What’s the world’s most global blogging platform?

By On January 12, 2010 · 2 Comments

I’ve been writing this blog since 2002.

Back when I started out, I wasn’t sure how long I would stick with this “blogging” thing and I didn’t really want to make any investment in software (besides time).

I tried a few different platforms before settling on WordPress.

It was free — certainly a selling point. But it’s wasn’t the easiest blog to install or maintain in the early years. ISPs weren’t exactly offering it as a one-click install back then. And don’t get me started on the challenges of updating plug-ins.

But WordPress has certainly come a long way.

wordpress_georgian

I was surprised to learn that, thanks to volunteer contributions, WordPress is now available in more languages than Blogger or TypePad.

  • TypePad is available in nine languages.
  • Blogger/Blogspot (owned by Google) is available in 49 languages.

WordPress is available in more than 60 languages.

Not bad.

And now WordPress is now launching a software translation platform: GlotPress.

Makes sense. Offer to others the very platform you used to localize your software.

I’ll be interested to see how this new platform develops.

 
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2 Responses to What’s the world’s most global blogging platform?

  1. Romain says:
    January 13, 2010 at 8:54 am

    Hi John,
    Please allow me 1 or 2 comments.

    “It was free — certainly a selling point. But it’s wasn’t the easiest blog to install or maintain in the early years. ISPs weren’t exactly offering it as a one-click install back then. And don’t get me started on the challenges of updating plug-ins.”

    Those difficulties still exist today, and that’s one of the main differences with TypePad, which doesn’t expect you to have technical skills, to know how to maintain a server and a WP installation, including the plugins.

    We also need to pay attention when we say that WP is free. The software is, but you need to pay for a server, and I don’t speak about the time you spend to maintain it.

    Anyway, let see how GlotPress can help.

    Best
    Romain

  2. Dwayne Bailey says:
    January 13, 2010 at 9:55 am

    GlotPress is interesting. But I’d rather bank on using a tool like Pootle.
    http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/pootle/index

    Pootle is open source, it has been in development for a number of years, it’s used by many other people, it’s feature rich, etc.

    Pootle works with XLIFF and PO and PHP files can be easily transformed so that Pootle can read them. This allows people to work online or offline.

    Pootle also has features like TM and glossary support which are usually ignored or forgotten by most people who believe that by giving someone a textarea you can make them a translator.

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