How to Turn OceanWP Multilingual with WPML
OceanWP is a lightweight and customizable multi-purpose WordPress theme. It’s also fully compatible with WPML, making it possible to build multilingual websites.
Start by making sure you have the following installed and activated on your site:
Getting Started with WPML
Upon activating WPML for the first time, you need to go through a setup wizard. Follow the wizard to register WPML and choose your site’s languages, URL format, and translation mode.
One of these options is the Translate Everything mode, which automatically translates your site’s content as you add or edit it. You can also choose to review the translations before publishing them to make sure they are correct.
The Translate Some mode gives you control over which content you translate, as well as who will translate it. You can translate the content yourself, assign it to individual translators, or send it to a professional translation agency.
To learn more, we suggest you take a look at WPML’s Getting Started Guide. It provides a comprehensive overview of the options available with WPML.
Translating Posts and Pages
With WPML, you can translate posts and pages individually or send them for translation in bulk using the Translation Management Dashboard.
As an example, we’ll show you how to to translate a post by yourself:
Edit the post you want to translate. In the right sidebar, find the Language box and click the plus icon next to the language you want to translate your post into.
You’ll be taken to the Advanced Translation Editor. You can choose to translate your content automatically or enter the translations for each line, then click Complete when you’re done.
Now, you can take a look at your post in your site’s default and secondary languages on the front-end:
Translating Portfolios and Other Custom Post Types
The OceanWP Portfolio extension comes with a Portfolio custom post type which allows you to display and organize portfolio items. Before you can translate your Portfolio posts or other custom post types, you first need to set them as one of the Translatable options in WPML > Settings.
Then, you can translate these the same way you translate any other posts and pages.
Translating Categories, Tags, and Other Taxonomies
WPML also allows you to translate categories, tags, and custom taxonomies assigned to posts:
- From your site’s dashboard, go to WPML > Taxonomy Translation and use the dropdown menu to select the taxonomy to translate. For the purpose of this example, we are selecting Categories.
- Click the plus icon to add your translation.
- When you’re done, don’t forget to press the Save button.
Translating Menus
With WPML, you can translate menus in a few ways:
- Automatically, using the Translate Everything mode
- Manually, so you can choose to have different menus in your site’s default and secondary languages
- Using the menu sync tool, which syncs the menu structure from the default language into the site’s secondary languages
To learn more about each option, check out WPML’s documentation about translating menus.
Translating Texts from OceanWP Theme, Plugins, and Other Places
Your site is made up of more than the content in your posts and pages. There are also various other texts coming from the themes and plugins installed on your site.
For example, let’s say you have some text in your site’s footer. After you translate the post, you’ll still see the text as untranslated:
You can translate text from the footer and other texts by scanning your theme for translatable strings, then using WPML String Translation to translate them.
- Go to WPML > Theme and plugins localization.
- Choose OceanWP from the Strings in the themes section.
- Click on the Scan selected themes for strings button.
Once scanning is complete, go to WPML > String Translation.
Use the display filter at the top of the String Translation page to choose which strings to display. You can also select the domain the string belongs to or search for the exact string. For the purpose of this example, we are searching for strings in the admin_texts_theme_mods_oceanwp domain.
Click the plus icon next to the string you want to translate and hit Enter (on your keyboard) to save the translation.
Here’s the translated footer text on the front-end:
Translating Texts from the OceanWP Child Theme
If you are using the OceanWP child theme, you may want to translate custom theme elements. You can learn more by visiting our page about Translating Texts from the OceanWP Child Theme with WPML.
Translating Custom Templates
Ocean Extra allows you to create custom OceanWP templates. To learn how to translate these templates, see the page about Translating Custom OceanWP Templates with WPML.
Using OceanWP Extensions with WPML
To add more features to your site, you can purchase the OceanWP core extensions bundle which includes all premium OceanWP plugins.
To learn how to translate the content coming from OceanWP extensions, see WPML’s documentation page about OceanWP Extensions Compatibility with WPML.