Multilingual Content Management System

In this tutorial, we will be discussing the advantages of having a Multilingual Content Management system on your website and how to use the multilingual feature introduced in Strapi.

Introduction to Multilingual Content Management System In Strapi

CMS (Content Management Systems) is a software interface used for adding, editing, and deleting content on a website.

A CMS does not just manage the text and image content displayed on web pages but also help in building the design of websites, monitor user sessions, handle searches, collect visitor comments, host forums, and much more.

A multilingual CMS as the name suggests is a website/Web application that has content that can be accessed in more than one language. Multilingual CMS tackles one of the most challenging content management obstacles faced today, the language barrier. Engaging an audience from different language backgrounds can be a problem considering multiple languages are spoken all over the world.

Strapi is a popular open-source, easy-to-use Headless CMS available. Strapi improves the quality of content created, managed, and published to any digital platform or device. It gives a very consistent experience and you can integrate it with any technology.

It is a free self-hosted and open-source product, meaning you get to save your money while getting a premium content management service. Strapi being an open-source project means that it is always under improvement by the open-source community. Plugin and new exciting features are constantly being made to the project producing a great product.

Following a release of the Internalization (i18n) Plugin, Strapi now allows users to create, manage and distribute localized content in multiple languages, called "locales". This feature allows admins on Strapi to create several localized (Multilingual) versions of their content. The developers build localized projects by fetching and producing the right content depending on the language understood by the audience.

Types of Multilingual Content Management Systems

Choosing the right CMS that supports multilingual capabilities is essential for managing content across multiple languages effectively. CMS platforms generally fall into two categories: open-source options and proprietary solutions.

Open-source Multilingual CMS Options

Open-source CMS platforms offer flexibility and customization, allowing developers to tailor the system to specific multilingual needs. Some popular open-source options include:

• WordPress with Multilingual Plugins: Enhanced with plugins like WPML or Polylang, WordPress manages content in multiple languages, enabling content translation and language-specific site settings.
• Drupal: Drupal has robust built-in multilingual features, supporting content translation, multilingual configurations, and localization, suitable for complex websites.
• Strapi: As an open-source headless CMS, Strapi allows developers to create custom multilingual content structures, define content types, and utilize APIs for efficient localized content delivery. With its Internationalization (i18n) plugin, managing content in multiple languages becomes streamlined.

Proprietary Multilingual CMS Solutions

Proprietary CMS solutions are commercial platforms that come with dedicated support and advanced features designed to handle multilingual content out of the box. Examples include:

• Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): AEM offers comprehensive tools for managing multilingual content, including translation workflows and language-specific site versions.
• Sitecore: Sitecore provides extensive multilingual support with features like language fallback and translation management, maintaining consistent content across regions.
• Kentico: Kentico includes built-in multilingual capabilities, allowing content management and translation within a single interface.

Choosing between open-source and proprietary CMS options depends on your specific needs, budget, and technical expertise. Open-source platforms offer flexibility and community support, while proprietary solutions provide specialized features and professional services.

Advantages of having a Multilingual Content Management System on your website:

• Availability to everyone

While English might be the most spoken dialect globally, there are many other popular languages understood by a big population. Having content on your website only available in English will keep a large number of non-English speakers from accessing your website. Most internet users are likely to skip past non-localized websites and prefer sites that offer multiple languages. This automatically puts the user in a ‘cultural comfort zone’ due to them being able to navigate, understand and connect with the website in their local dialect. Your customers want to feel comfortable and connected with the brands they do business with. Having your Website’s contents translated will make your web presence more welcoming to the target region.

• Increased Financial Productivity

E-commerce websites are likely to reach more customers if they have Multilanguage CMS incorporated into them. Customers reading content in their native vernacular are more likely to make purchases on your website. While everyone is competing for attention among the one-billion-plus e-commerce websites available on the internet, gaining traffic and making sales can become challenging. Having your content available in various languages puts you ahead of your competitors. With multilingual websites, your content will reach potential clients driving up your sales.

• Time and Cost-Effective

  Getting content online can be a time-sensitive process. To save time and money lost in translation, it would be important to choose a Content management system that is multilingually built. This ensures your users will receive the content they need in their preferred language instantly without having to spend time translating. This will result in a proper customer user experience and satisfaction.

• International Search Engine Optimization

  Your website's online success highly depends on its ability to rank highly on a search engine results page. The higher up your webpage’s rank on a search engine, the more likely your consumers will see them first directly translating to a good impact on your sales eventually. Additionally, most key search engines like Google, are developing the capacity to run searches in foreign languages. Having pages of your site available in those languages increases the chances for your site to be picked up in searches by potential customers.

• Improves Brand Image

  Having your website available in multiple languages is a flex enough that your brand is global enough. Having your content available in multiple languages implies a high level of sophistication and inclusivity for the customers who associate with your business.

Challenges faced when creating a Multilingual Content Management System for your website:

While creating websites with multiple languages has many advantages, there are downsides faced when doing the translations. Translation means more than just swapping words for another. When translating, one must account for language standards that apply to other languages to avoid losing meaning in translation.

For Multilingual websites to work effectively, the translation process needs to be done correctly by a professional who understands the local dialect to ensure effective implementation of localization practices. This can be quite a costly process as the cost of getting a professional to do the work can be high.

Building Multilingual Websites With Strapi

Let's go through the steps to get a project up and running with Strapi. Detailed documentation of computer requirements, how to create and start a Strapi project.

Setup

Installation using Yarn :

1 yarn create Strapi-app my-project

Or Npm:

1 npm create-strapi-app my-project --quickstart

This automatically creates a new Strapi app called my-project using an interactive command-line interface for you to choose your preferred settings.

• Here is the full guideline to the full set up on your local machine

• Head to http://localhost:1337/admin/ on your web browser, and set up an admin user. account

Once you have done that, you should have a dashboard that looks like this :

• Creating a collection with Strapi

Click on Content-Types Builder on the left panel on the dashboard, and it will give you an option to create new collections. Click on it and give it a name of your preference then click continue to proceed. (I named mine Tutorials)

• Next, you have to add fields for the collections. We will specify each field name with the language code as a suffix in the field name just to differentiate between each language since we’re building a Multilanguage website.

  For example, If we need to specify the field ‘title’ for the English language then the field name is b named as ‘title_en’. In the same way, we can mention the French language as ‘title_fr’.

The title and description along with the language code as the suffix for the field name for all fields should be similar. After adding all the fields, click on Save.

Here is the list of all field names created for this multilingual website: Field Name Field type

title_en text

title_fr text

title_de text

title_sw text

description_en rich-text

description_fr rich-text

description_en rich-text

description_sw rich-text

image media

So far, This is how it should look so far ;

• The next step would be to add a few articles to the created collections. In the left side panel, under Collection types, Click on ‘Tutorials’ and then click on add New Tutorials.

  As per the defined language suffix, type the content in its specified language field as shown ;

Title_en: Importance Of Multilingual Websites Title_fr : Importance des sites Web multilingues Title_fr : Bedeutung mehrsprachiger Websites Title_de : Umuhimu wa Wavuti za lugha nyingi

The same process is done for the Description fields as well. This will help in differentiating different languages to display in the front-end by their field name. We can easily differentiate with the help of the language code provided in the Suffix.

• After it's done, click on Publish to make your content available for use.

• After adding a few Tutorials, we need to provide the ‘Tutorial’ collection permission to send the API requests to fetch the data from Strapi. For That Click on settings then Roles and finally Public.

Usage

Now we have our headless CMS set up, complete with a database for the website. The next step is fetching that data on the front end.

• Scroll down to the Permissions and check the find and find one box. Save it and we have successfully given permissions to our Tutorial collections. This will grant you permission to use the published tutorial on your website front-end.

Is Strapi the Best Multilingual CMS Solution for Your Business?

Determining whether Strapi is the ideal multilingual CMS for your business depends on your specific needs and objectives. Strapi offers a flexible platform for developers and content managers, but it's essential to assess how its features align with your requirements.

Evaluating Strapi's Benefits

• Flexibility and Customization: Ideal for developers requiring a customizable CMS that can adapt to specific multilingual strategies.
• Headless Architecture: Enables content delivery across multiple platforms and devices, perfect for omnichannel experiences.
• Active Community and Support: Benefit from community plugins and contributions, with ongoing improvements and updates.

Considerations

• Technical Expertise: Strapi v5 requires development knowledge for setup and customization. Non-developers might prefer platforms with a more straightforward setup.
• Comparison with Other CMS Options: Platforms like WordPress with multilingual plugins may offer easier setup but might not provide the same level of flexibility and scalability.
• Scalability and Performance: Assess how well Strapi handles high traffic and large volumes of content, especially if you anticipate significant growth.
• Cost: Evaluate the total cost of ownership, including hosting, maintenance, and any additional services.

By comparing these aspects, you can determine if Strapi's strengths align with your business goals or if another CMS might better serve your multilingual content needs.

Conclusion

Implementing a multilingual Content Management System is essential for businesses aiming to reach a global audience effectively. Strapi's Internationalization (i18n) plugin simplifies the process of managing multilingual content, offering flexibility and efficiency.

By following best practices and leveraging the right tools, you can overcome the challenges of localization and deliver a consistent, engaging experience to users worldwide.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have learned how to set up and build multilingual sites with Strapi as the back-end. But if you are a beginner and/or want something fast and easy for creating dynamic content on your site, I would definitely recommend this Strapi as a good Content Management System.

This article is a guest post by Kelvin Kipkorir. He wrote this blog post through the Write for the Community program.