Vincent Oberle’s blog
Multilingual blog solution
Loic Le Meur is wondering on his blog how to approach the problem of having two languages to blog in. He’s wondering what would be the best solution: Two separate blogs or mixing posts in both languages.
Why not just leave the choice to the readers? With WordPress it is easy to do. Keep only one blog and mix posts of each language but assign each post to a category corresponding to the language (e.g. a category “English”, a category “French”). WordPress automatically generates an RSS feed per category in addition to the main feed. So instead of proposing only one feed, propose all three.
Additionally it is possible to see only the post of a category. So just add on the blog two links toward each category. Readers who only want to see posts in one language will just watch one category and never be bothered by the others.
WordPress even allows having different designs per category.
blogging, wordpress
June 23rd, 2005 17:45
hi
I read your reply to LLM with great interest, however, not being a specialist I am wondering about one thing :
RSS feed are meant for aggregation : very relevant thus to be able to aggregate a category that corresponds to your mother tongue/choice of tongue. (substituting “horizontal RSS selaction to “vertical” is a novating use).
But before the reader is at the stage of aggregating and feeding his reader, he has to meet a Home Page : what happens then ? Which category is supposed to appear “spontaneously” then ? Does that implies a pre-home page ?
Or maybe I missed smth and you can use RSS “internally”.
But I don’t figure it out. What is your advice ?
June 23rd, 2005 18:12
oops
sorry for the AZERTY errors : not really me. Must have typed fast. Please consider you have read “selection”, “imply”.
hope to read from you soon
another question occurs to me : in your hypothesis, could you create subcategories (thematical, ie vertical) ?
June 27th, 2005 18:04
This is a good remark, how to handle the main page of the blog.
A pre-homepage would be an option, where the user chooses the language.
Another solution is to have as the default homepage the mix of both languages. Or set as default homepage one of the language, offering in the sidebar or header part the option to switch to the other language.
Finally it is also possible to detect from which country the visitor comes and choose the language accordingly (not 100% accurate of course, and would require eg a cookie to save the chosen setting for upcoming visits).
About sub-categories, with Wordpress it is possible to put a post in several categories and create sub-categories. So yes, I think you could subscribe to a RSS feed of only one sub-category (if this was your question).
June 27th, 2005 18:51
Thank you for your kind answer… This topic is interesting, as it leads to a reflexion on ergonomy on blogs. I think the best solution will always be that offering simplicity of use for the author and access for the reader (home page in the langage of country is the most relevant).
November 7th, 2006 22:14
Probably, I am a bit late to “the party” - but for WP bloggers now there is an excellent tool/plugin for multilingual blogging. See more details in my blog