Getting started
Languages and URLs
Choose your languages and set up a separate URL for each one.
Choosing languages
Under WPGlotty → Languages, check “Is this the language your site is written in?” to confirm your source language. Choose your target languages from the 108 languages and regional variants listed, or use Add manually if yours is missing.
The picker marks duplicates “Already added”, even under another code, such as en-us for English. You can add a source-language variant, such as English (UK) on an American English site. WPGlotty changes only what differs.
Start with one target language and check whether the tone is right before adding more. Fixing it in one language is cheaper than fixing it in five.
Translation quality is highest in widely used languages. For less common languages, such as Tibetan, Yoruba or Faroese, have a native speaker check the result: the editor lets them correct any sentence on the page.
The language is in the URL
Each language has its own address: a subdirectory (example.com/fr/), a separate domain (example.fr) or a subdomain (fr.example.com). The URL determines the language, not a cookie or header. Visitors using the same URL see the same language.
Because each language has its own URL, page caches, CDNs and search engines handle it with no special set-up. None of them has to tell two languages apart at one address.
The default language prefix
By default, the source language has no prefix: example.com/ is English and example.com/fr/ is French. You can add a prefix for it too. English then moves to example.com/en/, and visitors to the root address are redirected there.
A source-language prefix gives every language the same URL structure. Decide this during set-up if you can, because adding it later changes every source-language URL.
Existing links keep working because WPGlotty redirects the old URLs to the new ones. Changing URLs can still affect your search rankings.
Sending a visitor to their own language
Browser-language detection is off by default. Turn it on to send first-time visitors to the language their browser asks for. For example, a German-speaking visitor can go straight to German without using the switcher.
The redirect happens once, and WPGlotty remembers the choice. Reloading, going back or opening another page does not trigger another redirect. Visitors who choose English stay in English.
- Server-side redirect: decided before the page is built, with no flicker
- Client-side script: decided in the browser, after the page has been served
If you use a page cache, choose the client-side script. A cached server-side redirect can send later visitors to the same language, regardless of their browser’s preference. One German visitor could therefore send everyone to German. The settings screen checks for a page cache and warns you if it finds one.
What search engines see
Language detection never redirects search engine crawlers. A crawler such as Googlebot receives the URL it requested, so it can index each language separately. The hreflang links tell it where to find the other language versions.
This applies to both detection modes, whether or not the crawler runs JavaScript.
Per-language settings
You can set the tone of voice, formality and glossary rules for each language. French can be formal while Swedish is informal. Both can keep your product name untranslated.
When WPGlotty can detect your site’s form of address, it uses that as the starting point for a new language. The article on glossary and tone explains how to adjust these settings.