Multilingual e-Commerce with WordPress
February 12th, 2010 by AmirUpdate (April 28, 2010): there’s a slight delay. We’re waiting for WP-E Commerce 3.8 to get started. Looks like it’s only going to happen after WordPress 3.0 is out.
A week ago we wrote about sponsoring support for niche development and now we’re getting ready start with the first multilingual e-commerce solution for WordPress.
Three folks – Nicolas Harnois (2 Associés), Dan Milward (WordPress e-Commerce Plugin) and Level Level have agreed to sponsor this work.
Since we have an interested co-sponsor, we’ll naturally be starting with WordPress e-Commerce.
What’s a multilingual e-commerce solution?
An e-commerce plugin is like a CMS inside a CMS. It has its own database with products, shopping carts and transactions. Going multilingual means that products need to have language attributes and be translatable.
Then, the entire shopping, checkout and delivery process needs to run in the language in which the product was viewed.
Of course, people would also need to be able to pay in different currencies. That’s not exactly language related, but still should be supported.
How
WPML includes a mechanism for hooking to other plugins. We call it compatibility packages.
The idea is that the e-commerce plugin continues working the same in one language. When WPML also runs, it will use hooks and filters in the e-commerce plugin to add the language information. This is exactly what WPML does with WordPress core as well.
On the e-commerce plugin side, we’ll need to make sure that there are filters in place for adding the language attributes. For instance, WPML needs to add language selectors to product pages, and translation controls to product administration.
Once all these filters and hooks are in place, WPML can make any plugin fully multilingual, just for the users who need it. Makes sense?
When
We got word that WP e-Commerce is updating now. We’ll work together with the folks from Instinct to make this new release multilingual-ready. We’re very excited about this and can’t wait to get started!
If you’re running an e-commerce WordPress site and want to see it running multilingual, let us know. We’ll be looking for early adopters to test and give feedback.
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Hello,
this is a great notice, we’re implementing this in our websites, and a common in all of them is multilingual (spnish and catalan).
will be nice to know when this addon is finished! email me if you wan testers or so.
thanks in advance.
Great news, Amir!
Please provide me your PayPal account, so I will be able to send you donation. Thanks.
Great idea! I am willing to test. Remember that you should also be able to select different shipping and payment options for different countries/languages.
Hi there:
That will be great when done, I am planning to implement a shop and there is no real solution for a multilingual one over WP (which is a big lack!!).
Thanks for your great work.
Javier.
PS: This will well deserve a donation from me.
This sounds great!!
I was looking for a solution like this but really had not found anything for WP, only for other ecommerce software (Magento and other stuff).
Looking forward to it
hi!
great, great, great!
I´m starting a new shop and i really need it multilingual!
how can I test it?
thanks!
That is great news, I would love to test it too. Would it be released sooner if I sponsored it as well?
I’m glad to hear that. Now, we’re waiting for a new release of WP e-commerce, so that we can start working on it.
You can get involved by asking the WP e-commerce folks when it will be available and possibly offer help in testing it.
As soon as their new version, which uses custom post types, is ready, we’ll start adding WPML support for it.
count on me!
i’m doing my first e-commerce and there’s a lot to mess around to make WPEC and xLanguage work together…
nowadays i use more qTranslate, but found easier to use xL in this project
I’m interested to test it
That’s maybe the greatest news of the year !
It’s going to be awesome to be able to work with wpec in multilingual.
What about sites already running with WPML, will they be able to add WPEC or will it be a new plugin and users will have to translate existing sites entirely ?
Anyway this is great, keep up the good work guys.
And of course, I’ll be happy to test it.
for sure… the greatest news of the year!
Hi Amir,
you should get in contact with the people at Shopplugin.net as well.
They are in the mist a making it all work and your partnership would probably be greatly appreciated. I know they’re direct competitors to wp-e-commerce but it’s just lot’s more user if you can manage both.
Cheer.
Thanks for the tip. We are talking with them as well.
Hey, this is great news! I am more than happy to test it! I’m in!
Thanks!
Hi, I’ve setup a dutch sports site with wpmu, buddypress and the e-commerce plugin. Did a lot of manual translating to get it all to work. Our market is expanding and we need to offer the same news, framework and shop in other languages as well. So if you want an early adopter, please contact me.
cheers, Jorg
Thanks. I’m eagerly waiting for the WP E-Commerce guys to be ready and we’ll start on it. Ping them at their forum as well. More interesting folks means it’s going to be ready faster.
This is my first e-Commerce website. The site is bilingual: Dutch and German.
Unfortunately not for the e-Commerce part (at this moment in test).
But it sounds hopeful, that you are working on it.
I would like to test this possibility.
Thanks.
Me too, the multilingual shop configuration with WPML is really a must…
Thanks, T.
Hello, good idea ~
We’re look ahead to this project. Please let me know if you need tester.
btw, we found that there is a problem in using doublebytes language in permalink on wp-ecommerce. Is there any suggestion or you can note this in your project ?
Are there any roadmap for this project?
Really looking forward to have this option in my WPEC-store!
It seems that we need to wait until WP E-Commerce 3.8 becomes available. This will be a major change with a different way to implement products.
The WP E-Commerce guys are shooting for 8 weeks from now. With WP3 going out, I would expect some delays there too.
As soon as that’s ready, we’ll make it multilingual. Our work will take about 2 weeks.
Great to hear that the work will be done, and very quickly after their release too.
I am looking forward to see the result when it comes out.
Also longing for a multilingual WP e-shop.
Its possible for me to wait a fiew moths for the multi part.
But, if i install the current version and get that one up and running. Will I be able to just upgrade it to the latest (and multilingual) version without any hassle?
I’m not sure how the e-commerce plugin would work when upgrading. It’s best to ask the e-commerce guys themselves before you decide.
For others interested: http://getshopped.org/forums/topic.php?id=10357
We’re developing an online store that would benefit from multi-lingual support (English, French and Flemish)
Contact me if you want me to test the solution.
any news guys?
I would love to test it!
hi there, yes great idea, please contact me to to test it. When do you think you will publish the plugin? jonn
I am really excited to hear about this news. I can’t wait for this project to be made available.