Best practices for localizing WordPress content?

Question

A client asked for a blog that will have localized content (i.e. en.blogname.com for English content, fr.blogname.com for French content, etc). Being new to building such a blog, we recently discovered WPML and qTranslate, which look perfect for our needs.

Do you have any best / recommended practices for setting up a multilingual blog?

At this point, we don't envision the need to have the WordPress software translated, but if you've found that to be a good idea, we would love to know. The authors will all be multilingual (English + one other language), but it's conceivable that non-English speakers may be hired later.

Answer 1

The best way is without plugin - i set WP3.0 with multisite; the first blog is a dummy to rewrite the uesers to right blog with his language, a small script in the theme to rewirte ro the right language; i see in the browser-language of the users and rewrite; the second is the default blog, the third blog is another blog and so on - olso it is possible to swich the blog from post tot post with core function of WPMU and you can add own functions to post draft in other blogs from published post in a blog

update for your question:

Sorry, my english is bad

I install wp3.0 or MU and the first blog, the admin-blog has an small theme, one template with a small function. The function read the browser-language of the users on the frontend of the domain and sitch then to the other blog of this install, she have this language as default.

All other blogs are for different languages and one blog is for one language. So it is possible to has great tables for the different posts and all works with WP core methods. WPMU has enough function to switch from post to post in different language. Give it a post in blog english and link to post in blog german, than i write this with an own plugin in the postmeta of the post. So it is possible for the users, he can switch on the frontend from a post in other language. Also you can use wp_insert_post() to add an draft in blog german maybe, when you publish in blog english.

I hope you understand my way - works great and i have many customer with this solution.

Update, pulled from the comments 12/22/2012

We have created a free plugin to do this:
wordpress.org/extend/plugins/multilingual-press
bueltge Dec 22 '11

Answer 2

I have used qTranslate as well with success and seen it implemented in couple of blogs.

but the problem with using any of the 2 plugins is that with the wordpress updates, you have to wait for the new releases of plugins versions then update. With other plugins, like a contact form, rating system or stuff like this , you can disable them temporary, find another replacement, but for something as important as this, you can not afford to do so.

so it is kinda tricky on the long run to use any of the 2 plugins to manage the main component of your blog aka your content and security concerns could arise.

That is why i support bueltge's method, try to implement it and good luck with that :)