While WPML already has a system in place to handle generally saved options to the wp_option table of your WordPress database, this will not work well with Theme Blvd themes. The reason is because we save our options within one entry in the wp_options table, opposed to each one being saved individually as simple text strings. This allows us to more efficiently pull theme options every time your website loads, without having to access your WordPress database to fetch each option.
So, the primary purpose of our WPML Bridge plugin is to integrate your theme’s options with your WPML-configured languages.
How it Works
After you’ve setup WPML and then installed our plugin, you will see something like this when going to Appearance > Theme Options in your WordPress admin panel.
Your Theme Blvd theme will now associate all of your previously-configured theme options with the default language setup in your WPML settings. Whether you keep our WPML Bridge plugin or not, your default theme options will remain. — These will always be your theme options and are saved in your WordPress database the same way whether you’re using our WPML Bridge plugin or not.
Matching the Default Language’s Options
While allowing you to setup theme options for each language can open doors to many theoretical possibilities, we realized it can also be a little daunting for simply changing just an option or two, or working with your site while it’s still in development. To help with this, we’ve added in way to match the options of your current language with the default language.
You will see a button on your Theme Options page that says “Match Default Language” and when you click it, all current options associated for the language you’re working on will be wiped and will be set to match whatever options you set on your default language. This button will only appear when you’re editing the theme options associated with a language that is not your WPML default language.
A good approach to take, in order to utilize this, is to first setup all of your Theme Options for your default language in the way you want. Then, after you’re finished, match each other language’s options to your default language before configuring its unique options.
Potential Possibilites
We are not multilingual ourselves, and so it’s difficult for us to imagine what you all out in the real world will come up with in order to utilize these features. Although, it is interesting to think of the possibilities.
- Styles – You do obviously have the ability to select different stylistic options based on the language. This might be overkill depending on the theme you’re using and what style options it comes with. However, it might be logical to apply different minor stylings for each language within the “Custom CSS” option.
- Fonts – It’s possible that your fancy Google font being used for English doesn’t come with characters for Arabic. So, for example, with setting up different theme options, you could potentially just choose a different font for your Arabic readers.
- Logo – Now here’s an interesting one you won’t be able to do with many other WordPress themes. If you have a standard WordPress blog where you feed the site title to the top of your site, then WPML already has you covered, but what about in our world of using WordPress for sites that we place an image logo at the top? Well, now you could potentially use different image for each language, if you wanted.
- Custom Homepage Layouts – When using the Layout Builder to create a custom layout to assign to your homepage via your Theme Optiosn page, you can now assign a different custom layout for each language. (Learn More)
- Social Icons – Many of our themes come with a way to setup Social Icons form your Theme Options page. It’s possible that certain social icons apply better to different cultural demographics based on your site’s languages. So, this will give you a chance to serve different social profiles and services to your different audiences.
- Text String Options – This is probably the most obvious and we probably should have lead with it. If your theme’s options has any text string outputs, this will give you a chance to change those based on the language.
- Footer Options – Depending on how you’ve chosen to setup your footer options, you have a few possibilities here, as well. If you’re using floating widget areas, you can call completely different ones, if you wanted, for each language. If you you’re inputting custom content, then you can adjust this for each language.