I need help switching my WordPress website language from English to German on the front end. I already tried updating the wp-config.php file but nothing changed. My site is running WordPress 4.0 and I want the entire frontend to display in German instead of English. I thought modifying the config file would work but the site still shows everything in English. The theme language hasn’t changed at all. What steps am I missing to properly change the language? Are there other files I need to update or settings I should check? I really need to get this working so my German visitors can read the site properly.
WordPress 4.0 doesn’t have automatic language pack downloads, so you’ll have to do this manually. Grab the German language files from Download – WordPress.org and upload them to your wp-content/languages folder. You need both the .po and .mo files. Then add define(‘WPLANG’, ‘de_DE’) to your wp-config.php file. I’ve hit this same problem with older WordPress sites - just changing the config won’t work if the language files aren’t actually there. After you’ve done both steps, clear your cache and the site should show up in German.
check if the german lang pack is installed. go to settings in wp admin, then general, and see if german is an option in the site lang dropdown. older themes may not have full support for translations, so that could be an issue too.
are you seeing any error msgs in your admin when tryin to switch languages? also, does your theme have german translation files? sometimes themes come with their own .po/.mo files, and if they’re missing, that could be why some parts of your site aren’t translating.