English is the default language for your WordPress blog, but since many of us do blogging in other languages than English, it can sometimes be useful to make our blog change language. Here you will find out how to change the language of your WordPress blog easily!
The first thing you will need to do is to download the language pack for WordPress in the language you want to use. Sometimes you will find the language files separately, while other times you downlodad the entire WordPress package in that language and then you will find the language files located in the /wp-content(languages/ folder. What you need to do is to take those language files and upload them using for example FTP to the server where your current WordPress installation can be found. Once connected enter the wp-content folder and create a directory named languages. Upload the language files to the folder and 50% of the job is already done.
Modify config.php
The second part of the job that needs to be done is to modify config.php. The file can be found in the WordPress root directory. Download it to your computer and edit the file in for example Notepad or Pspad. Scroll down until you fine the following line:
[stextbox id=”grey”]define (‘WPLANG’, ”);[/stextbox]
Here you will need to enter the codes for your language. The codes are normally very easy to find and to guess, but you can also find on the page where you download the language pack from. If you have downloaded an entire WordPress package you can also find the code in the config.php of the WordPress package you downloaded for the given language.
Here you can find some examples of what the code looks like for some languages.
define (‘WPLANG’, ‘en_GB’); (English – Great Britain)
define (‘WPLANG’, ‘da_DK’); (Danish)
define (‘WPLANG’, ‘fi’); (Finnish)
define (‘WPLANG’, ‘fr_FR’); (French)
define (‘WPLANG’, ‘vi’); (Vietnamese)
Once you have made these changes you need to upload your modified config.php to the server and overwrite the existing file. It can be wise to make a backup of the original one, in case you make some mistakes (which you shouldn’t really do). Now it is time to return to your browser and your WordPress admin and installation should now be in the language you requested.
[stextbox id=”info”]Even though you have WordPress installed in a certain language your theme will still remain English. Often you will need to download language pack for the different themes to make strings and words used by the theme available in your language.[/stextbox]
Hope you have enjoyed this guide. If you have further information, advises or input, please write a comment to this article about changing the language of your WordPress installation.
