Getting Started with PerfLocale

You activated PerfLocale and probably noticed a new PerfLocale menu in the WordPress sidebar. Here’s what changed under the hood:

• Your existing site became the “default language”. If your site was in English, English is now the source language — nothing about your existing posts changed.
• A few database tables were added (nine of them: languages, translation groups and links, strings and their translations, translated slugs, content hashes, the background-job queue, and a migration source map). They’re prefixed with wp_perflocale_ and stay tidy — we covered this in the Privacy docs.
• No URLs broke. Until you add a second language, your site behaves exactly as before. PerfLocale is dormant until you give it something to do.
• The PerfLocale dashboard nudges you to step 2. Until you add a language it shows a single notice — “No active languages found. Add a language to get started.” — linking straight to the Languages screen.

Go to PerfLocale → Languages. You’ll see one row already — your default language — with a DEFAULT badge. Click Add Language and pick from the dropdown (194 locales bundled). Repeat for each language you want.

What each field actually does

• Language — the locale; controls date formats, plural rules, and which WordPress translation files load.
• URL slug — what appears in the URL (e.g. de in example.com/de/about/). Edit this if you want deutsch or de-de instead. Keep it short.
• Active — a checkbox (“Active – enable this language on the site”). Leave it off and the language gets an Inactive badge on the Languages screen: you can still translate into it, but it isn’t exposed publicly yet (useful for staging a new language). The default language is always active.

Open PerfLocale → Settings → URL & Routing. You’ll pick one of four layouts. This is the only setting that’s genuinely painful to change later — it determines every URL on your site, so think before you click.

Beneath that, leave “Hide default language prefix” on (the standard look). You can read the rest of the routing options in URL & Routing later — the defaults are sensible.

Open any post in the WordPress editor. You’ll see a new Translations panel in the right sidebar (Gutenberg) or the side column (Classic). Each language you haven’t translated yet gets a + Create button; click it and a new draft post is created, linked to the source. Once a translation exists, the button becomes Edit.

Three ways to fill it in

1. Type it manually. The new draft is a normal WP post — edit title, body, blocks, anything.
2. Auto-translate first, edit second. Tick Auto-Translate on Create in the Machine Translation settings and the draft is pre-filled the moment you click + Create; or open the draft and use the block toolbar’s Translate from (source language) to fill it from the source. PerfLocale routes through DeepL / Google / Microsoft / LibreTranslate (enable the Machine Translation addon on PerfLocale → Addons, then configure it at Settings → Addons → Machine Translation). You then refine.
3. Hand it off. Give a colleague the built-in Translator role so they can edit translations without full admin access, or export the post as XLIFF for an outside agency and import their file back — see Export & Import.

Publish the translation when you’re happy. The translated post is now live at example.com/de/about-us/ (subdirectory mode).

You have a translated post, but visitors can’t reach it yet. Drop a switcher into your header, footer, or menu. Three ways, pick the one that fits your theme:

By default the switcher renders as a flag-and-name dropdown. Style and behaviour are configurable — see Language Switcher for the full reference.

Open your site in a private/incognito window (so you’re not authenticated as admin) and walk this list:

• ✓
  The switcher appears. Visit any page on the front-end. The switcher should be where you placed it, with all active languages listed.
• ✓
  Clicking a language navigates correctly. Click German — the URL should change to /de/… (subdirectory) or de.example.com/… (subdomain). The translated post should load.
• ✓
  Page source has <html lang="de"> when viewing a German page. Right-click → View Source → first line. This signals the language to browsers, screen readers, and Google.
• ✓
  Hreflang tags are in the <head> — one <link rel="alternate" hreflang="de"> per active translation. This is how Google knows about the alternates. Search the page source for hreflang — you should see one entry per language.

Once the basics work, these are the most-asked next steps. None are required — pick what you need.