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Wordpress Multi Languages: 5 Plugins To Build A Multilingual Website

cosmos — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:41:31 +0000

If you are using Wordpress as a CMS, then you probably want to present your content with multiple languages. Recently, I came across a Wordpress blog that presents their content with three different languages, so I decided to investigate the methods and plugins to turn Wordpress into a multilingual website, and share my findings with WDB’s readers.

Maintaining a multilingual website is not easy. The best way to present multilingual content to your visitors is to allow them to switch between different languages anytime. So, the plugin needs to take care of this and links different languages’ content together.

Beside linking the content, the URL of the translated content also important. There are two different ways to present your URL:

You can have the same permalink for the translated content, and add a language flag at the end of the URL (ex: www.domain.com/multi-language-article/?lang=en, www.domain.com/multi-language-article/?lang=es, www.domain.com/multi-language-article/?lang=zh).
The translated content will have absolutely different URL.

So, how to choose your URL is yet another main consideration before you launch the multilingual website? In SEO point of view, having an absolutely different URL will gain better advantages Later on, we are going to look into 5 different plugins to manage your multilingual Wordpress website. These plugins have their pros and cons, so choosing the best plugin that suit your needs in the most important.

1. WPML

In my opinion, WPML is the most powerful Wordpress multilingual plugin. WPML has a complete startup guide for new users and its side-wide navigation adds top navigation with drop down menus, breadcrumbs trail navigation and also sidebar navigation. WPML is rather too powerful for a simple multilingual website. You can have a lot of options and configurations through the backend admin menu. Adding a non-support language is not that easy. For example, when I tried to add a language which is not supported by default, I need to go to my MySQL backend and manually add in the SQL queries. Hopefully future version will make this easier.

2. qTranslate

qTranslate is yet another powerful multi languages Wordpress plugin. It has advantages over WPML because it allows users to add new languages to the system through the Simplistic Configuration Page. In terms of URL structure, qTranslate provides three modes to make your URLs pretty and SEO friendly:- everywhere compatible ?lang=en, simple and beautiful /en/foo or nice and neat subdomain en.domain.com.

3. ZdMultiLang

You can define multiple languages and translate posts/tags/categories using the interface that will be added to your blog’s administration panel. Adding a new user-defined language is very simple through the admin panel, but there are a couple of important things that you should check before adding a new language. For example, the language code and the language permalink. You can read more about this is the plugin website.

4. Language Switcher WordPress Plugin

Setting up the language switcher plugin to work with your Wordpress site does take some work. The official website provides a very comprehensive startup guide which covers installing, theme and plugin modifications, translating and Q & A.

5. xLanguage

xLanguage is a full featured plugin which allows you to blog in different language. It works for blog post, page, tags and categories. xLanguage uses tags to differentiate different languages and serve the content to the user based on their selected language.

10 Qualitative Tools to Improve Your Website

cosmos — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:10:56 +0000

If you run or manage a website, you probably have experience with a web analytics package (like Google Analytics). These tools are great at answering the quantitative questions, the “what?” questions that every good webmaster should ask themselves. Questions like, “How many visitors did I have last month?”, “How many conversions?” and so on. However, they aren’t so great at giving you qualitative insight, the “why?” questions that are just as important. Questions like, “Why is my bounce rate so high?” and “Why are conversion rates so low?”.

The list below represents a compilation of some of the best qualitative tools out there, all of which you can start using to improve your website today. These tools will help you understand how users interact with your site and, most importantly, why they act the way that they do.

Qualitative Tools to Improve Your Website

This list is certainly not comprehensive, nor is it meant to be. However, it is meant to give you a sampling of the wide variety of qualitative tools available. So what are you waiting for? Pick one from the list that you haven’t used before and give it a try, I guarantee you’ll discover a new way to improve your site.

01. Concept Feedback

The Rundown: Concept Feedback is a brand new community for designers, developers and marketers. Members can upload a concept (a website, logo, advertisement and more), specify an objective and start receiving constructive, actionable feedback from other members. A system of reputation points keeps users honest and helps prioritize advice. Sensitive concepts may also be posted privately for client or co-worker review. Best of all, it’s free!

The Benefit: Getting a second opinion on your work is never a bad idea. Concept Feedback hosts an active community with a lot of talented members willing to give you quality advice. Oftentimes, the reviews spark new ideas and provide a unique perspective that can help you improve your projects. The interface is easy to use and rather addicting!

Official Link

02. Userfly

The Rundown: Userfly gives you the ability to watch videos of real users on your website. By adding a single line of JavaScript to your code, you can see every mouse movement and click your visitors make. The interface is easy to use and well designed. You can try it for free, but you’re limited to 10 captures per month. Basic plans start at $10 per month.

The Benefit: While watching videos of your users may seem a little creepy at first, it can provide you with insights that you would never have come up with using a quantitative analytics package. The first time I used it, I noticed a user get stuck on a page with a bad link. His mouse wandered back and forth until he finally abandoned ship. Needless to say, I quickly corrected the issue.

Official Link

03. Five Second Test

The Rundown: Just like it sounds, Five Second Test is a “simple online usability test that helps you identify the most prominent elements of your user interface”, according to Angry Monkeys, the founding company out of Melbourne, Australia. Once you’ve posted a visual, random visitors can take part in a test where they are asked to write down the top 5 things they remember from your piece after only 5 seconds.

The Benefit: The concept is great, and the tool is easy to use and very simple. If you get enough people to take your test, you start to see some interesting patterns, including what people noticed most, and perhaps more importantly, what they didn’t. The only problem is, after 45 days, I only had 12 results. This could stem from a lack of users, or an overabundance of concepts. So, if you do try this tool (and I recommend it – it’s free!), make sure to take advantage of the invite tools to give your concept more visibility and better results.

Official Link

04. Usabilla

The Rundown: Usabilla is a nice tool that allows you to collect feedback on wireframes, mockups or webpages. Participants point and click to share their opinion using markers and notes. Usabilla provides visual feedback as well as the reports and statistics to analyze the results. In their own words, “Usabilla provides you insight in the attitude and opinion of your users.” Although it is currently in beta, it’s also free, so get it while it’s hot!

The Benefit: The great thing about Usabilla is that it provides visual feedback. The tool is easy to use and administer, plus you can customize the questions asked based on your needs. One drawback is that, like Five Second Test, you are required to invite your own participants to provide feedback. If your network is relatively small, you may not be able to come up with the results you’re looking for.

Official Link

05. Loop11

The Rundown: Loop11 is an online tool for gathering unmoderated usability testing. In a nutshell, the system is an overlay on your website which allows you to present specific tasks on your website to participants. For example, you might say, “Find the contact information on this website”. The user can then navigate the site and either select “Task Completed” or “Abandoned”. Reporting tools give you the ability to see statistics like task completion rate, time per task and most common navigation path. Sound valuable? It sure is, but it also comes with a $350 price tag. Fortunately you can try it once for free.

The Benefit: Loop11 provides the context that both Userfly and ClickTale lack, however, by its nature, participants must be invited and are not live visitors. Despite that, Loop11 helps you understand typical behavior on your website and is great for improving navigation and conversion paths. If nothing else, give the free trial a spin and see what you can discover about your site and how people use it. What you find may surprise you.

Official Link

06. UserTesting.com

The Rundown: Like Loop11, UserTesting.com provides unmoderated usability testing, except this time they provide the users. The premise is simple, you provide the demographic you’re looking for, the number of users you would like and what tasks you want them to perform on your site. When the testing is over, you can access videos (usually 15-20 minutes each -watch a sample) that allow you to watch and listen to the participants, as well as read a written summary describing the problems they found. Prices start at $29 for a single user.

The Benefit: UserTesting.com is great because it makes live user testing affordable. I recently used it on one of my websites and came across some interesting insights that I would have otherwise overlooked. It’s not fully disclosed as to how they find their participants, but fortunately they provide a one-year money-back guarantee.

Official Link

07. Crazy Egg

The Rundown: CrazyEgg is an advanced heatmap tool. For those of you unfamiliar with heatmaps, they provide a visual representation of where your visitors are clicking. Over time, you start to see how your users are interacting with your site. With CrazyEgg, you add some JavaScript to your website and setup a test for a specific page on your website for a defined amount of time. Once the test is complete, you can view the page in a variety of formats, including overlay, confetti, list and heatmap (see a demo). Basic plan starts at $9/month which includes 10,000 visits across 10 different pages.

The Benefit: Unlike the heatmap offered in Google Analytics, CrazyEgg shows each and every unique click on your page. It also allows you to segment clicks by traffic source, giving you some powerful information. The best thing about a visual is that you can come to an educated conclusion quickly, without wading through data and numbers. I was able to make some minor, but important, changes to my homepage after just a few minutes in CrazyEgg. So whether you use CrazyEgg or not, you should give heatmaps a chance.

Official Link

08. Kampyle

The Rundown: Kampyle is a small tab that sits at the edge of each web page, allowing you to collect, analyze and manage your website visitor’s feedback. The feedback form is easy to use and its simple structure lets you organize feedback in to various categories, like bugs, suggestions, compliments and site content. Real time reports let you analyze the data and a built-in response system makes it easy to respond to customer inquiries. The free package includes 1 form and 50 items. Basic packages start at $99 per month.

The Benefit: Whether you are interested in actively administering usability tests or not, Kampyle is a passive tool that gives your users the opportunity to provide feedback on each page of your site. With Kampyle’s reporting tools, you are able to get feedback 24/7 from real visitors. Having it present on every page gives you a better understanding of your website, it’s bright spots, as well as needed improvements. Unfortunately, for those of you with a pretty website, the large orange tab might not be a welcome addition.

Official Link

09. ClickTale

The Rundown: Like Userfly, ClickTale gives you the ability to watch videos of real users on your website. However, ClickTale also provides a number of extra features, including heat maps, link analytics and form analytics. The reporting tools are impressive, and go in to great detail, sometimes more than you need. While they do offer a free plan, paid subscriptions start at $99 per month.

The Benefit: One drawback, and common complaint about both Userfly and ClickTale, is the lack of context (meaning audio or user intent). While it would be ideal to understand why a user chose the path that they did, something is better than nothing. In the end, ClickTale provides a lot of bang for the buck if you can take advantage of the data it provides.

Official Link

10. Google Website Optimizer

The Rundown: Google Website Optimizer (GWO) is a free website testing and optimization tool that lets you test and optimize site content and design. Upload a few variations of a web page and GWO will serve them in an alternating pattern to your visitors. Behind the scenes, GWO’s reporting tools are monitoring which combinations lead to the highest conversion rates. At the end of the test, you’ll have a definitive result, allowing you to continually optimize your designs and improve site performance.

The Benefit: While GWO may not be a purely qualitative tool, it should be one of the most important in your toolbelt. Using some of the tools listed above, you can come to better conclusions about which designs and layouts should work best, but GWO provides a real-life litmus test. GWO takes the guesswork out of design and gives you a virtual laboratory to test your assumptions.

Official Link

35 Tutorials for Creating Website Layouts in Photoshop

cosmos — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:51:18 +0000

Photoshop is an excellent tool for creating attract websites. Fortunately, if you’re looking to brush up your skills or learn some new tricks for creating layouts and designs in Photoshop, there are plenty of tutorials specifically for this purpose.

The 35 tutorials featured here will each take you through the process of creating an example website design in Photoshop. The are all different types of websites and styles of design represented, so you should certainly be able to find some useful tutorials from this group.

Create a Sleek, High-End Web Design from Scratch

Create a Dark Themed Web Design from Scratch

Carbon Fiber Layout

Making Your Own Portfolio Web Page

Design a Cartoon Grunge Website Layout

Hand Drawn Layout

How to Create a Grunge Web Design in Photoshop

Photo Portfolio Web Page Layout

Photography Portfolio Layout

Creative Studio Web Page Layout

Online Photo Portfolio Layout

Sound System Studio Website Layout

Car Layout

Design a Unique Grungy Website Layout

Stylish Web Studio Layout

Professional Web Layout for Business Solutions

Computer Store Web Layout

Professional Layout for Business Company

Making a Template in Photoshop

Web Layout for Italian Restuarant

Web 2.0 Vector Layout

Design Studio Layout

Personal Portfolio Layout

Business Layout

Nature Portfolio Layout

Hosting Layout

WordPress Mockup Layout

Photographer Portfolio Layout

Web Design Layout Tutorial

Software Layout

Design a Clean Business Layout

Old Paper Layout

Interior Design Layout

Gaming Layout

Video Sharing Layout

The Ways To Optimize Your Website For Bing

cosmos — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:21:51 +0000

From Entrepreneur.com: After all the rumors and last-minute botched deals over the years, it’s finally happened: Microsoft and Yahoo have reached an agreement to merge their search services in hopes of finally being able to compete with the grand search overlord, Google.

Under the new 10-year, $275 million agreement, Microsoft’s new Bing search engine will power Yahoo Search, while Yahoo Search Marketing will be powered by Microsoft AdCenter.

So what does this mean for small-business owners? Well, keep an eye on your Yahoo rankings because they are going to change once the Yahoo search engine is replaced by Bing.

As for your Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns, the good news is that your ads will now be seen across a greater number of websites. If you’ve been running campaigns through Microsoft AdCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing, once the change takes effect you will only have one campaign to manage, which will free up your time to work on other search marketing strategies.

If you’ve never bothered with Microsoft’s search offerings, the best way to get ready for the coming changes is to learn how to optimize your site for Bing and become familiar with the rules and regulations of Microsoft AdCenter.

Since its launch, Bing has proven itself to be very amenable to webmasters’ optimization efforts. That means that with a little tweaking you can get your site listed at the top of Bing’s search results quickly. And if your site is brand-new, you can probably get it indexed faster on Bing than on Google, so you might want to focus your optimization on Bing first. Then, once you’re ranked well in Bing’s listings, you can tweak your optimization efforts to meet Google’s more stringent requirements.

Here are five easy ways to get Bing to notice you:

The older, the better. Bing places a lot of emphasis on the age of a domain, so if you’re just starting out, you might consider buying an older domain in order to get your site a higher ranking.
Titles are important. Bing seems to place a lot more emphasis on title tags than Google does, so make sure you use your best keywords in the title tags of every page on your site.
Text is terrific. For Google, the amount of text you have on a web page doesn’t play a huge role. Not so with Bing, which seems to place a higher value on pages that have at least 300 words.
Outbound links are OK. Google has always seemed to frown on the number of outbound links you have on a page. But Bing actually seems to like them–at least for now.
Backlinks are even better. If you’re frustrated because all of your efforts to get links pointing to your site haven’t gotten you anywhere with Google, then good news! When it comes to backlinks, Bing’s attitude seems to "the more, the merrier"–as long as the links are coming from relevant sites.

So there you have it–five easy optimization tips to help you score a good ranking with Bing. Bear in mind that this is a huge change, and will take months to fully take effect. But the sooner you align yourself with Microsoft’s search policies, the better positioned you will be to ride the wave of change to the top of Bing’s–and Yahoo’s–search results.

How to increase traffic to your Website or BLOG

cosmos — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 04:49:50 +0000

follow these 7 simple steps 1. First of all you must stick to your topics this will show your knowledge about the topic & people will always be attracted towards your site in search of the information regarding the particular topic . 2.Then you should update your blog Everyday or with a gap of some days this will show your sincerity towards the topic & would help to establish your Site or Blog in that particular Field. 3. The 3rd thing usually seen in most of people is that they get frustrated of not getting Comments or Replies to their posts & finally the stop writing. But this should not happen because whenever we are writing or Updating our Website our Rank on many Popular search Engines continue to increase & we start getting traffic within 1 to 4 Months. 4. You MUST use Pinging sites such as i) http://www.pingomatic.com/ ii) http://www.pingoat.com whenever you update your Blog .This will help in Better Rankings in Search Engines like Google. 5. You Must give Powerful comments on the Blog or Site of others & always put a link to Your site .This will impress the owner of the site & the other people commenting on the sites . This will help to increase traffic to your Site. 6.You Should make your own communities at sites like http://www.mybloglog.com/ when other people will join your community it will help in greater traffic to your site & don’t forget to join the communities of other people. 7.The last step is that You should Never leave the Spririt & should Continue writing & Finally you will be able to get the desired amount of traffic & will be able to generate $$Revenue$$ from your site…