How-To:

First off I add the Redirect To First Child Template to the Theme. What this does, is look for the first Child of a Page, and redirect to it. (To controll which Child is the first, I use the plugin My Page Order.) I then create a Page for each of the languages I want, employing the Redirect-Template on them. I then add what is to be the main menu items for each language, and add them as Children of their respective language Page. If the site has any subnavigation, I simply add these as Children to the Child-of-language-Pages. Follow me?

This gives me a rough navigation along the lines of:

• ENGLISH
  • Main Page
  • Products
  • About Us
  • Contact
• GERMAN
  • Startseite
  • Produkte
  • Wir über uns
  • Kontakt
• FRENCH
  • Page principale
  • Produits
  • A propos de nous
  • Contact

(Apologies for poor translation, if any, had to use Google Translator.)

Then I add the code for the navigation to the Theme. We can’t simply use wp_list_pages() for this, as it will simply output a list like the one above. Instead we use this script where we want our navigation to appear:

<?php
// CHECK IF WE ARE ON A PAGE
 if(is_page()) {
 $currenttitle = $post->post_title.'</a>';
 $subpages = wp_list_pages('title_li=&echo=0&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&child_of='.$post->ID);

 $id = $post->post_parent;
 $sidebar_title = get_page($id);
 if($sidebar_title) {
 $prevpageparent = $sidebar_title->post_parent;
 }
 rewind_posts();

 if($subpages) {
 $pages=wp_list_pages("title_li=&echo=1&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&echo=0&child_of=".$post->post_parent);
 $pagelisting = str_replace($currenttitle, $currenttitle.'<div id="submenu"><ul>'.$subpages.'</ul></div>', $pages);
 echo $pagelisting;
 }

 elseif($post->post_parent && $prevpageparent>'0') {
 $parent = $post->post_parent;

 $id = $post->post_parent;
 $myquery = new WP_Query("page_id=$id");
 $currenttitle = $myquery->post->post_title.'</a>';

 $subpages = wp_list_pages('title_li=&echo=0&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&echo=0&child_of='.$post->post_parent);

 $pages = wp_list_pages("title_li=&echo=1&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&echo=0&child_of=".$prevpageparent);
 $pagelisting = str_replace($currenttitle, $currenttitle.'<div id="submenu"><ul>'.$subpages.'</ul></div>', $pages);
 echo $pagelisting;
 }

 else { wp_list_pages("title_li=&echo=1&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&child_of=".$post->post_parent);
 }
 rewind_posts();
} else {
// WE ARE NOT ON A PAGE, BUT A POST, CATEGORY VIEW, ETC
// SO WE HAVE TO DEFINE THE DEFAULT LANGUAGE MANUALLY AT THE END OF THE STRING
 wp_list_pages("title_li=&echo=1&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&child_of=1");
} ?>

Line 40 is important; if we’re not on a Page the script can’t traverse back to it’s source (the Page that defines the language), so we have to manually put in the ID for the language Page we want to use as default, f.i. ENGLISH, at the end of child_of=.

Also note that this script is custom made to show vertical navigation, with any subnavigation positioned directly below its Parent both when the Parent is active and when the Child is active, like this:

• Main Page
• Products
  • Software
  • Hardware
  • Upgrades
• About us
• Contact

It can be shortened and/or modified for other needs and types of navigation.

A few notes:

• It’s easiest to add the links for each language into the Theme manually. If you want to use flag icons, or simply text links, you can simply add: <a href="<?php echo get_bloginfo('home').'/english/'; ?>">English</a> and so forth.
• If you want the ENGLISH > Main Page to be the default Front Page, simply go to Settings > Reading in WP-admin and set Static Page: ENGLISH to display as Front Page.
• And most important: This won’t take you from the English Product Page to the French Produits Page by clicking the flag. When you change language, you will be redirected to the Front Page of the selected language!

Exclude Pages from Navigation

I often want to add Pages to my WordPress site, without showing it in wp_list_pages(). So far WordPress doesn’t have an option for excluding Pages from navigation menus without setting Visibility to Private (which makes them unavailable for non-logged-in users). For this we have to use a Plugin: Exclude Pages. This plugin adds a checkbox to the Page Editor; “Include this page in menus”. Simply uncheck this to exclude Pages from the page navigation that users see on your site.

Alternate Titles

When creating Pages in WordPress, what you put in the Title Field will show up both in navigation and as a title on the website. This can be very impractical, not to say downright frustrating. Often I want the menu item to be “About Us”, but the Page title to be “Who We Are”, or something of the same. Not possible in WordPress out-of-the-box. The sollution is Custom Fields. In the Page Editor, add a new custom field called “alttitle”. Then edit your page.php, and replace <h2><?php the_title();  ?></h2> with:

<?php $alttitle = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'alttitle', true); ?>
<h2><?php if(!$alttitle) { the_title(); } else { echo $alttitle; } ?></h2>

That’s it. The code checks if an alternate title is exists, and if so, displays it. Otherwise the default Page title is displayed.

Make an Alternate Title Section in the Editor

If you have hidden the custom fields section from your users, or just simply want to make the sollution more elegant, you can use the More Fields plugin i mentioned in part 1. Here’s how to do it:

1. Install and activate the plugin
2. Go to Settings > More Fields and click “Add a new box!”
3. In Box title put “Alternate Title”, and select “Left” in the Position pull-down, save
4. Click the “Add new field!” button
5. In Key put “alttitle”, in Title put “Alternate Title is used as page heading, while Title field (above) is used for navigation items”, leave the rest as is, save
6. Click “Manage post types” in the top menu, click “Page”, scroll down to the bottom and check the checkbox next to Alternate Title, save

You will now have a new editor section in the Page Editor, where you can write alternate titles for your Pages.

Basically, by removing the excess funtions the users never need, WordPress feels more complete and functional as a CMS. This might make the learning curve a little less steep.

Here’s a few things you might want to do:

Hide Admin Panels

It’s a good idea to clean up the Dashboard, and hide admin panels the users don’t need. For this I use Hide Admin Panels, a plugin that let’s you do just what the name implies; hide panels from the Dashboard main menu, on a per-user-basis. If your users don’t use Links or Comments, they don’t need to see them in the Dashboard. Likewise, if your users only use Pages, hide the Post panel, et cetera.

(This, of course, has more potenial uses. For example, if the site you’re setting up has several users, where only some (or one) of them should have access to publish news, you simply hide the Post panel for those who shouldn’t have access.)

… and rename the rest

If you’re using WordPress as a CMS, some of the admin panels have names that average users don’t necessarily relate to. Maybe you want to change Posts to News, Pages to Content, and Media to Files? This is easily done. All you have to do is download the latest language file (or the latest one in your language, if you’re using a translation), open it in a POT-editor, for example POEdit, and change all instances of “Posts” to “News”, or whatever you like. This is a tedious and time-consuming task, but the good news is, once you’re done you can reuse your new language file on all your WordPress-sites.

Read more about editing language files on Translating WordPress.

Hide Editor Sections

It’s also a good idea to clean up the Editor (for Pages and Posts), by removing sections the users don’t need to see or use. For this I use More Fields, a plugin with many uses (I’ll get back to some of them later), among them the opportunity to remove sections from the Editor. If your users don’t need Comments/Pingback, you hide that section. Likewise with Custom Fields, especially if you use them for certain functions you don’t want or need the users to see. Your users don’t need Excerpt? Remove it! You get the picture …