Today, we released BuddyPress Multilingual 1.7.0, an update to the glue plugin that makes it possible to translate sites built with BuddyPress. This release also makes WPML compatible with the BuddyBoss platform.
Build Online Communities in Multiple Languages
Online community plugins allow you to build completely custom social networks, forums, and groups, just for your site users. It’s a great way to foster connections between you and your clients, or for your site users to connect with each other.
Here are some examples from real clients:
iCouponU is a coupon aggregator site. BuddyPress allows their site users to group their coupons under their profiles, which is available in both English and Arabic.
iCouponU site in English
iCouponU site in Arabic
Pictoflash is a platform for sharing files like photos and documents within family, friend, or work communities.
Document sharing platform Pictoflahs translated using WPML
Alamakamlah.com is a social learning platform that uses LearnDash and BuddyBoss. Even though their clients speak English, the creators of the site quickly realized that they were much more likely to consume content and complete purchases in their native language.
Social learning platform Alamakamlah built using BuddyBoss and LearnDash
Growing your online community globally is easy, thanks to WPML and BuddyPress Multilingual, the glue plugin that makes it possible to translate online communities.
Support for the BuddyBoss Platform
As of version 1.7.0, we now extended support to sites that use the BuddyBoss platform as well.
The BuddyBoss platform is a free plugin that includes all the same functionality as BuddyPress, but adds a more modern look and feel. You can also upgrade to the premium version, which consists of the BuddyBoss theme and BuddyBoss Platform Pro plugin.
All together, the BuddyPress platform allows you to build robust online communities, including social media sites, web courses, and membership sites.
Viewing a translated BuddyBoss news feed
Translate Group Names and Descriptions
Also new to BuddyPress 1.7.0, you can now translate Group names and descriptions using WPML’s String Translation add-on. This makes it quick and easy for your users to view groups in their language.
As with all of our releases, we are rolling this out gradually.
To update your plugin, go to Plugins → Add New and click the Commercial tab. If the update is not available for you yet, you can click Check for Updates.
You can also download this update from the Downloads page in your WPML account.
Your Feedback Will Drive Our Future Development
Before we build major new functionality for BuddyPress Multilingual, we’d love to know what you are doing with it. To see more features coming in the near future, please help us by leaving your comments below, telling us:
Are you already using BuddyPress or BuddyBoss?
Maybe you are planning to build a multilingual online community?
Do you need your community to be multilingual?
Are you missing any multilingual features for your online communities?
And of course, anything else about this topic you might want to share.
We are already using Buddyboss for more than one client and we are currently working on a multilingual online community and we would like to have full integration between Buddyboss and WPML.
Hi, Talal! Well, this version actually makes BuddyBoss fully compatible with WPML, so I recommend trying it out. Then, let us know how it goes and if there’s anything we can improve. Thanks!
I am planning to install GAMIPRESS (https://gamipress.com/) that is also directed to on-line communities.
I have WPML installed. Will it work with Gamipress? Or something will work and something else not?
Which is the best way to do that?
Best
Hi, Franz! I just checked about Gamipress with my team. While we have some clients using it with WPML it seems it’s not completely compatible at the moment. So, I guess it will be like you described it, with some things working while some not.
However, I would suggest you to contact Gamipress developers about this and ask them to contact us via our Go-Global program for official WPML compatibility. We will be happy to work together with them on making the two plugins work great together.
Hi, I wonder why you need to create additional plugins for other plugins ? Is it because they don’t do their homework to make theirs compatible for WPML ?
Any WP manager can find it super frustrating to see its plugins amount rising, especially when such kind of duplicates happen, like for Free plugin + Pro addons >> why not a single Pro plugin where you activate and deactivate upon your needs ?
In this case, shouldn’t you ask to those plugins to do their compatibility work, or did I miss something ? This would leave much more room for WPML improvements >> especially simplification of user flow since the auto-translation development is now accomplished. My last email was very precise on expectations here.
Regards.
Hi, Thibault! We have a separate Compatibility Team that works independently from our main development team. So, Compatibility doesn’t affect the development of the WPML plugin itself.
That being said, having separate add-on plugins allows easier development and maintenance. Also, for example, not all BuddyPress/BuddyBoss users use WPML and the other way around. Actually, only a small percentage of them do. Putting compatibility-related code into core plugins of either side could quickly bloat the plugin size of either plugin. In other words, in some cases, it’s simply much more practical to have a separate glue plugin. Finally, please note that we currently have only 10 add-on plugins for compatibility with specific plugins. At the same time, WPML is compatible with hundreds of themes and plugins.
Thank you for your email, it reached the right people and it’s actually related to some existing activities that we have on our mid-to-long-term roadmap and some of those are already under way.
Very interested, we are using WPML for our translation.
Hello
Good to know. Do we have the automatic translation of any language? With an automatic recognition of the language?
Thanks for yoir feedback.
Sabrina
Hello, Sab! Yes, BuddyPress Multilingual works with WPML’s automatic translation and it covers almost all world languages.
I’m not sure what you mean by “automatic recognition of the language”. You define your site’s languages in the setup and WPML automatically translates content from the default language to other languages you add to your site. If you create a post in a secondary language, WPML will not automatically translate it.
It was exactly my question and you replied.
as it is a multilingual and people from any other language can answer on the platform, I was wondering if in that case we could have the automatic translation from an other language than the default one.
And you say no.
It is a shame.
Sab
I might be wrong, but what you’re describing is not what most of the users actually want to have with this BuddyPress/BuddyBoss integration. Most of the users want to be able to translate the groups, names, labels, and GUI for the users. So, if the user is using the community, they are doing so in their own language.
I honestly haven’t yet heard of a case where someone would want to translate all posts to all languages.
Are you really looking to build such a site? Can you maybe describe how you imagine it would work and how would the users benefit? Thanks!
Thrilling news. Thanks for your hard work!
Hi Dario,
Very good news, thanks for this update, as we are currently working on Arabic RTL multilingual online community with Buddyboss and WPML.
Kindly, can you confirm the new release with Multilingual 1.7.0 will support Buddyboss 2.0.
With Thanks,
Hello, thanks, that’s great to hear! I see that BuddyBoss 2.0 is still a work-in-progress, however, their team is working with us on compatibility with WPML, so there shouldn’t be any show-stoppers. If they introduce something that needs compatibility work with WPML, we can work together to achieve it. In short, this should be a problem at all.
Great news! Thanks for that!
we are considering WPML to make our website multilingual english/french/arabic … for now, we have boddyboss pro installed on a french version of wordpress … I’m asking to know if in the Arabic version the website (menu, byddypanel … ) will be ALL RTL (right to left) display automatically ? to explain more, for example : the sidebar menus, the buddypannel and the profile picture … we need them to be on the right side of the website in Arabic version … will this be an automatic result of translating the website to arabic (with WPML) or should we do some other adjustments (plugins, custom code …) to have it display like that ? thanks
Hi, Amine! Your project sounds interesting! 🙂 OK, so, visually speaking, RTL mostly comes from your theme and its styling. It also comes from the plugins in your site that affect it visually. In your case, that would be the BuddyBoss plugin and its documentation says it supports RTL, so you should be fine there.
When it comes to languages and translation, of course, WPML supports RTL languages but again, it’s not WPML that actually visually aligns things right-to-left.
If your theme supports RTL, you should be fine, but you (or your developer) will know/see exactly as you start developing the site. Even if there are any RTL glitches, a good front-end developer can easily fix them.
Thank you very much. I’m currently building a community with BuddyBoss platform (without the theme), and this compatibility is wonderful. If my tests are unsuccessful I would switch back to BuddyPress and BBPress.
Thank you also for asking “Are you missing any multilingual features for your online communities?”
I would love to see a possibility near any user input (activity, comment in a forum, etc) to click on a “translate” button a bit like we can see on facebook, for members speaking another language to get any input (from other members, in any language) to their own language if we could set that in one’s profile/account, or at least “translate to English” default.
That would be wonderful. Thx again 🙂
Hi, Patricia, thanks for the comment! I forwarded your suggestion to our development team. However, to be completely upfront with you, the “click to translate” feature is more complex to implement than it looks like as there are many implications.
I guess so 🙂
Thank you Dario and happy holidays
oh and just to add, it could be with an API to a paid service such as Yandex, DeepL, etc
Actually, WPML already allows you to connect to DeepL, Google, or Microsoft, through our automatic translation account. That’s not a problem at all. The complex part is that translation requires a call to these services, from the front-end, which means allowing any site users the privilege to send content for translation. Plus, while automatic translation is very affordable, if a lot of people translate on the fly a lot, the site owner could end up with a hefty monthly bill for automatic translation.
However, I do get your point and our developers are notified about this suggestion.
Thank you very much for your comments and good wishes! I wish you awesome holidays and the new year! 🙂
We are already using Buddyboss for more than one client and we are currently working on a multilingual online community and we would like to have full integration between Buddyboss and WPML.
Hi, Talal! Well, this version actually makes BuddyBoss fully compatible with WPML, so I recommend trying it out. Then, let us know how it goes and if there’s anything we can improve. Thanks!
I am planning to install GAMIPRESS (https://gamipress.com/) that is also directed to on-line communities.
I have WPML installed. Will it work with Gamipress? Or something will work and something else not?
Which is the best way to do that?
Best
Hi, Franz! I just checked about Gamipress with my team. While we have some clients using it with WPML it seems it’s not completely compatible at the moment. So, I guess it will be like you described it, with some things working while some not.
However, I would suggest you to contact Gamipress developers about this and ask them to contact us via our Go-Global program for official WPML compatibility. We will be happy to work together with them on making the two plugins work great together.
Hi, I wonder why you need to create additional plugins for other plugins ? Is it because they don’t do their homework to make theirs compatible for WPML ?
Any WP manager can find it super frustrating to see its plugins amount rising, especially when such kind of duplicates happen, like for Free plugin + Pro addons >> why not a single Pro plugin where you activate and deactivate upon your needs ?
In this case, shouldn’t you ask to those plugins to do their compatibility work, or did I miss something ? This would leave much more room for WPML improvements >> especially simplification of user flow since the auto-translation development is now accomplished. My last email was very precise on expectations here.
Regards.
Hi, Thibault! We have a separate Compatibility Team that works independently from our main development team. So, Compatibility doesn’t affect the development of the WPML plugin itself.
That being said, having separate add-on plugins allows easier development and maintenance. Also, for example, not all BuddyPress/BuddyBoss users use WPML and the other way around. Actually, only a small percentage of them do. Putting compatibility-related code into core plugins of either side could quickly bloat the plugin size of either plugin. In other words, in some cases, it’s simply much more practical to have a separate glue plugin. Finally, please note that we currently have only 10 add-on plugins for compatibility with specific plugins. At the same time, WPML is compatible with hundreds of themes and plugins.
Thank you for your email, it reached the right people and it’s actually related to some existing activities that we have on our mid-to-long-term roadmap and some of those are already under way.
Very interested, we are using WPML for our translation.
Hello
Good to know. Do we have the automatic translation of any language? With an automatic recognition of the language?
Thanks for yoir feedback.
Sabrina
Hello, Sab! Yes, BuddyPress Multilingual works with WPML’s automatic translation and it covers almost all world languages.
I’m not sure what you mean by “automatic recognition of the language”. You define your site’s languages in the setup and WPML automatically translates content from the default language to other languages you add to your site. If you create a post in a secondary language, WPML will not automatically translate it.
It was exactly my question and you replied.
as it is a multilingual and people from any other language can answer on the platform, I was wondering if in that case we could have the automatic translation from an other language than the default one.
And you say no.
It is a shame.
Sab
I might be wrong, but what you’re describing is not what most of the users actually want to have with this BuddyPress/BuddyBoss integration. Most of the users want to be able to translate the groups, names, labels, and GUI for the users. So, if the user is using the community, they are doing so in their own language.
I honestly haven’t yet heard of a case where someone would want to translate all posts to all languages.
Are you really looking to build such a site? Can you maybe describe how you imagine it would work and how would the users benefit? Thanks!
Thrilling news. Thanks for your hard work!
Hi Dario,
Very good news, thanks for this update, as we are currently working on Arabic RTL multilingual online community with Buddyboss and WPML.
Kindly, can you confirm the new release with Multilingual 1.7.0 will support Buddyboss 2.0.
With Thanks,
Hello, thanks, that’s great to hear! I see that BuddyBoss 2.0 is still a work-in-progress, however, their team is working with us on compatibility with WPML, so there shouldn’t be any show-stoppers. If they introduce something that needs compatibility work with WPML, we can work together to achieve it. In short, this should be a problem at all.
Great news! Thanks for that!
we are considering WPML to make our website multilingual english/french/arabic … for now, we have boddyboss pro installed on a french version of wordpress … I’m asking to know if in the Arabic version the website (menu, byddypanel … ) will be ALL RTL (right to left) display automatically ? to explain more, for example : the sidebar menus, the buddypannel and the profile picture … we need them to be on the right side of the website in Arabic version … will this be an automatic result of translating the website to arabic (with WPML) or should we do some other adjustments (plugins, custom code …) to have it display like that ? thanks
Hi, Amine! Your project sounds interesting! 🙂 OK, so, visually speaking, RTL mostly comes from your theme and its styling. It also comes from the plugins in your site that affect it visually. In your case, that would be the BuddyBoss plugin and its documentation says it supports RTL, so you should be fine there.
When it comes to languages and translation, of course, WPML supports RTL languages but again, it’s not WPML that actually visually aligns things right-to-left.
If your theme supports RTL, you should be fine, but you (or your developer) will know/see exactly as you start developing the site. Even if there are any RTL glitches, a good front-end developer can easily fix them.
Thank you very much. I’m currently building a community with BuddyBoss platform (without the theme), and this compatibility is wonderful. If my tests are unsuccessful I would switch back to BuddyPress and BBPress.
Thank you also for asking “Are you missing any multilingual features for your online communities?”
I would love to see a possibility near any user input (activity, comment in a forum, etc) to click on a “translate” button a bit like we can see on facebook, for members speaking another language to get any input (from other members, in any language) to their own language if we could set that in one’s profile/account, or at least “translate to English” default.
That would be wonderful. Thx again 🙂
Hi, Patricia, thanks for the comment! I forwarded your suggestion to our development team. However, to be completely upfront with you, the “click to translate” feature is more complex to implement than it looks like as there are many implications.
I guess so 🙂
Thank you Dario and happy holidays
oh and just to add, it could be with an API to a paid service such as Yandex, DeepL, etc
Actually, WPML already allows you to connect to DeepL, Google, or Microsoft, through our automatic translation account. That’s not a problem at all. The complex part is that translation requires a call to these services, from the front-end, which means allowing any site users the privilege to send content for translation. Plus, while automatic translation is very affordable, if a lot of people translate on the fly a lot, the site owner could end up with a hefty monthly bill for automatic translation.
However, I do get your point and our developers are notified about this suggestion.
Thank you very much for your comments and good wishes! I wish you awesome holidays and the new year! 🙂