Hello,
I’m relatively knew to designing with Webflow and I am working on a very simple brochure website that I’d like to have two versions of it in both English and Spanish.
I’ve taken a look at Weglot and other third-party apps recommended by Webflow, but I wonder if there exists a possibility of using the CMS to access data inside a .CSV file that includes the copy/text sorted by language?
In my mind, I have a small dropdown menu on the nav bar with both English and Spanish choices, and upon clicking any of them, the website switches the CMS data based on the selected language through JavaScript, maybe by using “hreflang” attribute.
I just have no idea how to approach this as it’s my first time experimenting with CMS for this particular use case.
On the other hand, my only solution is to duplicate the pages and translate them, but I am not sure if that’s the most professional solution.
Has anyone been successful with a more efficient solution using Webflow?
Webflow has promised multilingual features will be under development this year, but not much has surfaced publicly yet.
You could wait, if that’s an option, or if you want to do this now, you could approach this using the CMS approach you’ve outlined.
Depending on the specifics, I’d probably use a separate collection for each language, with otherwise the same structure. This lets you split the paths more understandably, e.g. /de/blog/... and /en/blog/... and that simplifies your hreflang metas a bit.
Just to be clear, you’re going to encounter problems here- sitemap issues, page language issues, hreflang meta issues… so you’ll be writing some script if you want to fix these things, and just hope for the best.
Thank you for the reply.
So what would be the best solution to this? I also want the most optimal approach for SEO. How do other professionally-made websites do it? do most of them use a third-party plugin?
Yes, note that those aren’t ideal ideal either, and they add cost- but they solve many of the SEO and content-admin issues.
Polyflow was the best designed I’ve seen, however I’m not certain of its current status. I’ve also seen a new one mentioned in the forums, I think it’s called Linguana?
Weglot is the long-time king of the hill but has a few known SEO limitations, and some think it’s overpriced.
You’ll need to explore and come to your own conclusions on what works for you.
Okay, I guess for my current use case I might not need the third-party plugin. But, on larger and more complex projects I’ll implement the third-party solutions then.