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WP ZhConvert - Quick Start

WP ZhConvert — Quick Start

For WordPress admins who just installed the plugin and want their site serving both Simplified and Traditional Chinese in 5 minutes. Current version: v1.1.0 · Reading time: ~6 minutes

What this plugin does for you

Chinese sites can't avoid the "Simplified or Traditional?" dilemma. WP ZhConvert lets you maintain one source of truth while the frontend auto-serves both scripts on demand:

  • Auto-conversion: OpenCC dictionary-based — articles, pages, category names, menus, product titles all auto-convert at render time based on visitor language
  • SEO URL routing: /zh-cn/posts/foo and /zh-tw/posts/foo are two distinct URLs, indexed separately
  • Browser auto-detect: visitor with Traditional Chinese system locale auto-redirects to /zh-tw/ (first visit, can be disabled)
  • Floating switcher: small icon in the corner, lets visitors flip variants manually
  • Custom glossary: lock down industry terms, brand names, person names from being mis-converted
  • hreflang tags: auto-emits <link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh-CN/zh-TW"> so Google sees both variants as alternate-language versions of the same content

1. Install & activate

If you haven't installed yet:

  1. Download the ZIP from the Intally store
  2. WordPress admin: Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin → pick the ZIP → activate
  3. WP ZhConvert appears in the left admin menu

After activating, important: visit Settings → Permalinks and click "Save" — this flushes rewrite rules so /zh-cn/ and /zh-tw/ URLs work. (The plugin auto-flushes on activation, but some themes/caches need a manual save too.)

2. First-time configuration (2 minutes)

Open WP ZhConvert → Settings and confirm at least these:

2.1 Site original language

Which script is your source content mostly written in? - Simplified → pick "Simplified" (default) - Traditional → pick "Traditional"

This determines the conversion direction. Pick wrong and the conversion goes backwards.

2.2 Default variant

When a visitor hasn't specified a variant (no URL prefix, browser detect off), which one do they see? - Default Simplified → pick /zh-cn/ - Default Traditional → pick /zh-tw/

2.3 Browser auto-detect

  • On (default): first-time visitor with Traditional Chinese system locale auto-redirects to /zh-tw/, Simplified to /zh-cn/
  • Off: always serves the default variant; visitor flips with the switcher

2.4 Switcher button

  • Shown: on by default, floating icon in a corner
  • Position: pick any of the 4 corners

Settings save instantly takes effect on the frontend.

3. Verify it works

Open any post on your site, manually prepend /zh-tw/ to the URL: - Example: https://yoursite.com/hello-world/ → change to https://yoursite.com/zh-tw/hello-world/

The page should immediately render in Traditional Chinese (title, body, menu, categories all converted).

Go back to the original URL or use /zh-cn/ → Simplified.

There should be a switcher button in the corner — click it to flip variants.

4. Custom glossary (avoid mis-conversion)

The OpenCC dictionary covers 99% of common words, but technical terms / brand names / person names often get mis-converted. For example:

  • "软件" auto-converts to "軟件", but your brand is named "软件之家" — you don't want that
  • "計算機" maps to "计算机" in mainland usage, but your Traditional article is about a software product literally named "計算機" — you don't want it converted

WP ZhConvert → Glossary: - Add an entry: source word → forced conversion result (or "keep unchanged") - Bidirectional: specify simp→trad, trad→simp, or both - Takes effect immediately, no restart

Example: | Simplified | Traditional (forced) | Note | |-----------|---------------------|------| | 软件之家 | 软件之家 | Brand name — keep both forms unchanged | | 计算机 | 計算機 | IT-industry term, override system default |

5. SEO-friendly (automatic)

The plugin automatically emits hreflang tags on every page:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh-CN" href="https://yoursite.com/zh-cn/page" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh-TW" href="https://yoursite.com/zh-tw/page" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://yoursite.com/page" />

Google / Bing read this and treat the two variants as "same content, different language" — no duplicate-content penalty, and they serve the right variant by user region/language. Zero extra config from you.

6. FAQ

Q: After install, /zh-cn/ and /zh-tw/ URLs all 404? - Visit Settings → Permalinks and click "Save" to refresh rewrite rules - Confirm pretty permalinks are enabled (not the default ?p=123 style) - Nginx users: ensure your server config has try_files

Q: Menu / widget / Gutenberg block content isn't being converted? - Confirm the content is output via standard WordPress APIs (menu items, widgets, blocks) — the plugin hooks all standard output paths - Custom shortcodes / theme hard-coded strings are out of scope (that's a theme issue)

Q: Conversion feels slow / impacts performance? - OpenCC dictionary load has a one-time overhead (~50–100ms on first request) - With a WP cache plugin (W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, etc.), the cache stores the already-converted HTML — hit rate is unaffected; each variant gets its own cache entry - High-traffic sites: enable object cache (Redis / Memcached)

Q: Can the glossary be bulk-imported? - Current version supports single-entry add via the UI. Bulk import is on the roadmap.

Q: Conflicts with multilingual plugins (WPML, Polylang)? - Coexistence works, but split responsibilities: let WPML/Polylang handle true multilingual translation (Chinese → English → Japanese), and let WP ZhConvert handle Simplified ⇄ Traditional variants within Chinese - Don't let both plugins manage language variants for the same page set — the logic will collide

Q: Can I disable hreflang tags? - Currently auto-emitted; opt-out is on the roadmap.

Next

  • See the full changelog for version-by-version updates
  • Hit a problem? Contact us — include your WordPress version + PHP version + site URL for the fastest answer.