Managing Multilingual Content with WordPress Multisite

Project Description

The WordPress CMS does not currently provide built-in support for managing multilingual content and considers this “plugin territory”. This will change in the upcoming Phase 4 of the Gutenberg project. We believe that the APIs, functions, and capabilities referred to as “WordPress multisite” serve as an ideal basis for multilingual WordPress sites.

Multisite was introduced in 2010, in WordPress 3.0. It is an optional feature that enables the site owner to manage multiple instances of WordPress using a single installation. WordPress.com and the official White House website have been using this feature successfully for many years.

Enabling WordPress multisite capabilities by default could serve the development of Phase 4 well, and allow for maximum flexibility in developing multilingual sites in WordPress. At the same time, using multisite will allow site owners and editorial users to use all available features, including managing multilingual content, without requiring any coding knowledge.

Hackathon Goals

During the CloudFest Hackathon, we will plan and build a proof of concept, making it easier to use WordPress multisite. We will collect and address all relevant questions about the current, somewhat more complex integration and interface, to reduce it to the required minimum for managing multilingual websites.

Our main goal is to make it possible to use WordPress multisite as a default for serving multilingualism, not just an option. In doing so, WordPress keeps backward compatibility and can focus on the multilingual UX.

Target Audience

Everyone who has interacted with WordPress (or any other CMS, actually) is able to contribute. Developers, designers, testers, content editors, and pretty much everyone else. People who used WordPress multisite before may have an easier onboarding to the project, but we absolutely welcome people with a fresh and unbiased view on this topic.