Tag: Twenty Ten Judge Child

New Features

Judge Blogs goes international!

| Joel

One feature that has been requested multiple times in the past for the Judge Blogs Network is Internationalization, or simply put the possibility to provide content in multiple languages and link them all together. Well, after quite some work we can finally present solutions for this request.

Before I explain the details, I would like to mention that these changes might be a bit overwhelming for you, if you are not too familiar with WordPress. But as always, we are there to provide you full and detailed support. So feel free to contact us via the forums, if you need any assistance with this transition.

Judge Blogs is able to offer Blog owners two ways to link to translated content. We choose to split this up, because we have to deal with two quite different use cases.

Use Case 1: Partial translations on external pages

Example Language Links
Example for a Chinese translation link on a Judge Article

Some of your content might get translated without even knowing it! Ever wondered where this Chinese ping-back came from? Well, it is time to link to such content in a more prominent way. This might then look like the example on the left.

There can be any number of languages associated with one post or page and they can point to any other webpage. The idea is, that this is actually a link to a translated not hosted on the Judge Blogs Network.

 

To enable this feature on your blog, you need to go through the following simple steps:

  1. Enable the plugin Language Links.
  2. Add the language links to your post.

1. Enable the Plugin

Also in your Admin Dashboard you can find the Menu Posts > Plugins. In this list of available plugins, find the Plugin named Language Links and enable it.

2. Add Language Links to your post

Details to add a language link
Details to add a language link

Now you are ready to add these language links. When you edit an existing post or add a new one, you will now find a box named “Language Links” on the bottom. There you can add any number of languages with the respective links.

Use Case 2: A fully translated website

In the second case you host a webpage and wish to translate all or at least most of your content to one or more languages. Most likely you have a translation team ready when you release content, so that there is little delay between the releases in different languages. Maybe in the past your languages were separate blogs with separate addresses. Well now we can merge those pages!

To make your blog ready for a full internationalization a couple of changes and set-up is required. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

New Features

Judge Blogs launches its official theme

| Joel

So far the only available theme on the network has been the Twenty Ten Theme, released by WordPress itself. We still like the simplicity and style of this theme, but also reached certain limitations when it comes to developing future features of the network. Thus we decided to take the current theme and adapt it to our specific needs. The result is the Judge Blogs Theme!

The new theme should be fully compatible with your existing content and won’t change any major parts of the layout. It only contains some small tweaks on the typography like fonts and colors. But it offers you more features, for example:

And more features are coming!

Can I have a preview?

Of course you can! The theme is already active on the root blog page and the popular Judge Articles page. You can also preview the theme on your own blog before activating it.

How can I switch to the new theme?

You can select the theme in your Admin Dashboard in the Menu Appearance > Themes. It is called Judge Blogs.

Where is my header picture?

Unfortunately the Theme switch resets the header picture for the blog. But as we did not change the dimensions of the picture, you should be able to reset it quickly without any cropping. You can find this under Appearance > Header.

I now see only excerpts on my front page

Content options in the customizer
Content options in the customizer

Yes, the default option currently is to show only excerpts instead of full posts on the front page. Either you keep it like that, or you can change this behavior. Simply click “Customize” on the theme and select your preference in the Content Options tab (see example left).

Do I have to switch the theme?

Not right away. We keep the old one available for the next couple of months. But to provide a more consistent and comprehensive image of the judge blogs, we encourage everybody to switch.

Something is not working! I need help.

No worries, we are here to help you! Contact us via our User Group on Judge Apps or directly via any other channel. Also if you have any future feature requests, please let us know.