If you want to review the entire Multilingual ready list of themes and plugins you are welcome to view it here:

• Multilingual Ready Themes
• Multilingual Ready Plugins

Also, if you’re a theme  author and you want to make it compatible with WPML, you are welcome to contact us at go global program page. In order to expedite the process we strongly recommend that you test your theme with our Achieving WPML compatibility for your themes . It easily tests compatibility with WPML and help you quickly make your theme Multilingual Ready.

In this post Neil will talk about building multi language and multi currency websites with WPML and WooCommerce.

Why Build Multi Currency / Multi Language Websites?

If English is the Lingua Franca of international business and the USD is seen as the recognised currency of online transactions, why do we need to go to the trouble of creating a multi language / multi currency e-commerce site?

The answer is plain and simple, to keep your potential customers happy. They don’t care if we are all meant to read English and spend in dollars, they are the one about to click add to card and pull out their credit card, you should be thinking about their needs and making your e-commerce site accessible in their language and currency.

The ability to give your potential customers details of your products or services in their native language and in their local currency helps to break down any barriers they may have to purchasing from you.

If you can price your products in someone’s local currency they know exactly what the price is and don’t have to do mental exchange rate dance.

WPML & WooCommerce Make This Easy

Thanks to the great collaboration between WPML and WooCommerce setting up an e-commerce site that supports multiple languages and currencies is a much easier task than it was a few years ago.  With a couple of plugins and some configuration you are good to go, no custom coding required.

Using techniques you already know from translating content, you can translate your products or outsource the translation with iCanlocalize and have a multi language / multi currency site.

Setting Up Multi Language E-Commerce

Here are the plugins you need to set up a multi language multi currency site (MLMC from now on) .

WPML of course -, I’m not going to talk about installing and configuring WPML in this post, there are more than enough excellent resources on this site already, But you will need to download and install WPML, add the languages you plan to support and add a language selector.

WooCommerce – You need to install and configure WooCommerce. Full details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this post, but I will be demonstrating them in a webinar (see base of post for details), but you will need to install the plugin, setup the checkout and cart pages, setup your payment processor, setup shipping costs and then start adding products.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/woocommerce/

Woocommerce Multi Languge Plugin  -There is an additional WPML plugin you need to add to your site.  This manages the integration between WooCommerce and WPML and also adds multi currency functionality to  your WPML dashboard menu.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/woocommerce-multilingual/

WooCommerce Special Pages

A number of special pages are required to make WooCommerce work correctly.  They are a cart page, a store front page, and checkout page and some miscellaneous pages such as customer account pages.

These are setup by adding short codes to pages which tell WooCommerce to display the cart or checkout.  Don’t worry too much about this configuration stage, there is a wizard which will create these pages and add the short codes for you when you install WooCommerce.

Once these are setup they will allow you to display products, manage your shopping cart and checkout to buy items.  All of these special pages come pre-translated so when you switch languages, your cart , store front and checkout pages will all be displayed in the supported language.

Creating Products

Creating a product in WooCommerce is much like writing a blog post in WordPress.  You add a product description in the normal post editor, then add product specific information such as price, size, colour options , SKU, stock levels etc.

You can add one or more product image and save your new product and publish it much like you would a blog post.

Once published it will automatically appear in your store page.

Translating Products

If you are familiar with translating content in WPML then translating products will be very easy for you.

There is the familiar WPML user interface where we can create a base language product then add translations in our desired language.

Translating Products

Multi Currency Pricing

There are two ways to price your products in multi currency.  You can manually set the price per translated product or you can setup an exchange rate table so that product prices are automatically changed.

A currency is associated with a language and when you switch to that language products are automatically shown in the new currency.

Enable Multi-Currency

Considerations

Some things you should take in account when running a MLMC e-commerce site.

Fluctuations in exchange rates – exchange rates go up and down, you should keep your finger on the pulse of your various exchange rates and update as required.  The exchange rate table is static and will require management so you don’t lose out if there is a big change in rates.

Multi Currency fees with your payment provider – you should factor in payment processor fees when pricing your products, you will probably have to pay a fee when you withdraw your money if you bill in a foreign currency.  For example I’m based in the UK but most of my clients are from the US, I bill in dollars but when I withdraw money from Paypal as GBP I am hit with a foreign currency exchange fee.

See It In Action

Here is a quick screencast video to show you what a MLMC shop with a single product looks like.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/YRkLjK62BUw

Want To Learn More?

I’m running a live webinar where I will showing you exactly how to setup a MLMC e-commerce site. The webinar is on Tuesday 21st May at

• 9am-10am Pacific
• 12pm-1pm Eastern
• 5pm-6pm London
• you can select your local time zone when you click the link below

The things I will teach are:

• Installing WooCommerce & WPML
• Making WooCommerce Multi Langauge/Multi Currency ready
• Adding multiple currencies and associating with languages
• Adding and manageing products in multiple languages
• Integrating your store with paypal for multiple currencies
• Q & A where I answer any questions you have about MLMC e-commerce

To join the webinar click on the link below and leave your details, the webinar is at no cost, but slots are limited to 100 so book your seat now.

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/517260176

About Neil Matthews

Neil is the owner of Webpolyglot.com, a web development agency specialising in mulit language websites.  Neil is also recognized as one of our Expert WPML Contractors

We identified two more cases where variable product synchronization can fail and took care of them. You will need this update if you use variable products in your store.

Variable Products (Variations)

The following table shows the supported combinations for product variations:

• Translating with global attributes and automatic currency conversion: Works
• Translating with custom attributes and automatic currency conversion: Works
• Translating with global attributes and manual currency conversion: Works
• Translating with custom attributes and manual currency conversion: Works
• Duplicating with global attributes and automatic currency conversion: Works
• Duplicating with custom attributes and automatic currency conversion: Works
• Duplicating with global attributes and manual currency conversion: Not recommended
• Duplicating with custom attributes and manual currency conversion: Not recommended

The two methods “Not recommended” wont work because when you make a change to the original product, the price in the duplicate will be automatically updated by WPML.

There is more information about all this in our documentation page.

Known problems

Changing the slug of an attribute causes the taxonomy to loose language information. We have reported this bug to the WPML team and we will be addressing it soon.

Using non-ascii characters in the attribute slugs causes synchronization not to work.

Download WooCommerce Multilingual

The major new feature in WordPress 3.6 is the post formats. This is a new (and much improved) GUI that makes the existing post formats feature a lot more usable and fun.

When you create posts in WordPress 3.6, you will notice a very visual selection for their format.

The new Post Formats in WordPress 3.6

Selecting a different post format will customize the Post Edit screen, adapting it to the inputs different formats require.

WPML 2.8.2 synchronizes post formats between translations. This feature is enabled by default. You can change it in WPML->Translation Management->Multilingual Content Setup, under the Synchronize posts format option.

When enabled and you translate the content, all translations will have the same post formats.

The new post formats put an emphasis on media in posts. To make the best of it, you should also use WPML Media Translation, so that your media files will be available in all translations.

Download and Test with WordPress 3.6

WPML 2.8.2 is a recommended update for anyone. If you are already testing your sites on WordPress 3.6 (which you really should), please let us know how WPML is working for you. We have put WPML 2.8.2 through extensive testing on the recent WordPress 3.6 beta, but every testing that you do is great.

If it’s all working for you, we would love to know that. If you see any glitch, tell us, so that we can fix it before the final WordPress 3.6 is out.

You can get WPML 2.8.2 using our Installer plugin or from your WPML.org account.

Coming Next to WPML – Front End Translation via CRED

While we’re talking about new releases, I want to tell you about the next major development for WPML – CRED Frontend Translation.

Using CRED Frontend Translation, you will be able to translate content and edit translations from the front-end pages. Translators and proofreaders will see the familiar WPML translation controls, appearing on the public pages of your site. These translation controls are visible to admins and translators only and not to visitors.

Front end translation controls

They can click on the familiar + and ‘edit’ icons, create translations and edit translations.

We think that you would love CRED Frontend Translation because:

• You can create your own translation interface, matching your site’s content types
• Translators can see what they are translating and edit a lot more conveniently
• You can get your site translated without anyone working in the WordPress admin

CRED Frontend Translation needs WPML Translation Management module, so you will need to have the Multilingual CMS package. You will also need to have CRED, which you can buy by itself or with the complete Toolset package. When it’s ready, we’ll be offering Toolset at a reduced cost to WPML clients.

It’s in beta right now, getting ready for a first release. During beta, you’ll get CRED for testing without having to pay for it.

We welcome you to join our WPML Testers Team, and be the first to “taste” the new features and products. Just add a comment and we’ll get in touch with you.

If you want to review the entire Multilingual ready list of themes and plugins you are welcome to view it here:

• Multilingual Ready Themes
• Multilingual Ready Plugins

Also, if you’re a theme or a plugin author and you want to make it compatible with WPML, we welcome you and ready to help: you can test your theme or plugin with our Multilingual Compatibility Testing Tool. It easily tests compatibility with WPML. You are welcome to contact us at go global program page.

This update addresses this issue and it’s only required for PHP 5.2 users.

Download WooCommerce Multilingual

I want to take the chance to tell you about a major upgrade to our documentation page:
http://wpml.org/documentation/related-projects/woocommerce-multilingual/

So, if you are building hospitality sites today, or you’re planning to build them in the near future, I’d love to learn from you.

Fill our survey about multilingual hospitality sites »

Themes for Hospitality Sites

Are you using specialty themes, or taking ‘general purpose’ themes and adapting them?

Our friends over at Hermes Themes are building themes that are dedicated to hotels and are all multilingual-ready. If you are using other hotel-specific themes, or are building your own, tell us.

And, what features do you look for in your hotel themes?

Booking and Channel Management Systems

To me, the toughest part in a multilingual hospitality site looks like the reservation system. I bet that many who read this blog know how to show hotel rooms in different languages.

But when it comes to room availability and order process, I’m not sure how things work.

• Are you using a 3rd party system for order management?
• A WordPress plugin to handle it?
• or maybe, the hotel staff does it manually?

To add to it all, there’s what’s called “channel management”. Channel Management allows hotels to synchronize their listings across different travel websites, like Expedia.com and Booking.com. When a customer books a room, the availability is immediately updated on the different travel sites, so that rooms cannot be double booked.

I know of a few dedicated systems for channel management, but I haven’t seen real integration with WordPress for any of them.

Are you familiar with this? What are you using for your booking and channel management?

Guest Contact and Communication

Last, but certainly not least, I’m curious about how hotel staff (your clients) handle visitor inquiries. Once you have a translated website, people would assume that they can contact the hotel in these languages. Yes, it’s great to have hotel staff that speaks different languages, but it’s not always possible. If you want to get business from Europe and Asia, you’ll need staff that speaks some 10 languages. That’s tough even for pretty large hotels.

• Do your clients restrict the site languages to those languages that they speak?
• Do they use Google translation, or another form of free instant translation?
• Anyone using human translation for this communication?

Fill Our Survey

I know that it’s a lot to ask and I’m not sure that we can help with everything right away. The more you give us, the more we have to work with. When we learn about different themes and plugins that require compatibility, we can get in touch and get things moving. If we’re talking about third-party system, we can certainly approach them and see if they’re interested.

Fill our survey about multilingual hospitality sites »

…and help us make WPML better for you!

If you want to review the entire Multilingual ready list of themes and plugins you are welcome to view it here:

• Multilingual Ready Themes
• Multilingual Ready Plugins

Also, if you’re a theme or a plugin author and you want to make it compatible with WPML, we welcome you and ready to help: you can test your theme or plugin with our Multilingual Compatibility Testing Tool. It easily tests compatibility with WPML. You are welcome to contact us at go global program page.

In this release we continue to cover more areas in attribute synchronization. We now take care of copying also the order of (both global and custom) product attributes and categories, and we translate attributes even if they arent used in variations. Variation ordering is also taken care of properly.

The cart widget is properly refreshed when currency is switched, both filter navigation widgets are now working and a few other minor bugs have been fixed.

Download WooCommerce Multilingual

If you find any problems, please report them to our support forum and we will take care of them. Make sure to check first our greatly improved documentation; it has undergone a major upgrade with this release.

Also, if you’re a theme or a plugin author and you want to make it compatible with WPML, we welcome you and ready to help: you can test your theme or plugin with our Multilingual Compatibility Testing Tool. It easily tests compatibility with WPML. You are welcome to contact us at go global program page.