Plugin Review – WPT Custom Mo File
WordPress Plugin Directory Location – https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpt-custom-mo-file/
Version tested: 1.0.0
Ever wanted to change the default wording of your WordPress/BuddyPress site? WPT Customer Mo File will allow you to do that.
The standard for WordPress translations is that each plugin comes with .pot translation files for each language that is supported. You can modify these files in order to create your own local translations of the plugins in the form of .po and .mo files as desired using the Poedit tool, WPT Custom Mo File allows you to upload your custom translation (.mo) file into WordPress thus creating your own custom translations.
What this is particularly useful for is when you wish for content strings within your default language to be phrased differently.
Installing Poedit
You can download and install Poedit by visiting the Poedit website and downloading the installation files then running the installer. Poedit is free to use.
Installing WPT Custom Mo File
As with all plugins listed in the WordPress Plugin Directory, it is very easy to install WPT Custom Mo File, you simply go to you Dashboard and select Dashboard>>Plugins>>Add New, then type in WPT Custom Mo File in the search bar. the plugin will be displayed and you can click on Install and then Activate.
Changing BuddyPress Labels and Messages
The first step is to take the BuddyPress master language file (buddypress.pot) and to make your own language file.
Copy /wp-content/plugins/buddypress/buddypress.pot to your local computer and rename it to buddypress-en_US,po
This gives you a master po file that you can edit.
Next, open Poedit and open buddypress-en_US.po
You will see that All of the available messages and labels are listed within the Poedit application, you can scroll through these and find the messages that you would like to change, then it is a case of entering the required translation into the Translation box.
Once you have completed this process, selecting save will create a new file called buddypress-en_US.mo, this is all of your specific translations saved into one file.
Next to upload your translations to your site, you will use WPT Custom Mo File, to do this, from the go to Dashboard>>Tools>>WPT Custom Mo File. Here you can select the Plugin to translate (text domain) and the language you are translating. In this case it is BuddyPress Text Domain and English US as the language. Then you can select the local .mo file to upload and select “Add New Rule“.
Once you have added the rule, it will appear in the configured rules list and you have options to delete the rule or deactivate it.
Conclusion
Managing translations used to be a pretty complex and laborious job, copying files to and from your site, with WPT Customer Mo File at least the site management aspect of this task is now a lot easier, the plugin is simple to use and has the added benefit that you can temporarily turn off the translation.
My Star rating for this plugin is 8 out of 10, since it only automates half of the task – It would be nice if the plugin also handled bringing the master translation file to your computer.
My Star Rating
Other Peoples Reviews
1 Comment
fxbenard · January 11, 2017 at 1:21 pm
Hi fxbenard from WPT speaking. Thanks for your review, we’re glad our plugin is helping you out.