How to Make a Bilingual Website in WordPress
One of the great things about WordPress is how easy it is to create a website with just about any content you want. It’s the perfect tool for people looking to build a portfolio of their work or a business’ website. Most bloggers and website owners choose to make their content available in both English and Spanish, since lots of people around the world speak those two languages. Whether you want to create a portfolio for yourself or your business, or want to create a bilingual (English-Spanish) website for your customers – whether you have a few or a lot of followers – here’s how to make it happen!
Decide Whether You’ll Use Free WordPress Themes Or Build Your Own
One of the great things about WordPress is how many themes are available for download, free of charge, from the WordPress repository. This means you can create a completely custom-look, for free, using a variety of elements (such as photos, copy, and menus) from existing sites. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but you also don’t have to follow anyone else’s design decisions, either.
There are many reasons why you might want to build your website from the ground up rather than use pre-made themes. Maybe you want to keep the layout and design of your site static, or you want to have full control over the content that appears on your pages. Whatever reason you have, you can build a unique WordPress website that will be perfect for your needs.
Find A Theme That Works Well With Your Website
When you decide to build a bilingual website, your first task is to find a theme that will work well with your chosen languages. Luckily, this is a pretty easy task nowadays, since most themes come with support for multiple languages built in. You don’t have to look far to find a theme that will work well with your needs, regardless of whether you want an English or Spanish site. For example, if you want an elegant British theme for your English site, or a more youthful American theme for your Spanish site, you can find many ready-made themes that will fulfill your needs (and you don’t have to build a custom theme, either).
The important thing to keep in mind is that the theme you choose should match the overall feel and tone of your website. If you’re looking for a British theme for your English site, for example, you don’t want to use a German theme (even though it might fulfill your needs, it won’t give your website the proper feel). Choose a theme that will compliment your existing design.
Install And Activate The WordPress Theme You Choose
Once you’ve found a theme that works well with your website, the next step is to install it on your WordPress blog. This must be done manually, and it’s a very tedious process (especially since you’ll have to go through four or five steps to make sure the theme is installed and activated properly). Of course, it’s worth it, though, since the end result will be a functional, unique-looking website that can greatly benefit from the additional customization that a theme provides.
Create Or Update Your WordPress Blog’s Theme
Once the theme is installed on your blog, it’s time to update its design. You can go through the Theme Options page in your WordPress dashboard to do this. There, you can choose various options such as the colors that will be used on your site, the display of the content (whether you want a grid or a full-width layout, and more), and even custom CSS (for advanced users).
Updating a theme is very similar to installing a new one. You have to go through the same process (installation and activation) and then you can go back and make any changes you want, using the Theme Options page as your guide. Remember: if you’re doing this for the first time, you’ll have to create a backup of your existing blog first, in case something goes wrong! (And something almost certainly willgo wrong, at least once, if you try to change too much at once.)
Add More Languages To Your Website
Having a website that’s available in multiple languages is great for any business, no matter the size. If you have a larger audience that’s mostly located in Spain, but you want to have a presence in the United Kingdom as well, you can use WordPress to create a bilingual (English-Spanish) website. To do this, you’ll have to add a new language to your existing WordPress installation (you can find the instructions for adding a language here).
After you’ve added the language, you can visit this link to toggle between the different languages. Remember: you can only have one URL for your site (the one you’ll use to reach it), so be sure to pick a different one for each language version. For instance, if you decide to call your blog british.blog, your spanish-language version will be spanish.blog, and your English one will be english.blog. This way, you’ll be able to easily manage all your sites from one place, using the multilingual feature built into WordPress.
WordPress is incredibly diverse, which means you can use it for any purpose you can think of. Not only can you create completely custom websites with it, but you can also use the content management system to store and manage your blog’s posts, pages, and videos.
No matter what your needs, there’s a WordPress theme out there that can help you realize them. You don’t have to be limited by the templates that come with the theme, since you can fully customize the look and feel of your website, using existing elements from existing sites. Plus, you can take advantage of the multilingual features built into WordPress to make your content available to people all over the world, no matter what language they speak.