Many of our clients request English and Hebrew websites and ever since WordPress 3.0 made WordPress Multisite a breeze to install, we’ve been using it so that clients can manage all their sites from one Dashboard.

Logically, our clients want the Hebrew website to have a Hebrew Dashboard. However, out of the box, WordPress Multisite defaults to English, and needs a bit of tweaking to localize the Dashboard into the language of your choice.

(Friendly warning: if you don’t change the Hebrew Dashboard into Hebrew, the post/page Editor is really problematic and usually messes up alignment and styling on the site.)

So here’s how to localize a site within WordPress Multisite into Hebrew, but you can apply the same general rules for any language.

1.

Download Hebrew WordPress from the Hebrew WordPress website and copy the language folder or use this zip file of the language folder (from WordPress version 3.2.1).  Upload the language folder into you’re site’s wp-content folder. 

2. Add the following to wp-config.php: define (‘WPLANG’, ‘he_IL’);

3. Go into your Network Admin Area by clicking in the top right corner on Howdy, YourName and click on Network Admin

4. In the left Navigation menu, click on Sites > All Sites

5. On the Hebrew site, click Edit

6. Once you’re in the Edit Site area, click on Settings

7. Once you’re in the Settings tab, search for the line “WPLANG” and fill in the language reference code such as he_IL.

Or, as Andrea pointed out, you can go into the Hebrew site’s General Settings and switch the language from there.

That’s it!

This post was originally published at How to localize a Hebrew website’s Dashboard with WordPress Multisite on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

I just published a Hebrew website with a Hebrew installation of WordPress. I first built the site locally, and then moved the database over to the client’s site.  When I tried to log in, I got this beauty of an error “You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page” in Hebrew, of course.

The advice I found in the WP Support Forums were mostly related to WP Database Prefixes.  I had changed the prefixes, so I thought this was the problem.

But, after numerous exports, imports, and hair pulling, I started reviewing everything I had done during the database transfer. And, I remembered a very tiny detail.  The  UTF-8 tag in the wp-config.php file.

Before moving the database over, I modified the wp-config file and removed the UTF-8 tag. BIG MISTAKE. You only need to remove the UTF-8 code to get Hebrew to work on an English installation of WordPress.  Since this time it was  a Hebrew installation, I didn’t need to remove the UTF-8 tag.  And, like magic, once I put the tag back in, I had sufficient permission to enter the site and be on my jolly way. Thank Goodness!

This post was originally published at Hebrew Installation, UTF-8 and Sufficient Permission in WordPress on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Ryan on the WordPress development blog (which is running on Prologue, very nicely I might add) has basically congratulated the “Farsi and Hebrew translation folks” for their hard work making the WordPress admin look good in right-to-left languages.

I’d like to take this opportunity to say that the Hebrew version of WordPress exists mostly, of not completely,  thanks to Ran Hartstein. Ran always makes sure the Hebrew speaking audience gets their Hebrew version of WordPress as quickly as possible. Of course, the extended Israeli WordPress community adds a lot of value to the usage of WordPress, with many right-to-left themes, plugins, and the vibrant and helpful wpheb google group.

This post was originally published at Ryan at WordPress mentions Farsi and Hebrew developers for their work on WP admin on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Here’s a contact form that comes in a Hebrew and Spanish version. We used it over here. It does the trick, and is easy to configure.

SCF2 Contact Form » LaptopTips

This post was originally published at Contact form WordPress plugin includes Hebrew and Spanish on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Update February 20, 2008:

The Hebrew no longer works on this blog, even with the trick I described below. Ido Fishman left a comment with a link to this section of the Codex that describes a gut-wrenching, hair-whitening way to get different languages to work on one WordPress blog. Since I don’t need Hebrew here, I’m going to pass on that and leave things as they are. In the meantime, if anyone finds a less stressful way to get multiple languages to work on a WordPress blog, please let me know.

The Hebrew version of this post is directly below the English, so scroll down my Hebrew-speaking friends…

????? ?????? ????? ???? ?????? ??????, ?? ???? ???? ???? ?????? ?????…

In an earlier post I described a problem I was having with Hebrew on WordPress 2.2. I found that every time I clicked on Save or Publish on a Hebrew post or Page, all of the Hebrew letters turned into question marks. After trying a million different ways to fix it, I gave up and downgraded the blogs that needed Hebrew to version 2.1.3, and then everything worked fine.

Well, I found the solution! Liew Cheon Fong at LiewCF has nonchalantly posted a simple solution that works, as if it’s not the most brilliant thing ever! (Ok, I exaggerate, but still…)

Here are his directions:

1. Open and edit “wp-config.php”
2. Find: define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
3. Remove “utf8?, so it becomes: define('DB_CHARSET', '');
4. Save and upload “wp-config.php”
5. Done. Your WordPress blog should display characters correctly.

Liew has saved me a lot of hair-pulling! Thanks Liew!

Now the Hebrew:

???? ????! ??? ??? ??? ?????? ????? ????? ?? ????? ???? ?????? ???, ????????? ?? “????” ?? ???? ?? ????, ?? ??????? ?????? ?????? ????. ???? ?????, ?? ?? ???? ???? ??? ???? ????? ?????? ???????? 2.2. ?? ??? ???? ????? ??????!

?? ??? ??? ?? ????? ???? ?????? ?? ????? ??? ????? ?? ?????, ???? ???????:

1. ???? ?? ????? wp-config.php.
2. ???? ?? ????? ??? ????: define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8') – ?? ???? ????? 8.
3. ???? ?? ?????? “utf-8″ ??? ??? ???? define('DB_CHARSET', '');
4. ????? ????? ??? ???? ??? ??? FTP.
5. ???!

This post was originally published at Getting Hebrew to work on WordPress 2.2 on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.