WPRealty 3.0 Multi Lingual
I wanted to come in this morning and make a quick post about a feature we are wrapping up in WPRealty 3.0 for those following the project. For those who do not know, WPRealty 3.0 is the next level in the series of WPRealty builds that will be better suited for IDX and RETS type real estate sites. From the start of the project almost three years ago, it has been our goal to create an open source GNU/GPL plugin for WordPress that would allow Realtors to escape the proprietary nonsense and limitations imposed upon them by commercial providers.
WPRealty has been downloaded 2,700 times in the past 4 months and may very likely exceed 3,000 by weeks end. We know of and have reviewed some 80+ sites using the plugin and with active licenses on valid domains we get a number that comes in just below 350 blogs with the plugin installed. Not to toot our own horn but this is substantial enough to suggest that the new round of updates and features should make this solution one of the best open source solutions for WordPress anywhere on the web.
After looking at the ordering stats and the many languages that represent the client base we decided to take the multi-lingual characteristics a bit more serious than in the past by adding in a feature for language support that really isn't like any product we have encountered. From the start, I have always hated the idea of maintaining language files in order to get things done with multi lingual projects but we could not escape the requirement that language support needed to be effective, editable, expandable and easy to customize. Language files fit that bill but require too much knowledge from end users regarding PHP. Errors will certainly surface if we started down the road by encouraging people to modify the language files of the plugin. I'll explain a bit further.
Multi Lingual WordPress Real Estate Website
What we opted to do instead of using language files was make each of the language variables part of a language record in the database. Now with the new language table, end users can literally create a new record for a new language, edit those language variables used throughout the system and present those language changes based on user criteria. Adding a template tag like { wpr_lang_2_url } would net the link that switches the language setting in your WPRealty portion of the blog. By allowing site owners to create their own language records, we can expand some of the functionality in ways that do not require a great deal of effort to have a truly multi lingual real estate website.
More on this as the demo becomes available.