Code Styling Project

Translating BuddyPress will raise a lot of problems if tried with my plugin. First of all BuddyPress will be distributed and bundled automatically with bbPress forum software. If it gets scanned now to find all contained text phrases the texts from bbPress will be scanned too even if they are doesn’t belong to BuddyPress. The second problem is, that both plugins are using the same default textdomain.

I did solve both of this issues and did extend my plugin to cope with this.

BuddyPress translation support

The BuddyPress plugin now got it’s own icon and will be handled in a special way. If bbPress exists as part of the BuddyPress plugin, the scan process correctly skips this 3rd party bundle and ensures only texts from BuddyPress are contained now.
The scan contains BuddyPress itself but also the theme folder of BuddyPress. Because all by myself known BuddyPress themes doesn’t load their own textdomains (if ever use one) but utiliting the main textdomain of BuddyPress always, I did forcefully scan the folder bp-themes below BuddyPress too. If this will ever be changed by the community, I will change this behavoir too.

bbPress translation support

My plugin additionally supports bbPress if it’s bundled with BuddyPress at the subfolder bp-forums and displays also a new icon for this component. If bbPress is not contained, this will not appear at the list of translatable elements. There are 2 special things to know about bbPress:

1. The language folder is not part of the delivery package
2. bbPress is not yet a plugin as normally known at WordPress world

To cope with the first special issue my plugin shows an option to create that missing folder on demand at your webspace. If you haven’t enough user rights or your host is restrictive, you have to create this folder using your FTP program.

The second special issue belongs to the version number of bbPress. Because it’s not a plugin, the version number can’t be figured out. This is a remaining problem but as far as I know the community is preparing bbPress as normal WordPress plugin. But when this will be available, I don’t know.

Ciritcism about bbPress

Because WordPress and bbPress share the same! textdomain, there is a terrible code inside bbPress for handling the language file. The original loaded language file from WordPress core will be rude trashed and the bbPress language file will be loaded instead. That’s why nobody can utilize the language translations from WordPress itself from within bbPress! This also affects the server load of your host because 2 textdomains have to be loaded sequentially and the memory will be extra ordinary clustered and wasted this ways.
I would prefere a separate and special textdomain for bbPress, because running a forum is known for need of memory anyway. But having both translations in parallel it would permit cross over access between bbPress and WordPress if required. I would call this synergy-effect.

Teaser Shot

Next you will find a small screenshot out of my backend showing both components with a german translation file.

Conclusion

With my actual plugin version again 2 new features has been introduced, hope they are helpfull for somebody. Additional I spent time for bugfixing based on the feedback i got from the users out there. If you have some hints or feedback belong to this 2 features, please let me know.

Download Links:
Codestyling Localization - local Pluginpage
Codestyling Localization - WordPress.org Repository