Support » Everything else WordPress » Multilingual plugin testers needed

  • Hello everyone,

    I’ve been using qTranslate for quite a lot of time, but since it’s author no longer has the needed time and basically no one is running the project any more(well the forums are still active and bugfixes get posted there from time to time), I decided to start working on a new Multilingual plugin for WordPress.

    So far, I’ve reached the point at which I think is ok for people to alpha test the plugin. It’s at the very basic stage yet – a lot of features have not been implemented yet, but it’s generally working.

    If someone is interested in testing the plugin, here are the requirements that you need to meet:

    • Free time – this is more or less required, since in order to track down bugs, you’ll need to play a bit with the plugin.
    • You can set-up a test WordPress installation – this is really important! You should not install the dev plugin on a live site!
    • GitHub account – since this is where I host my code right now, you’ll need a GitHub account in order to post bug tickets(GitHub account is easy to create).

    I think that’s the main stuff – if you meet those requirements, I’d love you to be a tester. If you don’t meet them, then I’d suggest you wait until a stable version is released

    Here’s what you need to do if you’ve decided to join the beta testing:

    • Create a test installation of WordPress – if possible, make this a fully-functional installation(with all plugins, content, etc).
    • Get the plugin files – go to GitHub and download the files(there should be a “ZIP” button on the left).
    • Once you get the zip – install it like a normal plugin on your WordPress site.
    • Go to the Multilingual WP page in the WordPress administration – under the “General Settings” tab, you will see the enabled languages, post types and general settings. Under the “Language Settings” tab, you can change the settings for each currently registered language.
    • Under Multilingual WP > Add New Language you can add a new language.
    • Try different plugins and themes to see if things work properly

    When you activate the plugin and select which post types you want to have multilingual support, you can go and edit each post type. While the page is loading, you won’t see anything(since the default editors are hidden). Then you’ll see something like this.
    A “Language” section with all of your active languages as tabs. Clicking on the tab switches the language editor. They are built with native WordPress functions and are only hidden/displayed via JavaScript – that’s why they should work pretty well out of the box. As you can see you can change the title, slug and content for each language.

    Also, you need to know the things that have not been implemented yet.

    For now I want to see if there is interest in the plugin and whether I can find people to help me with the testing.

    Thank you for your time,
    Nikola Nikolov

Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
  • As author of xili-language trilogy since more than 4 years, I will tell you that there is no unique solution to do a multilingual website.
    The most important thing is THE CONTENT STRATEGY and how this site is created and maintained (newbie, wp expert, skilled webmaster,…)
    Another thing is how the plugin interacts with WP core and version… with his own architecture (table or not, taxonomy, admin UI and more…)

    After 4 years, the initial architecture of xili-language seems strong but the main side effect is to find time to follow the project ;-)…

    To complete this short reply, I invite you to read the texts linked below…

    Best regards

    M.

    http://dev.xiligroup.com/?p=2109

    http://dev.xiligroup.com/?p=2293

    http://dev.xiligroup.com/?p=1961

    http://wiki.xiligroup.org/

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/xili-language/

    Thread Starter Nikola Nikolov

    (@nikolovtmw)

    Thanks for the tips Michel – they are appreciated! 🙂

    What I’m aiming for is ease of use and relying on WP core functionality as much as possible. Hopefully this strategy will make it much easier to maintain the plugin for future releases.

    PP: I’m not sure why I’ve never stumbled upon your plugin – if I had some free time, I would totally test it 🙂

    Hello Nikola, I was wondering if you had any update regarding your new plugin?

    Thread Starter Nikola Nikolov

    (@nikolovtmw)

    Hi everyone!

    Unfortunately – no.

    I had a milestone set to 31-st of December, but I got really overwhelmed by work so I pretty much couldn’t spend any time at all on my plugin 🙁

    This month I’ll be quite busy as well – besides the regular work, I’m also getting married on the 26-th, so I’ll totally won’t have a lot of time.

    I’ll be getting back to Istanbul(where I currently live) around 7-th/15-th of February, so when I get there, things should’ve calmed down and I’ll get time to work on the plugin 🙂

    Sorry for just teasing everyone, but I didn’t expect things to turn this way.

    Nikola Nikolov

    These are wonderful news! I’m happy for you and I wish you all the best in your new life adventure with your partner 🙂

    There’s no urgency with the plugin: it’s still working fine with WP 3.4.2, and so for now, my team will stick with this version. However, let us know if you need help, either for testing or developing the plugin: I think there is a couple of persons including myself who are eager to help you out so that we can all drive away from qTranslate as it shows no support from the author. Maybe this time, the successor will have a more thriving community to support the plugin.

    Good luck in your endeavors! I’ll wait for your news in mid-February. Meanwhile, I will play a little with what you have already posted on GitHub.

    Thread Starter Nikola Nikolov

    (@nikolovtmw)

    Hello everyone!

    I’ve been through the most crazy, great and awesome 3 weeks in my life at the end of January 🙂

    Now I’m back to Istanbul(where my wife is studying for now) and things have calmed down enough, so I resumed my work on the plugin I’m developing.

    I did quite a progress in the last couple of days, adding more functionality to the plugin. Here’s a quick list of the updates:
    – Added basic link parsing/fixing functionality. This automatically fixes links to posts/pages/etc by making them link to the proper URL for the specified language.
    – Added proper support for custom-slugs on a per-post basis, including hierarchical post types.
    – Added the initial version of a post-fixing script – it should in theory import posts from qTranslate as well(I haven’t tested that, but if someone wants to test this – be my guests).
    – Added the possibility for reordering languages
    – Added support for different language comments(I merged the new plugin with my “qTranslate Separate Comments” plugin).

    I noticed that qTranslate is now working properly with the latest WordPress, which I was very glad to find out. This doesn’t mean that I’ll stop the development of the new plugin though 🙂

    I’m glad that some people are watching my repository on GitHub. This should be the best way to stay up-to-date with the development of the plugin. If you want to star/watch the repository – simply go to https://github.com/nikolov-tmw/multilingual-wp/ .

    That’s pretty much it for now – I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up and an update on the situation.

    Greetings,
    Nikola Nikolov

    Thread Starter Nikola Nikolov

    (@nikolovtmw)

    A heads-up to anyone still interested in the plugin – I’m only left with implementing taxonomies translations in order to have a quite useful plugin 🙂
    I’ll try to do this today, but if I don’t succeed, I’ll probably be able to do that in a week.
    You can download the latest version of the plugin from here – https://github.com/nikolov-tmw/multilingual-wp/archive/master.zip .
    Please feel free to test it and give me any feedback either here, or as an issue on GitHub.

    Nikola

    “Damned” : a new multilingual plugin to add in the list. The choice of newbies will be harder and I have to add another plugin to prepare a comparison article.

    Your sources seems to be well written.
    Can you write an article when you describe what your plugin do in terms of database architecture (new table ?, taxonomy ? custom field ?,..)
    What will be your policies in term of support, services, ?
    Will you follow the road of WPML becoming commercial or the road of the free of others like qTranslate, xili-language trilogy or polylang sharing theirs experience since 4 years ?
    When do you plan to upload it in WP plugin repository ?

    Best regards,
    M.

    Language switcher (frontend and dashboard) don’t work on local servers like MAMP

    my-server-imac.local:8888:8888/wp_mwp/

    The port is rewritten twice !!!

    M.

    In Wp i want to switch my site & draw custom wp theme.

    Thread Starter Nikola Nikolov

    (@nikolovtmw)

    Hi Marcel,

    Thanks for your interest(and for pointing out the port bug).

    My local server uses the default port 80 – that’s why I haven’t seen this issue – I’ll make sure to fix that at some point before releasing the plugin.

    Here’s a quick reply to your questions(I’ll either post a more detailed post on my site, or at GitHub – when I do that, I’ll post the link here as well):
    …describe what your plugin do in terms of database architecture:
    I’ve chosen to use WP core functionality only – no additional tables are created by my plugin. Each language is a separate custom post type – a clone of the original post type(for instance “mlwp_post_de”).
    The original and translation posts are linked with custom post meta(one to many[original->translation] and one to one[translation->original] to be more specific).

    What will be your policies in term of support, services, ?
    I intend to have long-term support(I make my living by building WordPress sites – generally I work freelance, so I should have enough time for support). Hopefully as time goes by a community will build around the plugin and I won’t have to deal with all of the support requests all on my own.

    Will you follow the road of WPML becoming commercial or the road of the free of others like qTranslate, xili-language trilogy or polylang sharing theirs experience since 4 years?
    I don’t have any plans on making the plugin paid. People will have the choice to donate if they want, but that will in no way be obligatory.

    When do you plan to upload it in WP plugin repository?
    Right now I’m only left with adding support for taxonomies – after that I’ll spare some time for testing, fixing other bugs and hopefully optimizing performance. I assume that the soonest all of this will happen is the beginning of May.

    Greetings,
    Nikola Nikolov

    Thread Starter Nikola Nikolov

    (@nikolovtmw)

    Hello everyone,

    It’s been a long(almost half a year!) time since I first started this topic, looking for some support for my plugin.
    Since then, I’ve introduced most of the features that were missing back when I started the topic.

    The plugin now seems to work fine out-of-the-box with the latest WordPress and TwentyTwelve, allowing you to translate posts, pages, categories, tags, etc.

    It supports query mode(with/without pretty permalinks) and “sub-directory” mode with pretty permalinks. Links are modified to apply for the current language, and are created properly for each of the languages in the language switcher.

    Each category/post/page can have it’s completely unique URL(including the category base and slug) out of the box. Comments are filtered per language – meaning that comments written when viewing the post in one language are only displayed when viewing that post in the same language.

    Now I’m looking towards finding people that have some spare time and would like to use some of that time to test the plugin with their own WordPress set-ups – because it’s impossible for me to test the plugin with all possible combinations of themes/plugins.

    Please refer to the first post to see how to download and setup the plugin.
    If you decide to join in and give me a hand in testing the plugin, please fill-in any bug reports on the page in GitHub

    Thank you for your time,
    Nikola Nikolov

Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
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