Advanced Classifieds and Directory Pro plugin is fully compatible with the multilingual plugin, WPML. This means you can easily translate your website into multiple languages to reach a wider audience. However, if you’re looking for a free alternative, you can use the Polylang plugin instead. With Polylang, you can easily create a multilingual website without paying for a premium plugin. This guide will show you how to use Polylang to make your website multilingual.
The focus of this document is to demonstrate how to use the Advanced Classifieds and Directory Pro Plugin (ACADP) with Polylang to make your website multilingual. Therefore, we won’t be covering the installation and configuration of Polylang in this guide. For those instructions, we recommend referring to the official Polylang documentation.
Note: Kindly follow the instructions below in the same order this tutorial is written.
1. Enabling Translations for Listings, Custom Fields, Categories, and Locations
Before you can start configuring ACADP with Polylang, you need to ensure that the ACADP plugin’s post types and taxonomies are enabled within the Polylang settings. Assuming you’ve already installed and set up Polylang on your website, navigate to the Polylang settings page by going to “Dashboard / Languages / Settings”.
Next, locate the “Custom post types and Taxonomies” section and click on the “Settings” link. Here, you’ll see a list of all available post types and taxonomies that you can enable for translation. To make your ACADP website multilingual, you’ll need to select the “Listings (acadp_listings)”, “Custom Fields (acadp_fields)”, “Categories (acadp_categories)”, and “Locations (acadp_locations)” options. Once you’ve made your selections, click on the “Save Changes” button to save your settings.
However, before you start translating the listings, it is important to translate the standard WordPress pages added by the plugin during installation, as well as the categories and locations.
This is because these pages are integral parts of the website and may contain important information that needs to be translated accurately. Without translating these pages, your website may not appear professional, and users may have difficulty navigating the site.
Fortunately, Polylang makes the translation process simple and straightforward by adding “+” icons to the plugin’s Listings, Categories, Custom Fields, and Locations pages. With just a few clicks, you can translate these pages to the other languages on your website, ensuring that your website is accessible to a wider audience.
2. Translate custom WordPress pages added by our plugin
When you install our plugin, it dynamically adds a few pages to your website that are used internally by the plugin.
These pages can be found under the “Dashboard/Pages” menu. It is important to translate these pages to all the languages on your website, as they contain special shortcodes that need to be included in each translated page.
If you are using Polylang, you may find that your page or post content is not automatically copied to another language version when you add a new language. To address this, we recommend using the Duplicate Page plugin. This plugin allows you to easily duplicate pages or posts and translate them into other languages.
To duplicate and translate a page using this plugin, first navigate to “Dashboard/Pages” and select the page you want to translate. Click on the “Duplicate This” option to clone the page and create a new draft page with the same name. Then, click on the “Edit” option under the cloned page to adjust the page title and set the language to the desired language, such as French.
In the “Languages” section of the page settings, you can connect the cloned page with the original page by selecting the original page’s language field and typing in the page title. Once the original page appears in the list, click on it to connect the two pages. You can then update the content and design of the cloned page as needed, translating the text and adjusting the rest of the content to suit the new language. Finally, click on the “Publish” button to save your changes.
You can repeat these steps for all the pages and languages on your website, including listings. By duplicating and translating pages using the “Duplicate Page” plugin, you can save time and ensure that your website is accessible to a wider audience.
3. Translate Categories & Locations
The next step is to translate the categories and locations added using our plugin.
Navigate to “Dashboard / Classifieds & Directory / Categories” and you will notice the Polylang language options for each category. All categories are in your default language, and the column contains flags of the other language available.
To create a category version in another language, just click on the “+” icon in the desired language column, enter the translated category name, and click on the “Add New Category” button.
Congrats, you have translated a category.
Now you can repeat these steps for all categories and languages.
Follow the same steps to translate the locations (Dashboard / Classifieds & Directory / Locations).
4. Translate Custom Fields
Now, it’s time to translate the Custom Fields.
Navigate to “Dashboard / Classifieds & Directory / Custom Fields” and follow the same instructions that you followed to translate the pages (Dashboard / Pages) to translate the Custom Fields.
5. Translate Listings
Now, it’s time to translate the Listings.
Navigate to “Dashboard / Classifieds & Directory / All Listings” and follow the same instructions that you followed to translate the pages (Dashboard / Pages) to translate the Listings.
6. Translation Strings
The final step is to translate the user input strings added using our “Advanced Classifieds and Directory Pro” plugin’s settings pages.
Navigate to “Dashboard / Languages / Translations” and use the input field there to translate each of the user-defined strings.
That’s it.
Now, the Listings, Custom fields, Categories, and Locations display in their own language on your site’s front end.