Tutorials & Resources Making Your Own Translation Site - Choosing Plugins

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by AliceShiki, Oct 19, 2018.

?

Do you use a plugin for next/previous chapter button?

  1. Yes!

    20 vote(s)
    16.8%
  2. No...

    35 vote(s)
    29.4%
  3. I wasn't using one, but now I will! \(^^)/

    13 vote(s)
    10.9%
  4. I'm not a translator, but I want to vote on this poll.

    51 vote(s)
    42.9%
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  1. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    The goal of this thread is to be a compilation of useful plugins for anyone that wishes to make their own translation site and doesn't really know what to put in it. I decided to make it because I didn't know how many useful plugins are out there back when I made my first translation site... Like, really, a lot of them made my life a lot easier.

    If you don't know what plugins are, they are a function available in the paid version of wordpress that modifies a specific part of your site for you, essentially making your life easier. There is a huuuuuuuuuge amount of plugins out there for all sorts of needs, some are paid and some are free.

    For the purpose of this thread, please list only free wordpress plugins, since this is meant for people that are just starting their sites and probably can't afford the paid ones.

    If you have any plugin suggestion, feel free to list it in the comments, I might add it to the first post if I like it, make sure to provide at least a short description of what the plugin does though, don't make whoever goes to the thread have to look it up themselves... Provide a link to it too if possible.

    ... Oh, and I figured I would make it here instead of in the Translator's Corner, because this is a Resource anyway, so it fits this subforum... That, and it won't get buried under requests for help in translating X sentence.

    Lastly, check @LysUltima's site, https://ebisutranslations.com too, just because a thread with advertisement isn't full without advertising https://ebisutranslations.com ! xD

    Well, without further ado, let's get to this list! \(^^)/

    Add Categories to Pages -> Self Explanatory.
    CBX Next Previous Link -> Links to previous and Next Chapters.
    Easy Footnotes -> Self Explanatory.
    WP Night Mode -> Creates a Dark (or Light) Theme for you.
    Jetpack -> Tracks Site Analytics and a bunch of other stuff that I don't remember.
    Disqus -> Alternative Comments System.
    ----------------
    WP Forms Lite -> Creates a Contact Us Page without showing your e-mail.
    Cookie Notice for GDPR -> Creates a small pop up to tell users your site uses cookies.
    Insert Headers and Footers -> Helps you put code in parts of your site.
    Ad Inserter -> Helps you put ads once you have contact with an ad company.
    Ads.txt -> Helps you put ads once you have contact with an ad company.
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Quality Of Life Plugins

    1) Add Categories to Pages

    This is a really simple plugin, it basically allows you to use categories and tags not only in your wordpress posts, but also in your pages. While this might seem mostly useless, most translators actually release their chapters as pages, and having some categories on the pages will greatly help your own organization, and might also help some other plugins function properly.

    My advice would be to just add a different category for each novel you're translating, it should be organized enough and make your life considerably easier~
    ----------------------------------
    2) CBX Next Previous Link

    I'm surprised by how unknown this plugin is, but it's very helpful. Remember those buttons at the bottom of each chapter that you see that say "<<Prev <TOC> Next>>"? Well, those are added manually by each translator... Imagine their pain when they wish to move sites, they need to change the links of every single chapter in their entire site to new ones, and then probably double check it all to make sure they didn't mess it up.

    Well... This plugin saves you all this trouble, it creates Next/Previous buttons on each page and post you made, and it sorts those by categories, so you can feel assured that it will always link to the next chapter of the same novel.

    It's not a perfect plugin though, it decides what is the next chapter based only in category and post date. So if you release your chapters out of order for any reason (for example, if you release them like this in this order: Chapter 1, 2, 4, 3, 5, 8, 6, 7, 9), it will link the next chapter as the next released chapter, not the next chapter of the order. (So, instead of linking them as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, it would link them as 1, 2, 4, 3, 5, 8, 6, 7, 9)

    This problem can be solved if you edit your post/page and change the published date of it though. So it's not a big problem... That, and most translators do release chapters in order anyway, so it would never be a problem.

    I know other plugins that do the same thing exist, but I don't know their names (and believe me, I searched), feel free to suggest alternatives if you think there are any better ones out there... Or if you just don't like this one.

    As a side note, remember that this plugin sorts your posts/pages by category, so if you don't have the above plugin, you won't be able to use this to sort your pages. (hence why I recommended it first)
    ----------------------------------
    3) Easy Footnotes

    Easy Footnotes is, as the name suggests, a very easy to use plugin to put footnotes in your novel. I highly recommend having a footnotes plugin in your site so as to have an easy way to put translation notes at the end of your chapter... Believe me, almost everyone hates translation notes in the middle of it.

    To use Easy Footnotes, you just need to put the text you want as a footnote between [note][/note] the plugin will automatically add the note to the end of the page, a button to instantly move the reader from the point the note is in to the bottom of the page, and it will also add a return button to make it easy for them to go back to reading from the point they were in.

    The plugin also makes it that if you hover your mouse over the footnote button, it will display the footnote without needing to click it... Really, it's super practical, I love this plugin.

    There is a myriad of other footnotes plugins in wordpress, I personally used another one (whose name I already forgot) for a long time, but this one is the simplest and most efficient one IMO.

    As a side note, I should mention that wordpress does have a built-in footnote function, so you don't really need a plugin to make it work. It just takes a while to learn how to make them... Also, if you copy paste your text from a MS word document (it does not work with google docs, also, I only tested this with the word 2013 version) to the visual text editor (it does not work with the pure text editor), it will automatically add the footnote for you.

    I still think a plugin to do that for you is more practical than adding the footnotes manually though... But well, it can be useful to know that it does have built-in footnotes in case you're using the free version of wordpress.
    ----------------------------------
    4) WP Night Mode

    So far all plugins I mentioned were to make your life as the translator easier... This one is actually for your readers. As the name says, this is a plugin to add a Night Mode to your site... Or a Dark Theme if you prefer.

    Actually that's half true, what the plugin actually does is to add a secondary color scheme for you to customize, so... It's even better than what the name says. If your site is already one with a dark theme, you can add this plugin to add a Light Theme for your readers that prefer it.

    It's a pretty simple to use plugin overall, you get some choices to choose the colors your site will have with the new color-scheme, and you add a button to trigger between the old colors and the new ones. Please make sure to read the installation instructions carefully, they are not hard, but failing to read them can very easily make you lost in how to activate the plugin. (I'm talking from experience here, trust me.)
    ----------------------------------
    5) Jetpack

    Jetpack is a plugin that does a buuuuuuunch of stuff, from giving you the option to change your dashboard to giving you your site stats, it also gives some wordpress themes for you to choose from and... Did I say it does a bunch of stuff? Yeah, it does a bunch.

    I don't remember even 1/2 of what it does, and I actually have almost all of it disabled. I mainly use it for the sake of tracking site stats and analytics (You know, stuff like number of visitors and the like), it's pretty useful, so I'd recommend it... And hey, maybe you'll use more functions than me!
    ----------------------------------
    6) Disqus

    Disqus is an alternative commenting system to the default that Wordpress has. It's something that depends a lot on personal taste, but I'm not fond of the default commenting system of Wordpress, so I prefer to install Disqus on my site.

    It also has a better anti-spam system AFAIK, but I know basically nothing on this kind of thing, so this is mostly hearsay.

    Still, it's an option if you don't like Wordpress' default commenting system much. Make sure to check the installation instructions properly btw, it requires a bit more work than most plugins.
    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    Plugins for Legalization, Privacy, Monetization and other stuff like that.
    I didn't have enough content to make more categories, so I just bundled all those together.

    1) WPForms Lite

    This is a plugin that allows you to create some forms that the user needs to fill to send something. There are many uses for this I guess, but the only one I can think of for a translation site is the "Contact Us" page.

    If you're like me, you don't really want to make your e-mail address public to anyone and everyone that visits your site. Using a form to make whoever wishes to contact you directly sent an e-mail to you without providing your own e-mail is pretty practical.

    Keep in mind that there is a reasonable chance that you'll receive some spam e-mails, I received 2 spam e-mails on the day I made my site... I haven't received any since though (My site is only about 1 week old by the time I'm making this post), so I think the spam potential isn't that high.

    There are other form plugins available and I'm not sure which one is best, this was just the first one I found. Another one that was recommended to me was Contact Form 7.
    ----------------------------------
    2) Cookie Notice for GDPR

    Ever saw that message that says that "this sites uses cookies blablablabla"? I never paid much attention to those even though I saw them a thousand times, I bet you haven't either... Yet why do people always put them on sites? Because they need to due to some european law or whatever.

    Technically speaking, Wordpress by default doesn't use Cookies AFAIK, but almost all plugins do use them, so you should get a plugin that notifies users of that, even though 99% of the users will not care about it and will just click "ok" without even reading it, there is always that one user that will threaten to sue you if you don't add this notification or whatever, so just get it done with.

    Relatively important caveat: According to my googling skills (I'm no lawyer after all), this notice is not enough to actually make you comply to the law, you actually need a bunch more stuff to comply to it... I never saw a single site that does follow all the rest of the stuff though, so I'm unsure on the validity of this claim.

    In any case, if you're really worried about the legality stuff and want to take extra steps to assure you follow it, I recommend trying the Cookiebot plugin instead, since it will probably do what you need... It seemed way too complicated for me though, so I didn't download it and went with the Cookie Notice one instead.
    ----------------------------------
    3) Insert Headers and Footers

    This is a pretty specific plugin that I'm not sure most people will need... It allows you to insert code in the Headers and Footers of your site... What are those? Tbh I'm not sure, I'm not a programmer for a reason.

    What I know is that you sometimes need to add those things for ads and what not, and adding it to your wordpress theme might break things, and even if it doesn't break things, you might lose the stuff you added when you update your theme, so using a plugin is better.
    ----------------------------------
    4) Ad Inserter

    I think this will only be useful if you already have a contact with an ad network... Tbh I'm not sure how exactly you need to put them in (I spent over 1/2 an hour trying to put the code myself before my manager put it himself), I'm not the one that manages the ads in my site, I just know I needed this because I broke a lot of stuff when I tried adding the code directly to my site.

    So... Word of advice, if you do get some contact with an ad company and they ask you to put the ads in a part of your code, use this plugin instead.
    ----------------------------------
    5) Ads.txt

    Oh look, another ad plugin... Do you think I know how it works? Well, I don't.

    This basically lets you get some specific data from ad companies and put in your site to manage your ads or something... Like... Seriously, I'm not sure how this works, there is a reason I'm not the one that manages the ads in my site.

    So... Why am I recommending it? Because I needed it to make my ads work, so I recommend giving it a shot if you are trying to get a contact with an ad company and they ask you to do something you don't really know how to. Maybe it will give you exact what you need.

    PS: By saying I don't know how it works, it means I don't quite know what it does, but I know how to handle the plugin, it's very intuitive.
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Phew, this took way longer than I thought it would take, I should have totally spent this time translating instead... Oh well, I really wanted to make this thread.

    Well, there you go! I hope it helps anyone that is starting a new translation site! Like and Subscribe, share to your friends, give a thumbs up, talk to your mom about it in your dinner table... You know, usual stuff~

    Remember to drop any comments on useful plugins you think that should be added to the list! ^^)/
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2021
  2. asriu

    asriu fu~ fu~ fu~

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    as lazy bum
    put that wall text on spoiler
    why?
    dear god
    these day people crazy about subscribe
     
  3. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    I actually put the TL;DR on Spoiler, since the Wall of Text is the actual important part of the thread~
    Because putting ads is hard~
     
  4. asriu

    asriu fu~ fu~ fu~

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    tututu
     
  5. LysUltima

    LysUltima Riichi! Tsumo! Toitoi! Suuankou!?

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    I was tagged~

    Now time for my own recommendations!
    1. Novel Navigation Links The chapter plugin that Alice linked only works for posts and only lists in chronological order, so you can't go back to add a previous chapter, for example. This plugin is more extensive, and works by using the URL of either a post or page.
    2. Updraft Plus This plugin lets uploads backups of your site to Google Drive, among other options. ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP!!!!!!!
    3. EWWW Image Optimizer Makes your images smaller in size so your site loads faster. Also saves data, which means less in hosting costs.
    4. WP Super Cache Makes your site faster so you can save on hosting costs.
     
  6. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    Oooooooh, those seem good, I'll take a look at them and see if I add them to the first post~

    Ah, just a note that the one I linked does work with pages, I use it for pages on my site! >.<
     
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  7. LysUltima

    LysUltima Riichi! Tsumo! Toitoi! Suuankou!?

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    It does? The plugin description was pretty vague, and the only listed feature was category pagination. They need to do a better description :blobangery:
     
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  8. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    Agreed! I had to download and test it myself to see if it worked, I'm pretty happy it did though~
     
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  9. Gandire Alea

    Gandire Alea [Wicked Awesome Translator]

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    A generic comment for the sake of making it look like I am contributing to this page
     
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  10. Nino Sasou

    Nino Sasou 『 ******** 』『 On Paid Leave』

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    A generic comment to make sure this useful thread doesn't get buried
     
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  11. Gandire Alea

    Gandire Alea [Wicked Awesome Translator]

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    Ali-chan, how about linking the url onto your signiture so it’s always easy to find??
     
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  12. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    That's a wonderful idea, Love~ *kisses*

    *still needs to add the stuff Lys-chan recommended to the first post*
     
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  13. Gandire Alea

    Gandire Alea [Wicked Awesome Translator]

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    YOu should also make a comment about the cookie notification. It’s only free until you make 100 pages/posts
     
  14. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    It is!? >.<

    I'll check this out, I hadn't noticed it at all... There should be another plugin out there that is free 100% of the time, no need to use a temporary free plugin...
     
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  15. TomiNdumplings

    TomiNdumplings Well-Known Member

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    For adding a category what does it mean by "unzip the archive and upload the entire folder"? I'm not very tech savvy.:oops::oops: I don't know where to but the /wp-content/plugins for example
    and should I be on wordpress.org instead of wordpress.com?(I'm guessing the answer is yes...)
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2018
  16. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    I think you need to be on Wordpress.org indeed... As for installing the plugin, don't follow those instructions they have there, they're complicated... Just go to the Plugins section of your dashboard and download it there~

    Mmmmm... I think it will be easier with some pics~

    First, go to the plugins section of your dashboard.

    [​IMG]

    Then, click in the "Add New" button.

    [​IMG]

    Then, search for the plugin you want, click in "Install now" and then on "Activate" (In the case of my screenshot, the plugin is already activated, but this part should hopefully be intuitive enough! >.<)

    [​IMG]

    This should make your plugin start working immediately! ^^)/

    This works for almost all plugins in wordpress, the ones that need some more work that I can think of are Disqus and the Night Mode plugin, so you'd need to see what else you need to do in their installation instructions...

    So, I do recommend checking the installation instructions of all plugins, but more often than not, you can do it by just using the plugin installation built-in wordpress! \(^^)/

    I hope this helps~
     
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  17. niznet

    niznet Well-Known Member

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    Actually, you can create prev/next chapter without use any plugin. Though, you must create some css code to make it look better.
    This may be useful for who don't want use some plugin to make little change, but must sacrifice your cute little storage.

    Example:
    PHP:
    next_post_link'%link''Next Chapter »'true);
    If you insert the code between php, you need add div or span before '%link'

    So:
    PHP:
    next_post_link('<div class="next-chapter">%link</div>''Next Chapter »'true);
    And for previous:
    PHP:
    previous_post_link('<div class="previous-chapter">%link</div>''« Previous Chapter'true);
     
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  18. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    I have no clue how any of this works, but thanks for contributing! \(^^)/
     
  19. niznet

    niznet Well-Known Member

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    You can read further the function explanation in developer or codex wordpress. (I can't post the link yet)

    Where should I place the code? => anywhere you like(Must on post type like single-post.php).
    If you want to place before after the content... put it before after " the_content(); " in the single-content.php (Ex: Twenty Themes) or on php file that display your chapter post.
     
    Last edited: Dec 6, 2018
  20. niznet

    niznet Well-Known Member

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    I will put off my old other code on here(I make this around six months ago), this about Table of Content and will be useful since there's no plugin bring prev/next with toc.

    PHP:
    <?php
    global $post;
    $category get_the_category($post->ID);
    $category $category[0]->cat_ID;
    $array = new WP_Query(array(
        
    'category__in' => array($category),
        
    'post_per_page' => 1,
        
    'order' => 'asc',
        
    'orderby' => 'id'
    )); $toc $array->get_posts();?>
    Put it on your chapter single (In Twenty is content-single.php) before the_content();
    and put this anywhere you like, Ex: Before/after the_content(); if you want place it before/after your chapter content.
    PHP:
    echo "<div class='toc-post-link'><a href=".get_permalink($toc[0]->ID).">ToC</a></div>";
    Make sure your novel toc and chapter on the same category or this will not work.
    You can use this with this plugin if you use page type for novel toc or chapter (I think? I never use it, I put my novel toc on custom post type with category)
     
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