I build English/Spanish sites as well and do things a bit different. My business handles all updates for my clients so, we update the sites manually. I create two versions of the websites, so that the logos go to the respective home page and the menus are all in Spanish and/or English.
I don’t have a SP/EN site that is using a blog yet, but I would imagine using RW/Writer which I use in other sites would work fine for the blog portion. the client would just have to translate it. We do provide translation services for our clients that do not speak Spanish or in one case English very well. They could update using RW/Writer, notify us of the new post and we could go in, translate and add the Spanish version.
Our philosophy is a bit different by trying to handle all aspects of the website for our clients. It keeps our clients close and we earn redesigns easier w/o bidding projects. We issue a website maintenance plan each year to our clients priced on the amount of time we spent the year prior on their site. Usually ends up being $300 - $500 typically. All those pennies add up. Our approach has differentiated us in the market and now some of our competitors have reached out to us to manage sites for their clients.
I do not concur with that, at least in regards to RapidWeaver. It might be possible with an “Enterprise Ready” CMS to maintain different text and content inside one tool and generate the different language pages from there, but that is something no CMS in the RW area is capable to do.
From there on, the only practical solution (if you do not want to duplicate pages by yourself) is either using RWML (all inside one offline project file) or Localizer Stack (possibility to maintain languages online in CMS systems).
And again pragmatically: It is useless if you have the best website structure from SEO / Google Crawler perspective, if you do not have content.
The right content excels any other technical SEO adaption.
I had 2 separate sites, actually 3. That makes adding a 4th or more language a breeze.
Maintaining became a nightmare.
Then I switched to RWML: it was the best choice!
At the beginning it looks cluttered in edit mode, but You get familiar with it.
Then You discover maintaining: great!
Yep, https://instacks.com/localizerstack/ from Instacks is good. As far as CMS goes, I currently use Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, Pagelime.com, Total CMS, Pulse CMS and http://inlinecms.com. I have used many others and I must say that the Visual Composer for Wordpress is impressive. The biggest thing is determining the need you have.
Depending upon the complexities of the CMS blog I would consider Total CMS from Joe Workman and Impact as well. Localization is easier as mentioned up top. I have used basics like Armadillo in the past successfully and most often Wordpress.
I would mainly consider the advantage also of considering a NONCMS or NOCMS approach. This would be more of the TotalCMS or PulseCMS examples. You must be careful of backup data, but import, export is a cinch, you should become more familiar.
If basic and fast then Pulse CMS or Total CMS, if more tweaky then Armadillo or reaching into Ghost or Joomla. Stacks give folks lots of opportunities. I have made multiple websites where I have also taken full advantage of something that has been out for a while now. PageLime.com and Joe Workman PageLime stack set.
Hare to be more specific, because there are tons of options, but capabilities on a tweaky level and menu navigation quick modifications and use case, it’s about becoming more familiar as you are with the Wordpress platform. That to me is more important than jumping into quick without spending more time experimenting yourself with the considering CMS process.
I’m not a web design company. I’m upgrading sites that I am involved with. So no need to consider anything further than what I can manage myself. I am hoping that by using RW I’ll be able to spend less time fighting off intruders. I’v had two WP sites infected even though I used all available security plugins to protect and kept everything up-to-date.
My needs are simple really and I think Amadillo (which handles multiple blogs), write the blog in Google (handles our remote CMS needs), and then pulling them in to display. So doable.
If I understand correctly then I agree. I have subscribed to both training courses I have found and there’s a ton of really good tutorial videos to learn from. I’m especially amazed at the comprehensive coverage from RapidClassroom.
Awareness of what is available, competency through playing and testing, and then finally actual designing
And RW and stacks + online learning will handle everything!
Totally understand. We mostly use Foundry from Elixir Graphics in RW. You may want to consider changing the hosting company if you’re getting hit like that. The only time one of my sites was hacked was because the “cheap” hosting company my client picked never kept anything up to date. We use Chillidog Hosting for all our hosting. Best of luck to you.
I’m using hostgator for all the sites. Although recently, with my latest site migration, it has been a frustrating experience and the support has been horrible. The worst is how slow the response time has been.
It will be easier to migrate in the future once all my sites are non-WP.
And trust me I followed each and every step they sent me to a tee. And still…
http://redtruck.us/hosting-providers/
This is a list of hosting providers that we don’t like working with and charge $130/hr every time we have to work with them.
Chillidog does WP sites very well and his service is top notch.
Hi @truegold would recommend too RWML, it’s really working great for a multi-lingual site. Have a look at the multi-lingual website that I have make for a client BensaGlobalTrading, done with RWML
Cheers
The multilingual site is a topic that will not fade a way. I got a lot of help and want to chip in for others as well.
Here’s my first site with Voyager Pro theme + RWML + HTML Contact stack: waldegroup.fi
Though I am doing a major overhaul for content and SEO, and it is not a big leap to move using project file per language and utilizing domain subdirectories. An old school option for those who are considering building multilingualsite.
Any one knows if RW is going to have a plugin that enables to change URL-paths like I have understood WP is having? That would solve URL side when using stacks that utilize cookies for language switch?
Our approach has differentiated us in the market and now some of our competitors have reached out to us to manage sites for their clients.
