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https://example.com/wp-admin/options-general.php

What is the name of your site in the new lanuage? Often the name of your site will not change in a language, because it’s the name of your company. In this case you can enter the same name for te new language.

In many cases you want to translate your site in another language without starting from scratch. This is exactly why this option is available, you can create any duplicate of the sites in the multisite. This means you will get an exact copy that you only have to translate in content. Everything else will be available, like: posts, pages, categories, submissions, media etc.

Before you do this, it is always wise to create a complete backup of your site (files and database). Although all my functions are thoroughly tested (over and over again) there is always the possibility that something can go wrong.

After creating a backup you can click on ‘Add new translation’. After you click on this, pending on the size of the source site, it will take a while to create a new translation.

In a few words: you connect the content from one site to the other. This works the same for all content types, for example: posts, pages and categories. If you create a duplicate of a site everything will auto connected. So all existing content will be linked to each other automatically. For new content you need to do this yourself 🙂

1. This is how the translation box looks like for a post in the classic editor of WordPress.

2. This is how it looks for a post in the Gutenberg editor of WordPress.

3. This is how the translation box looks for a term (for example a category or post tag).

Let’s try it out! The steps are simple, type in the title/name you want to connect in the search field. Usually you will search on the title/name of the counterpart in the other language. For example, to find the ‘Example page’ you type ‘ex’.

Under the search field you will see results matchting with ‘ex’. Now you want to select the ‘Example page’ to connect to this page, click on the button ‘Example page’. It is good to know that the search results all filtered on content type. So if you search while editing a page, you will only see pages in de search results.

Now you can click on ‘Update’ to update the page and they will be connected.

To disconnect an object (page, post or category) simply click on the ‘Disconnect’ link in the translation box. After this you can click on ‘Update’ and the objects will nog longer be related to each other. After you update the object the translation box will be clean, like this:

To make translating and duplicating content easy, you can click on ‘Copy to ..’ link. After this you will be redirected to the other language with an exact duplicate of the object (page, post or category). It will also duplicate your media, so this will be available in the other translation. This will save you tons of work 🙂

There are many options available to configure the language switch. For example you can display a flag for another language or just use text label. It is also an option to display the languages in a dropdown. See the wpMula demo as an example.

See the list below for all available options.

– format
flags : display links with an image of the flag (instead of ‘en’)
title : show a full language name (‘English’ in stead of ‘en’)
flag-title : display an image flag and a full language name
title-flag : display a full language name and an image flag

– display
default : display alle languages
dropdown : display current language and the rest in a dropdown

– direction
default : margin to the right
left : margin to the left
center : align items center
vertical : show items in a vertical direction

– current
default : hide
true : display current language

– wrapper
default : div
ul : ul

– style
Here you can put your custom css lines

– styles_container_padding
15px

– styles_item_padding
15px

– styles_dropdown_bg
#fff

– styles_dropdown_container_padding
0px

– styles_dropdown_item_padding
5px 15px

– styles_flags
height: 20px; width: auto;

– class
Custom class
– classitem
Custom item class

– classlink
Custom link class

– divider
A divider between languages, for example “|”

The most basic way to add a language switch is with a shortcode. This will work in all WordPress sites, because shortcodes are a WordPress core function. The shortcode of wpMula works in the default manner. You can use all options as descriped in the previous article as option=”value”. The default shortcode is:

So you add the options like this:

Using this format the language switch will be displayed as a flag.

Can you pour me some coffee? I am still working on this. Coming soon 🙂

Can you pour me some coffee? I am still working on this. Coming soon 🙂