Poedit

Another month, a new release. I just tagged WP Mollom 0.7.3. It’s got the shortest changelog up to date, but the translations that are included make up for that.

• fixed: multiple moderation would incorrectly state ‘moderation failed’ due to incorrect set boolean.
• added: german (de_DE) translation
• added: italian (it_IT) translation

Many thanks go out to Alexander Langer and Gianni Diurno for sending me their translations. With only 88 strings, translating the plugin doesn’t take that much time. So, If you could spare the time and you know your way around POEdit (or you’re willing to learn), just go out there and make this plugin easier to use for non-english speaking users of WordPress!

Of course, if you don’t use the plugin already: you can get it right here!

I just tagged major version 0.7.0 of WP Mollom in the WordPress Plugin Repository. Why a major leap (0.6 > 0.7)? Over the past month or two, in between my traveling and all that, I got my plugin taking full advantage of the great translation support in WordPress. So, it’s possible now to translate (or localize) the plugin in your own language.

Translation is very important because not everybody on the planet speaks english. Localization helps make WordPress more accessible and enables more people to pick up blogging.

WordPress, and the plugin, use GNU Gettext support for transparant and easy translation. Through userfriendly tools like POEdit, it’s very easy to translate all the strings which are contained in the interface of the plugin. All translations are bundled in a single .mo file which you need to upload with the plugin file. The code will pick up your translation depending on your WordPress settings. Of course, you can distribute the .mo file yourself or, even better, send it to me so I can bundle it with the plugin. Of course, where credit is due…

How can you help? If you are proficient in your own particular native tongue, you could pick up a tool and start translating. If you want to know more, you can read up on this tutorial. I’ve made a – provisional – example tranlation for Dutch which is stored in the wp-mollom-nl_NL.mo file that accompanies this version of the plugin.

Translating WordPress has always been very easy through gettext and tools like poedit. The availability of a whole range of languages and dialects that can be used to replace the standard English messages in WordPress is one of the factors that has contributed to the success of the CMS.

Of course, this support for translation is also available for plugins and themes. Since language shouldn’t be a barrier, I’ve been building support for translations into WP Mollom over the past weeks. The idea is that one can download a translation libary (a .mo file with all the translated strings in his language) and install it without a hussle.

So, today I tested the whole translation support fairly thoroughly and, well, there’s this rub. If I install the plugin using the local MAMP installation on my iBook G4, all is fine. The plugin gets translated in Dutch nicely. But if I try to enable the translation on line, on this blog and the testblog running on this domain, it doesn’t budge. Everything in the on line WordPress setups get translated fine… except for the plugin. I’ve tried switching off all the plugins, veryfing and re-veryfing paths, code, translation files,… and I still don’t see what’s really causing this.

So, I would like some help and see if other people are experiencing the same problem. If you are in for a challenge and you use translation support, dowload the development version of the plugin and give it a go. Just drop the wp-mollom/ folder in the plugins/ folder and make sure you have translation support on your WordPress installation activated.

Drop me a line if you have suggestion! Thanks!