Forum Display Enhancements - vB Enterprise Translator

2.3.15 RELEASED - TRANSLATIONS NEVER WERE SO FAST!!!

Great thanks to all who nominate vBET and allow us to win MOTM :up:

This mod translates your forum using FREE translations for over 30 languages from Yandex API. It is 100% FREE in version described here (2.x).
Note: using this mod (vBET 2.x) is free and bound by license agreement (see below)

Yandex translation gives you 1 000 000 FREE characters per DAY to translate. Please note that Yandex do not supports all language pairs, but vBET detects automatically which are supported for your forum language.

Version for vBulletin 4.0 is here: vBET 2.4.x for vBulletin 4.0

vBET 3.x released!
Please note that vBET 3.x is developed as separate product line and it is available here: vBET 3.x. Full version is paid, it supports 53 languages each to each translation, using: Google, Microsoft, Apertium, Yandex, SDL BeGlobal and DetectLanguage. It has lot of optimizations for booth performance and translations costs.

LIVE DEMO - note that demo shows functionality of full version (3.x/4.x), which has more features than 2.x
See also screen shots below, for configuration options

Features:
- Translation by Yandex (in PRO version supports 53 languages using several translation providers)
- Optimized cache, algorhitms and more performance options - PRO version only
- Translates URLs and RSS - PRO version only
- Supports multi language communities (allows to write in different languages) - PRO version only
- Links appropriate for SEO consensus (configurable) - even without any SEO mod
- Long texts are translated no matter how big those are
- Translation cache (after first translation results are cached and next page generation is much faster)
- Doesn't translate BB codes for code, php and html (must refresh post cache to see effect on existing posts Admin CP -> Maintenance -> Update Counters -> Rebuild Post Cache)
- Easy installation - just upload files and import product file
- Highly configurable and easy configuration - by Admin CP (see screenschots)
- Configurable place for flags - simply select in options where you want to have translation flags. NO MANUAL TEMPLATE MODIFICATION. Supported: Footer-Bottom, Footer-Top, Navbar-Bottom, Navbar-Top, Custom
- Possible custom place for flags - in such case just edit template which you want and add $vbenterprisetranslatorflags
- Translates also archive pages
- Reverse page direction for Arabic, Hebrew and Persian languages
- Not translated save areas - if you need something to be not translated simply edit appropriate template and put it between
<!--START vBET NOT TRANSLATED AREA--> and <!--END vBET NOT TRANSLATED AREA--> (note: you cannot use any mod which removes comments to use this functionality)

Installation:
1. Download zip package (last release - see index at the end of file name)
2. Upload to your forum directory on server everything inside upload directory
3. Import in vB Admin CP -> Plugins & Products -> Manage Products -> Add/Import Product -> Choose product file, set Allow Overwrite to yes and click Import
4. Click here: "Mark as Installed" Thanks!
5. Configure in AdminCP -> vBulletin Options -> vBulletin Options -> vB Enterprise Translator
You MUST configure at least Forum language and Yandex Translation API key. NOTE that there are some other important options - especially if your forum is in subdirectory or if you use vbSEO.

For MORE INFO and troubleshooting please read first post There is FAQ. So save your time for writing questions which are already answered and get your solution faster

Known issues:
- link for page on which you are doesn't track translation, cause it has same URL as flag for forum default language

ENJOY! :up:

And thanks for nominations

Already donated (great thanks:up:
PossumX, adwade, roymogg, zipperty, CoZmicShReddeR, RedHacker, john devost, mandingo, chris, smnoel, Audax666, Damas, TurkeySub, nectons, Scalemotorcars, TheWite, Cybershaolin, burlesque, Ransy72560, chick, jaryx, linuxututs, cormee, dai-kun x2 :up:, imported_silkroad, Megatr0n, KrisP, CareyCrew, ghisirds, vitoreis, cyc, mosz, CThiessen, actolearn, jaconi, andie215, yahoooh, bollie

LICENSE AGREEMENT - using this mod you agree for those conditions:
- you are NOT allowed to remove credit link under any conditions
- removing credit link means BREAKING LICENSE AGREEMENT and you lose your rights to use this mod
- using it after that is illegal, it is software PIRACY and it will be notified in vBulletin community and other places, including appropriate government/police units in your country
- author of this mod reserves the right to change the terms of this license agreement at any time. Failure to receive notification of a change does not make those changes invalid. A current copy of this license is and will be available here.

Please note that in full vBET version there is possibility to buy branding free license. There is no such possibility in free version included here.

Version history:
2.3.15 Changes:
- Fixed canonical link
- Fixed issue with SSL verification
2.3.14 Changes:
- Added 48 new languages pairs
- Updated link to Yandex in configuration
- When translation limit is reached now we show original text instead of empty message
2.3.13 Updated link to Yandex API key
2.3.12 Google changed to Yandex translations
2.3.11 Added "Affiliate Program" parameter
2.3.10 Footer bug corrected
2.3.9 userip added to Google translation request + small bug fixed
2.3.8 Small bug fixed - now all supported languages can be chosen as forum default language
2.3.7 Bugs fixed:
- weird redirections with vbet_lang
- double language in URL
- changing text direction for specific languages
Added support for:
- usernames not translated in who is online
- supported URL replacements for canonical URL
2.3.6 Important fix! - there was issue with sending referrer header which is necessary by Google conditions. This one was fixed + issue with # in translation links
2.3.5 Important change - According to Google conditions referrer header must be added to each translation query - otherwise you can be banned by Google. Install this version to avoid any troubles.
Changes:
- Added referrer header for Google translation queries
- Corrected bug for returning to forum main page from translated page
Also according to actual Google conditions your "Powered by Google" information should have Google logo. So please change text for flags in your vBET configuration to something like this:

Automatic Translations (Powered by <span style="vertical-align:sub;"><img src="http://www.google.com/uds/css/small-logo.png" alt="Powered by Google" border="0"/></span>):

You can customize it but "Powered by Google" should stay.
2.3.4 Important bug fixed! Corrected translation of meta keywords and description
2.3.3 Important bug fixed! And also some other bugs fixed
- Fixed bug with shifted results caching
- Fixed bug for URLs to javascript functions
- Fixed bug for not translating usernames in postbit
- Little cosmetic changes
2.3.2 Really little changes.
- Changed default value of "Links title" attribute, to be more accurate for Google conditions
- Little template changed for flags, so "Link title" font will be smaller (just like vB info in footer)
- Small bug fixed
2.3.1 Some little bug fixes. Confirmed working with vbSEO 3.3.1 and confirmed working SEO links on forums with vbSEO and subdirectory in URL
2.3.0 Great news for those without vbSEO
- Supports translation SEO links even without vbSEO
- Translate Google Maps (configurable)
- Little optimizations (i.e. included only necessary things for not translated pages)
- Supports several cache cleaning strategies (optimization for really big forums) and automatically disables cache for cleaning time to avoid read/write conflicts
2.2.1 Small bug fixed with returning to default language for main page and SEO links (happens only for specific vbSEO configuration, so you don't need to update if 2.2.0 is working for you)
2.2.0 Translation tracking is working even when redirection by some mod occures (configurable reaction time)
2.1.0 9 new translation languages added! Also:
- Redirect to user language functionality - configurable (disabled, forced, after asking user does he want to be redirected).
- Fixed bug for SEO links with forums acting like directories by id.
- Corrected several flags
Update note: if you use SEO links you must change .htaccess file according to description in first post. If you changed any vbseo.php rules ? un-change those.
2.0.3 Quick bug fixing (issue with bitfields in options panel)
2.0.2 Added option to set your forum main domain for tracking URL's in subdomains
2.0.1 Small bug fixed and added direction changing suport also for Hebrew
2.0.0 Some small or medium changes and one big - for vbSEO users now SEO consensus links available.
What's new:
- Links appropriate for SEO consensus (configurable)
- Persian support added
- Doesn't translate BB codes for code, php and html (must refresh post cache to see effect on existing posts Admin CP -> Maintenance -> Update Counters -> Rebuild Post Cache)
- Reverse page direction for Arabic and Persian languages
- Option to set forum directory if not linked to domain
- Few bugs fixed
1.1.1 Some little changes and bugs fixed
- Re-encode not translated parts, so there is no strange signs in scripts, images title etc.
- Corrected flag for Sweden
- Few harmless bug fixed in translation tracking and cache disabling
- Respecting Google conditions default flags title have link to Google (configurable)
1.1.0 Lot of new features and no longer in beta stage
- Long texts are translated no matter how big those are
- Cache is working for chosen languages (you simply select for each language does translations should be cached)
- Option to add Google Translate API key for translation requests
- Configurable cache time to live and scheduled task which automatically remove old cache.
- Option to show flags only for guests
- Option to easily remove flags border (without any style changing)
- Option to not translate usernames
- During translation changes param lang in html tag
- Option to translate messages changed by vBSEO to JavaScript (it has such functionality for SEO purposes)
1.0.5 Flags showing correctly for forums in subdirectory + corrected returning to base language
1.0.4 Bug fixed with translation of '0' string. Also added little feature - if some parts of your forum uses vbSEO and some are not then now flags will have appropriate URL's everywhere
1.0.3 Big bug fixed Mod doesn't mess in template anymore (it did in some specific cases)
1.0.2 Small bug fixed - error with array merge solved
1.0.1 Small bug fixed - now choosing supported languages in options works fine
1.0.0 Great mod released

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by KrisP

How much new content is too much?

I don't think it matters very much. There is nothing in the Google TOS that says "sites much grow very slowly or else!"

I am wondering if Googlebot might flag if a sites content (number of pages) after growing slowly for years suddenly grows 10 times over night.

There is nothing in the Google TOS that says "sites much less than 10 times overnight.

If it might be an idea to add one language at a time over a longer time period instead of over night?

Not really, but you can do as you like.

I suggest to you that you should only add languages from countries with a large number of Internet users first to optimize your traffic.

Also, if you are looking for revenue as a ad publisher, you should focus on countries and languages with a high income per person where languages are supported by the various ad networks.

Most ad networks do not support any language other than English. Google Adsense is the exception as they support over 30 languages, which is really amazing. So, look at the supported languages, look at the statistics for Internet usage by country and language, and look at the economics of that country if you are interesting in publishing revenue.

Hint: Adding many languages from poor countries with small Internet usage at the same time you are adding countries and languages like Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark is not a good idea if you are seeking revenue as a publisher.

[KrisP]

What do you think of the argument that a large language (like en) has more users as you say but has also more pages in that language and therefore more competition in search results. So there is an opposite effect this way. A smaller language has fewer users but also less competition in search results.

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by Kolbi

Can you tell me how to use analytics as good as possible?

Are you running Google Analytics now?

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by KrisP

What do you think of the argument that a large language (like en) has more users as you say but has also more pages in that language and therefore more competition in search results. So there is an opposite effect this way. A smaller language has fewer users but also less competition in search results.

Creating and publishing content on the web is no different than creating and publishing content like books. Most publishers publish to larger markets. They are also niche publishers that publish to smaller audiences.

Books are generally published in languages where there are a lot a readers and translated based on the same logic. Publishers do not translate a book to an obscure language thinking that someone will go to Amazon and maybe have an advantage because they are one of the few publishers in that market. Publishing takes both time and money.

On the other hand, you are free to try any obscure, niche publishing strategy that your heart desires and you think is fun, profitable or interesting.

I am telling you some facts, not theory:

• Almost all major CPM ad networks only serve ads in English (very small percentage in "other than English")
• Almost all CPM ad networks focus on serving ads to rich, modern, developed nations.
• Most all ad revenue is from the English language. This is the top tier of languages.
• Second tier, for global Internet publishing are (in no particular order): French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, etc.
• Advanced countries in Europe, like Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, etc have good CPM rates, some higher than in English, but the number of impressions is small compared to English, so English is where the big publishing money is.

You can easily find this information out on the Internet.

In my opinion, your strategy of targeting obscure languages for SEO or search advantage is interesting, but I would never do it. If you want to do it, go ahead that is your decision.

Also, I don't want to get into a discussion on "which language is better, nicer, more traditional, etc."... I am only replying as to "where the money is" for Internet publishers. The money is in modern large countries with big economics, a high standard of living, large number of educated, technical users, with a high percentage of Internet users.

As for you, you can try any strategy and if it does not work, you can change it later.

[KrisP]

Well, I included swedish and norwegian because these languages are very similar to Danish so the quality of translation is good, which would generate more hits. But besides that I see your point.

So your top ten list (in no particular order) is: English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and ... ?

Also with regards to the optimum number of languages to start with. Question is if the absolute number of urls beeing indexed are based on a percentage of total number of urls - if this is the case then you might as well choose to show all adsense languages to begin with?

[KrisP]

Seen in the light that it is a violation of Google TOS to create cache artificially beforehand - so uncached pages with many posts will load slowley - would it in any way be possible to load the page post by post - so the first post is shown fast - and then the following posts will be loaded one at a time on the page - so you dont loose users who dont want to wait 5-10 seconds for the whole page to load.

[KrisP]

Originally Posted by imported_silkroad

This is a much better way to do this.
I have a script that copies the vbseo_sitemaps and generates sitemaps for about 15 languages, moves them to their own subdirectories (one for each language) and then pings google after each one is updated.

Sounds like a very good idea indeed. Any chance you would share this script with the rest of us?

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by KrisP

if this is the case then you might as well choose to show all adsense languages to begin with?

Not us. We never show all language flags. It is suboptimal to have GoogleBot indexing links with little traffic benefit or upside.

I never recommend to anyone to enable all languages on any forum large or small.

Having said that, few people follow my advice. They simply load all the flags without regard to traffic patterns in the Internet.

Keep in mind also that there is a maximum number of links that GoogleBot will index. I have no idea how Google determines what the ceiling is, but I can tell you that the longer you index, the slower the progress is.

For this reason alone, you should index the high priority languages first (expose those flags and create site maps). It is a major mistake to simply expose languages without a plan. Make a plan ! Use Google Analytics to ANALYZE your site performance. Use Google Webmaster tools to optimize your sitemaps.

Review this link and others (you don't need to ask every question here.. do your own homework !)

Top Ten Internet Languages - World Internet Statistics

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by KrisP

Sounds like a very good idea indeed. Any chance you would share this script with the rest of us?

Not really..... I have already described the steps to create your own script in this thread. See below....

Please try to write one yourself ( it is really easy ... !! )

If you can't write a Linux/Unix script, go visit www.unix.com and learn :-) You can ask about scripting there and there are many people to help you.

[imported_silkroad]

Here is my prior instructions for writing a script for sitemaps / language:

Originally Posted by imported_silkroad

I do not recommend people use the shared mod for the vBSEO sitemap generator for the following reasons:

The mod "interweaves" the language links (link.html?language=flag) in a serial manner, so when you work with Google sitemaps, you have no idea how much of the translated pages have been indexed in your sitemaps.

This is OK, and you can certainly do this "kludge" if you wish, if you are not comfy with a little manual labor and command line performance

If you want more control over your sitemaps (so you can submit Chinese language sitemaps to China, etc. and also watch the indexing process of each language) then I advise you to do something like this (what we do and it works great!):

(1) Copy the vBSEO sitemap files to another directory, for example for Korean, you could create a /sitemaps/ko directory and copy all the sitemaps from the ./vbseo_sitemaps/data directory over there.

(2) Unzip all the files with gzip -d.

(2) Edit the index file, sitemap_index.xml and put the path to the directory where you have the specific language sitemaps. You can do this with vi, for example, in 2 seconds, or sed in about the same time or less.

(3) Use sed to append ?language=flag, for example ?language=ko (for Korean) at the end of your loc files, for example </loc> tag, sed to ?language=ko</loc> This takes about 3 - 5 seconds on a big site with a 400K links in the sitemap. ( Update: You can also use sed to add SEO optimized tags in the URL, i.e. www.yoursite.com/ko/link_to_your_favorite_thread.html ')

(4) gzip the files.

(5) Manually add the sitemap -- sitemap/ko/sitemap_index.xml.gz (in the example above) to your favorite search engine webmaster dashboard

Well, you don't have to follow our advice, but that is how we do it, and we like it much better than the "interwoven, giant, humongous sitemap" method hack provided so far.

You certainly can do it that way, if you have a small site and don't actively manage your sitemaps. Or you can do it that way if you don't care

However, if you want to observe / manage the actual progress of how your various languages are indexed, I recommend you make a sitemap_index.xml.gz for each language, as outlined above. It takes only about 15 - 30 seconds max for each sitemap, so if you use only the top 10 Internet-languages like we do, then it only takes a few minutes, between 5 and 10 minutes manual labor.

Then again, you can use any method you like

I am simply sharing how we do it, and it works great. We tried "the other way" and found it "unmanagable" for a site with over 400K links in the origin language sitemap. It take a while for Google to index a large sitemap anyway, so we recommend you focus on the top 10 Internet-languages for maximum benefit :up:

Cheers!

Note, this is really easy to do! Please try on your own and don't make one huge sitemap for all your languages !!