I need help with theme translation on my live WordPress website
I have been building a custom WordPress theme on my test hosting environment. Right now I want to make my theme multilingual but I have only done translations before on localhost using poedit software.
I am currently using Polylang as my translation plugin for this project. My question is whether it’s actually possible to translate theme strings when the website is already live on a remote server instead of working locally?
Has anyone done this type of translation work directly on an online WordPress installation? What would be the best approach for handling the translation files in this situation?
Any guidance would be really helpful.
Yeah, you can definitely do theme localization directly on a live server, but I’d set up a staging environment first if you can. Last year I dealt with something similar and found it way easier to handle translations through the WordPress admin instead of messing with FTP transfers. Since you’re already using Polylang, you can do most of the translation work right in their interface - no need to manually edit .po files. Just make sure your theme’s got the text domains set up properly with __() and _e() functions. I’d also grab Loco Translate - it lets you edit translation files straight from your WordPress admin, which is a game changer for live site work. Test everything on a non-critical page first though, so you don’t break anything important.
Yes, you can definitely handle theme localization on a live server. I just finished doing this myself after launching a custom theme. You’ll want to work with your theme’s language files through your hosting file manager or SFTP. Since you’ve got Polylang already set up, start by creating a .pot template file - use WP-CLI or manually pull the translatable strings from your theme files. Then create your .po files for each language and drop them in your theme’s languages folder. Make sure your theme actually loads them by adding load_theme_textdomain() to functions.php. Here’s what worked for me: translate just a few strings at a time, check how they look on the frontend, then move on to the next batch. This way you won’t break anything major on your live site. One heads up - back up your translation files because theme updates can wipe them out.
yep, totally doable! just make sure u back up ur site first. grab the .po files via FTP, tweak them on ur comp, then upload them back up. Polylang should manage everything well. good luck!