Something that is often overlooked in the multi language build process are multi language error messages.

If there is a problem with your site the vast majority of sites report issues in their base language, but how does this convey the issue to your site visitor that reads a different language?

What Is The Problem?

The problem is,  there is a problem and you need to convey this to your visitors in their own language.

If you throw up a random error message in a language someone does not understand how can they possibly know what to do.  If you are running a commercial website there is a very real chance you will lose that visitor as a potential customer/client forever.

You only get one chance to make an impression. Take an hour to ensure your error messages are in all the languages you support.

Example

A good example is the 404 page not found message.  Websites are fluid things, pages are added and deleted frequently.  Links get broken and people are sent to pages that do not exist.

Any website worth it’s salt will throw a 404 page not found message.  Here are mine in English and French.

• https://dev.neilmatthews.com/pagedoesnoexist
• https://dev.neilmatthews.com/fr/pagedoesnoexist

I’ve coded my site up to recognise the language a visitor is using and show error messages in that language.

How I Solve This Problem

I solve this problem on my clients sites using my old friend the WPML plugin.  For those not up to speed with WPML this is a comprehensive multi language solution, but one of it’s functions is called string translation. We can use this to translate error messages.

If your theme is coded correctly, string translation allows you to search for specific text strings such as “Error 404 – Page not found!” and add a translation, then when that string is displayed it checks for the language and shows the appropriate translation.

Super simple IF your theme is coded correctly.

If you theme is not coded correctly to output strings with a context, this will not work and some re-coding of the theme is required.

If you check your themes 404 file and see:

echo “Error 404 – Page not found!”;  this will not work.

But if you see:

_e(“Error 404 – Page not found!” ,”webpolyglot”); this will work, we are outputting the string but instead of echoing the string directly we are sending the string through the translate() function.

Error Messages You Need To Think About

Here is a list of things you should be thinking about:

• 404 file not found
• Error messages on any contact forms, submission okay and submission not okay
• Login errors
• Search results returning no results

Wrap Up

If you need help making sure all your error and customer facing messages are translated why not get a no obligation quote.

Photo Credit: rileyroxx via Compfight cc

My team and I manage many WordPress sites on a day-to-day basis because of our maintenance service, and I have tested most of the tools out there to help speed up the process.

In this post I want to show you how to manage multiple WordPress sites and  what to look for in a site management tool.  I’ll also let you know which one I selected.

Tools I Have Tried

I’ve had a go at them all, we have given a test drive to:

• Managewp
• InfiniteWP
• WPRemote

What Functions I Look For

These were my criteria when selecting my tool:

Automatic Backups – I want daily database backups and weekly full backups that send the files offsite to a cloud backup location like Dropbox or Google drive.

One Click Plugin Updates – I want to be able to quickly update plugins across all sites from a central console.

One Click WordPress Updates – and the same with WordPress updates.

Security monitoring – I want to monitor the sites for security and potential hack attacks.

Uptime Monitoring – I want to know when the sites are down so I can pro actively fix them.

Database Optimisation – I want to keep my clients databases optimised and running quickly.

Reporting – I want a tool to keep my clients up to date with the updates I’ve done on their sites.

What We Use

We opted for Managewp over the other two, it’s more expensive than InfinteWP but at the time of testing the backups were far more reliable.  They are both great tools that do the same thing, but reliable backups are a must.

I remember as an eager young techie, my boss said to me “You are only as good as your last backup”. That stuck and the more robust backup of managewp won the day.

WPRemote didn’t get much of a look in to be honest, their pricing structure ruled them out almost immediately.

Wrap Up

I think if you have five or more websites to manage then Managewp is an excellent tool for you, or you could outsource the maintenance of your site to us 🙂

Photo Credit: Gabriel Rojas Hruska via Compfight cc

Most of the time I will tell you to create a multi language website to help get your message over as effectively as possible, but sometimes there are legal requirements to make your site available in more than one language.

Consult A Lawyer Yaddah Yaddah Yaddah

I cannot give legal advice for your locale so please consult a qualified member of the legal profession to see if you are legally obliged to translate your website.

As a rule of thumb, if your country or province has a a large bilingual population, there is probably a need to translate your site.

Case Study

Here is a case study of a website I’ve worked on where there is a legal obligation to present content in multiple languages.

UK Government Websites In Welsh

The first multi language website I worked on was one for the government of the United Kingdom.

I was working for the National Health Service and one of the services offered is a reciprocal arrangement with other European countries for health services.  Long story short you need to apply for a card to take abroad with you so the government will pay for your medical bills if you fall ill or have an accident.

A small minority of people in the UK speak Welsh ( approx 3 million of the 65 million+ inhabitants of this small island I live on). This is a tiny minority and the vast majority of those 3 million Welsh speakers are  bilingual anyway.

We went to a huge amount of effort ( the tools were not available then, this was about ten years ago) to translate the site so we could keep within the legal requirement for a UK government site.

The bilingual nature of these websites was set into law to force agencies to provide information and electronic services to Welsh speakers.

Put yourself in the shoes of the Welsh speaker, they should be able to have information from THEIR government in THEIR native language, but many of the agencies exist outside of Wales, and without legislation could I suggest that the Welsh population would be forgotten?  I think they would by English centric parts of the government.

Wrap Up

It may feel like the bureaucrats are forcing you to translate for no good reason, but the rules are in place because there is a large enough section of the population to make  this important enough to create the law.

Does your country or province require multi language websites? Let me know more details in the comments below I’m really interested which areas are trying to preserve minority languages over homogenising majority languages.

Further reading

Canadian Site Owners Legal Requirements

Oh the irony a consultation document about Welsh speakers and I cannot find the Welsh version.

Photo Credit: SalFalko via Compfight cc

It’s a very over used term, but the money is in the list, but how do you do multi language email marketing?

How can you get the Dollars, Euros, Pounds or Yen from your list when the people on it are using multiple languages.

The Sign Up Form

The first port of call is the signup form.  Depending upon which provider you use signup forms are a little different. Aweber for example, asks you to embed a script for the form that is designed in their system and cannot be translated, whereas Mailchimp allows you to embed an HTML which can be edited per language.

Either way what I suggest is you create multiple signup forms in the appropriate language then show them in your sidebar or other areas of your site based upon chosen language.

Controlling content in your sidebar is a video post all of it’s own, I’ll create that soon, but using a plugin called widget logic we can set sidebar widgets and signup forms based on language, see this document while you are waiting for my video post:

http://wpml.org/2011/03/howto-display-different-widgets-per-language/

Popups

Following up from sign up, we have the ubiquitous popup.  Love them of hate them, they do help to get people onto your mailing list.  Does your popup provider allow you to show a particular popup based upon location?

I did some research on this and it looks like only Pippity has the tools to check for URL strings and popup dependant upon language,  Using their power filters functionality we could check for a language string in a URL e.g. /fr/ and show a popup based on that.

http://pippity.com/how-to-get-help-in-pippity#/how-to-filter-your-popups

We would create multiple popups in different languages and show them based on language strings.

The Lead Magnet

The lead magnet is that little carrot at the end of a stick to make people join your list.

It could be an eb0ok, video series, email course, the list goes on.  Have you made a promise in language A only to deliver a lead magnet that they cannot read or understand in language b?

Perhaps you could offer multiple downloads or control the lead magnet download based upon the popup or sign-up form you show above.

The Messages

The real problem with email marketing across languages are the email messages you send out to your list.  How are you going to ensure people get your marketing messages in the language they selected?

There are two solutions to this problem, you can segment a single list into language or you can create multiple lists one per language.

Segmentation

Segmenting your email list is when you divide your list as a whole into groups of email addresses that are interested in different things.  One way to segment is via language. Segmenting is like adding a tag to each of your email signups to put them into a group, you can then send out email messages to these groups.

Most email providers like Aweber or Mailchimp allow you to embed hidden fields in the signup forms which allow us to segment people at signup, one of these fields could be language.

Once segmented you can create multiple emails for that list and end the French version to the French segment, German to the Deutsch segment etc.

The downside of segmentation is that many features such as initial emails, redirect pages etc are limited to one setting per list,  which makes me think it’s better to run …

Multiple Lists

A better way to segment your email subscribers is with multiple lists.

Instead of one big list, have multiple smaller but dedicated lists per language.  This ensures all autoresponders, welcome emails, redirect pages and email templates are in the correct language.

You can control how people join lists from the signup form,  If you display a different signup form that links to dedicated language lists you can be sure that someone from language X gets their content and responses in that language.

Often Forgotten

Each email list has a number of forgotten areas that may need a revisit if you go multi language.

• The auto responder sequence you set-up years ago,  what language is it in?
• The unsubscribe links at the bottom of your emails is it perfectly clear in every language you support how to get off your list?
• Once people join your list, they are often redirected to a page on your website, is this translated, will people know what to expect when they have joined, do they know they need to click the double opt in link?

I highlighted the importance of testing in my recent post Importance Of Testing Across Languages, it couldn’t be more true with your email lists, join each list or segment, test the emails and responses you get at each step, stay on your lists so you can test what is being sent out over time.

End Note

The money is in the list, but you need to know how to speak to your list members using their desired language?

Photo Credit: idogcow via Compfight cc

How To Verify WordPress On Pinterest

In this video post I will show you how to verify WordPress on Pinterest.  It’s a short three minute tutorial to take you through adding a meta tag to  your site.

Verifying your site shows that you are a trustworthy source, for more details check out the Pinterest page on this subject.

http://business.pinterest.com/verify/

Video

[leadplayer_vid id=”51B993ABC4295″]

Files Mentioned

header.php

Step By Step Guide – how to verify wordpress on pinterest

1. Login to Pinterest
2. Click Profile
3. Click Pencil
4. Click verify by meta tag
5. Copy tag
6. Paste Tag into header.php or script area
7. Click on verify website

Photo Credit: Jon McGovern via Compfight cc

In this video posts I will show you how to build a multi language WordPress site using WPML a premium translation plugin.

WPML allows you to host multiple versions of your content, and provide a version of your site in a site visitors native langauge from a drop down button.

This video post will take you through a basic site build.

Video

[leadplayer_vid id=”5062F57C8B8B5″]

Links & Code

WPML (AFF)

Google Translate

Widget Logic

WPML Approved Contactor List

ICL_LANGUAGE_CODE='en'

Image by darkroses

On my site I have a number of banner ads which link to my WordPress technical support page.  I wanted to see if I could measure performance of  these banner ads.

There are a number of plugins out there which will track clicks on ads, but I wanted to use Google analytic s which I use for all of my other monitoring needs.

Here is a quick video posts to show you how to track clicks on your banner ads, be they internal links or off site links to affiliate or other sites.

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HlvEnC_tlI

Links

Google Analytics Plugin

Google Analytics

Code

Here is a copy of the code I used in my sidebars

<a href="https://dev.neilmatthews.com/wordpress-technical-support" onClick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'CTA', 'Click', 'Sidebar banner ad']);">

<img src="https://dev.neilmatthews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/WPDUDE_techsupp_250x250.png" /></a>

Image by m4tik

You may have heard talk about CDNs they are all the rage for websites.  In this post I’m going to explain what a CDN is and what it can do for your site.

(more…)

You probably already use anti spam plugins on your site, but sometimes Spam gets through, so how do you tell the difference between Spam (bad comments) and Ham (good comments).

This post shows you the evaluation criteria I use before trashing or spamming a comment.

The Difference Between Trash and Spam

I have two routes for an unwanted comment, I either trash it or spam it, the differences are quiet important.  If I find a comment that is real but I don’t want it to appear on my site (more about why I do this later) I will mark it as trash and bin it, if it is an actual spam comment I mark it as spam, the difference being, trash comments allow further comments, but spam comments potentially put that person or site on the Akismet blacklist.

I would ask you to use the Spam button aggressively to help combat this annoying and sometimes disastrous problem see When Too Many Comments Are Bad.

My Site,  My Rules

Everything that is published on my site including comments reflects my site and my brand, if I allow low quality comments  to be approved what am I saying to the world, I don’t care what crap is published?  As a result I’m pretty picky what I pass through.

Also linking to poor quality sites, even through comments is thought to lower the value of your own site and could affect SEO rankings

So here are my criteria for evaluating suspect comments that have come through the spam filter.

It Needs To Add To The Conversation

I’m very strict on this one, so sorry if you have attempted to say great post in the comments, but I bin anyone leaving congratulatory remarks and anything that does ont add to the conversation of the post.  You can disagree with what I have said, but your comments needs to add to the post.

Bizzare content

When you read the comment, it may look like it is written by a human, but it does not quite sit well with you, it’s too generic, whilst it could match your post, you are not sure.

When in doubt, bin is my motto

The site URL is Obviously Spammy

Look at the target URL or the site, is it obviously for  a spammy site, mark as spam.  Look for references to pharmaceutical, or any site selling stuff.  Add this to the next point and you have a spam candidate.

The Site URL Links To A Low Level Page Not Root

This always starts the red flag-a-flapping why would you link to a sub page if you were not trying to harvest links back to your piece of spammy crap.  A legitimate comment links back to the root, you may want to link to a particular page in you comment to emphasise your point, but not in your site URL.

Irrelevant Links In Content

If there are any irrelevant links in your comment, you are obviously trying to harvest links back to your site for SEO purposes.  You gonna get a spam for that.  If anyone links in my comments, it better make sense to the post and comment, I often remove links but approve comments if they add value.

Foreign Languages

I’m not being xenophobic, but why comment on a site in language X in language Y?  What are you trying to hide.  I don’t approve any non-English comments on my site.

Further Reading

I’ve written a lot about spam in the past, check out this search result, “Dealing with Trolls” found me on a rant so lets mark the language NSFW.

Wrap Up

You wouldn’t let people write on the walls of your house, so why let people write on the e-walls of your site?

Obscure Reference Update: The title “Pass the man ham please” is from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee