I hear a lot of requests about multilingual classifieds sites, but I’m not sure exactly what that means. Can you help us understand it, so that we can deliver something that you can use?
Craigslist is probably the biggest classifieds site on the web. For instance, look at Craigslist Geneva.
Geneva is as multilingual city as it gets, so I’m using it as a good reference as to what a multilingual classifieds site should do.
Here is what I see:
- You can easily switch the site’s language (top right of the page).
- The site language determines all the ‘hard coded’ texts, as well as the ad categories.
- The entire interface switches, including the dialogs for setting up ads, managing your account, etc.
- Ads themselves stay in the original language.
To me, the last point is critical and makes perfect sense. Visitors submit all these ads. What are the chances that a visitor would submit an ad and translate it into our site’s languages? I’m betting it’s zero probability.
Moving forward with multilingual classifieds sites with WPML, does this recipe work for you?
Switching the site languages would control everything that YOU write (interface, categories, dialogs), but all the user-generated content remains in the same language.
Right now (really now) we are working with leading classifieds-theme developers, as well as our own solution via Toolset, for multilingual classifieds site. The more input we get, the better suited solution we’ll have for you.
Write your comment, describing what you want to build and we’ll see that our plans cover it. Thanks!