Multisite Language Switcher

by Dennis Ploetner

Description

A simple, powerful, and user-friendly plugin that adds multilingual support to your WordPress multisite installation, whether using multiple subdomains or folders. Multisite Language Switcher allows you to effortlessly manage translations for posts, pages, custom post types, categories, tags, and custom taxonomies.

The plugin uses flag icons from FamFamFam. Thanks to Mark James for his great work. In addition, I would like to thank Jürgen Mayer for creating the plugin’s banner.

Please, don’t forget to rate this plugin! 🙂

Translators

Thanks to all the translators for their great work.

German (de_DE) – Dennis Ploetner
Italian (it_IT) – Antonella Cucinelli
Dutch (nl_NL) – Alexandra Kleijn
Brazillian Portuguese (pt_BR) – Coolweb
Spanish (es_ES) – Andreas Breitschopp
French (fr_FR) – Andreas Breitschopp
Russian (ru_RU) – Andrey Vystavkin
Ukrainian (uk) – Victor Melnichenko
Croatian (hr_HR) – Brankec69
Romanian (ro_RO) – Armand K
Polish (pl_PL) – Kamil Frejlich
Lithuanian (lt_LT) – Ovidijus Pukys
Catalan (ca_ES) – Joan López
Czech (cs_CZ) – Rastr
Hungarian (hu_HU) – RobiG
Georgian (ka_GE) – Jas Saran
Greek (el) – Christoforos Aivazidis
Serbian (sr_RS) – Web Hosting Hub
Turkish (tr) – Alican Cakil
Armenian (hy_AM) – Yeghishe Nersisyan
Bengali (bn_BD) – Md. Nazmul Huda
Japanese (ja) – ThemeBoy
Swedish (sv_SE) – Erik Bernskiold
Traditional & Simplified Chinese (zh_CN & zh_TW) – DrBenson
Arabic (ar) – Mohamed Elwan
Norwegian (nb_NO) – Ibrahim Qraiqe
Bulgarian (bg_BG) – Vencislav Raev
Mexican Spanish (es_MX) – Fernando Mata

You can translate this plugin on translate.wordpress.org, or if you prefer and have created your language pack, or have an update of an existing one, you can send me your Gettext PO and MO so that I can
bundle it into the Multisite Language Switcher. You can download the latest POT file
from here.

Installation

Use the WordPress admin to install the plugin from there or
Download the plugin and uncompress it with your preferred unzip programme and copy the entire directory in the plugin directory of your WordPress blog (/wp-content/plugins)
Activate the plugin in your plugin administration page (by the network administrator on all the blogs or by the blog administrator for each particular blog).
You need to activate the plugin once in each blog, by setting the configuration in Settings -> Multisite Language Switcher

Now you can:

Connect your translated pages and posts in Posts -> Edit or Page -> Edit
Connect your translated categories and tags in Posts -> Categories or Post -> Tags
connect your Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies across languages
use the widget, the Gutenberg block, the shortcode [sc_msls] and/or a content_filter which displays a hint to the user if a translation is available
you can find also a shortcode for the widget [sc_msls_widget]
optionally you can place the code <?php if ( function_exists( 'the_msls' ) ) the_msls(); ?> directly in your theme files

Review the Multisite Language Switcher Website for more information.

Screenshots

Plugin configuration with labels
Plugin configuration with flag
Posts list with label
Post list with flag
Edit post with label and select2
Edit post with flag and dropdown
Non-styled output of the widget, block and shortcode

Faq

I have no language options in the General settings.

You might read first WordPress in your language.

But I’d like the interface to stay in English.

You can choose the language of the dashboard in the settings of your user profile.

Do I need a multisite?

It’s up to you – of course. But yes, if you want to use the Multisite Language Switcher.

How can I automatically redirect users based on the browser language?

The Multisite Language Switcher does not redirect the users automatically. I’m not sure if the plugin should do that. You might check out this jQuery plugin or this approach with a theme
if you need such functionality.

How can I add the Multisite Language Switcher to the nav menu of my blog?

Please check the add-on MslsMenu out.

I want to have the languages in an HTML select. How can I do that?

Please check the add-on MslsSelect out.

Can I call a function to get the language of the page the user is viewing?

Yes, you should use the WordPress API function get_locale() but you could also use code like that

use lloc\Msls\MslsBlogCollection;

$blog     = MslsBlogCollection::instance()->get_current_blog();
$language = $blog->get_language();

If I have another question, where can I ask?

Please visit the MSLS website or use the WordPress support forum for more information.

Reviews

Great plugin and awesome support!

By Becki Beckmann (becki) on September 25, 2025

I think we still need to wait some time before WordPress core implementation for Multilingual sites. See WordPress roadmap

I've tried WPML in the past but did not really like it. Haven't tried Polylang plugin yet

In my opinion the best setup for multilingual sites is a wordpress multisite setup.

Then this great Multisite Language Switcher plugin is the way to go.

Simply loving it and also top support deserves a 5 * star rating

please keep up the good work you're doing!

greetings
Becki

Such a useful plugin, and top-rate support

By delythchandler on October 22, 2024

I always use this plugin when creating multi-language multisite wordpress sites.

Easy to set up and very useful.

Top-rate support too

Great Multilanguage Plugin

By Gunther H. (highlive) on May 7, 2024

There is a learning curve and i think someone should make a tutorial how to implement the language switcher and menu and how to work with it. But after all a great plugin.

Fantastic plugin

By MattV on November 13, 2023

This is a fantastic plugin: it does exactly what promises to do, it's not bloated with extra features and it's been around for a long time.

I can't thank the plugin author enough for developing this plugin, maintaining it for years and having the patience to deal with occasional 1-star reviews from people who can't be bothered to read the docs.

Superb!

By joodill on November 7, 2023

I'm not keen to write reviews, but in this case I was so overwhelmed of this plugin's simple features and ease of use that I had to. This is by far THE easiest multisite multilanguage plugin I ever tried. Over the years I tested several multilingual approachs (plugins for standalone WP sites, multisite "premium" plugins, country domains, etc.). But this here exceeds all my expectactions for its simplicity. Multilanguage should not be an option in WordPress, but part of the core, out of the box. This plugin deserves a 10 of 10. Two thumbs way up! Thank you for this peace of art.

Plugin not showing under settings menu

By blumentalbayern on July 8, 2023

Couldn't find the plugin under the setting menu

Great plugin but needs one functionality

By Paweł Nowacki (pawelnow) on March 29, 2023

I am very happy with the plugin's operation - it is extremely easy to use and does not cause any problems.
Works with WordPress Multisite great!

However, there is a feature missing from the plugin that has already been popping up on the web, namely support for reciprocal hreflang (return tag: which is missing Missing x-default).

When I audit any page with this plugin, I get "Missing reciprocal hreflang (no return-tag)", you can find info at Ahrefs site ""Missing reciprocal hreflang (no return-tag)" error in Site Audit"

I will be very grateful if this functionality is added 🙂
As I can see this needs to add one line of code 🙂

Greeting from Poland
Paweł

Great work!

By timholz on March 10, 2023

highly customizable, high performance, indispensable – thanks a lot. theo

Awesome plugin

By Apple.R (Red Apple) on January 30, 2023

Thank you for creating and maintain the great plugin. Thank you so much.

Wonderfull

By Angeles Portillo (enana) on October 27, 2022

Does what it promises and does it well

Changelog

This project has a separate Changelog.