Many businesses went online in 2020 and the trend continues. Today, clients expect websites to give complete information about what the business offers. For this, you often need to add a “directory” or “listing” (same thing, different word) to your sites. In this tutorial, we teach what multilingual directories need and how to build them.
A directory is anything that lists many items. It can be a complete site like Craigslist, a table of the products that you offer, a map of your service points and many other things.
In some directories, the admin will populate all content into WordPress. In other directories, visitors (or members) will create entries and in other directories, you’ll import content from an external site.
Directory and listing sites have a mixture of features. Some directories will have all these features, but most directories will have a subset of them.
The directory can be the whole site or only a section in a site.
When you’re creating a multilingual directory, you need to think about how to create and display content in different languages. There’s no “one size fits all”. Instead, it depends on the business and its objectives.
You could:
And, of course, you may need multilingual forms for submitting entries, multilingual account pages, and so on.
After a lot of research, WPML team has put together a short list of plugins that will allow you to build multilingual directories. The directory themes that we reviewed (true for January 2021) did not work fully in multilingual sites.
So, your best option is to pick a “general purpose” theme and add the directory functionality using a plugin.
The plugin options that we recommend are either the Business Directory plugin or Toolset (opens in a new tab). These two options are very different and each has its cons and pros (fits a different audience, with different needs).
The Business Directory plugin offers a “black box” that implements the complete directory functionality for you. You’ll need to install and configure it and you get a working directory. The folks from the Business Directory plugin have created a mini-guide on how to translate everything coming from their plugin (opens in a new tab).
Toolset takes a different approach. Instead of a complete solution, you get building blocks, which you can put together any way you want. This means more to learn the first time, but more flexibility and control over the final result. Toolset offers a complete course on building directory sites (opens in a new tab), including an entire chapter on translating directory sites (opens in a new tab).
Our free course on design (opens in a new tab) will show you how to get sleek and professional look for your multilingual WordPress site, even if you’re not a designer.
Almost every directory site will use post relationship (opens in a new tab). For example, a car dealership will connect between “cars” and “makers”. A real estate site will connect between “properties” and “agents”. An events website will connect between “events”, “venues” and “speakers”.
As of version 1.3, Toolset has full support for multilingual post relationships. This means that you can create and connect content in any language, without always going through the site’s default language.
Rich directory sites are complex projects. We’ll be happy to help with tips and ideas from our experience. Leave your comments and we’ll get back to you.
WPML 5.2 is out. Saving a page no longer rewrites translations that did not change, the Translation Dashboard lists your content whatever the number of languages, automatic translation tells you when it is waiting for payment instead of stalling, and 565 fixes land across WPML and every add-on.
WPML 5.0 is the biggest update we’ve shipped in years.
Many WordPress users are exploring ways to combine ChatGPT and WPML to translate their websites.
