• 30 . 06 . 10

  • Gengo is a multi-lingual plugin for WordPress that has fallen by the wayside. Is there enough interest out there for me to restart development on it?

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Do You Still Want Gengo?

Gengo was (and remains) a project that I am very fond of. Originally developed for my own personal use to blog in Japanese as well as English, it turned into a fairly full-featured plugin that was used by quite a few people. Unfortunately, time pressures meant that I had to drop support for it a few years ago. Even so, every few weeks I get an email or comment (usually nothing to do with the post it was written against!) asking me to consider restarting development.

It might just be the alcohol talking, or end-of-financial-year madness, but with WordPress 3.0 recently out and a couple of requests already this week, I’m seriously considering starting development again. I do have a couple of projects I want to do though, so I only want to dedicate time to Gengo if it’s going to be used. My Japanese has sadly diminished to the point where I’m practically mono-lingual again, so I’m not going to be blogging in multiple languages any time soon, and it would purely be for others to use. So, if enough people email me or comment in the next week or so, I’ll give it a crack. Second time around, I’ll hopefully be able to design it more cleanly and more quickly, and WordPress’ plugin architecture hopefully hasn’t changed too much while I’ve been away.

So if you want to see a new version of Gengo, please let me know. On the other hand, I hear very good things about WPML, so If Gengo’s time has passed, feel free to say that too! I won’t have hurt feelings, promise :)

  • Remisan

    Yes, I do still want to see this! WPML is NOT good enough. Yours is!

  • Fsadfsa

    Remisan is right! we need Gengo

  • Martino

    I really need it too! I need this plugin!

  • http://www.yktravelphoto.com yktravelphoto.com

    That would be great!

  • Me

    I would like this too. Regards and thanks for all the work done so far.

  • Webnewbie

    And.. what is about X-valid?.

  • kimon

    Yes, that would be nice !

  • GengoUser

    Great news ! In my point of view, there is one missing feature on Gengo (that brings me to your blog every 3 months to see if there is a new version coming). The URLrewritting put the language “tag” at the end of the url which makes google mad in its index…

    Otherwise you can be proud of your job as it's a nice piece of code !

  • Yas

    Ah yes! I'd love to see a new version! I do speak both English and Japanese, was looking for a good plug-in for my blog!

  • http://twitter.com/VitaminJDesign Jesse Chase

    Definitely Take a crack at it. There isn't a great solution out there!

  • morpheus7

    Hey,

    I've never used Gengo but multilingual logs are still a problem for WordPress, so every new plugin is great!

  • http://www.gamesintheattic.com/ Bruno

    Yes. We want. :)

  • Nospam

    Yes! Give us a new version! :)

  • http://danb.us danb

    Would love to see what you can do to help WP users make their sites multi-lingual.

    I’ve been playing around with WPML for the last day or two, maybe it’s just me since I’m new to that and WP, but I don’t find it intuitive or the directions & documentation clear at all. And can’t get various seemingly basic things to work, at least so far.

    So by all means do throw your hat back in the ring!

  • http://silicone.homelinux.org/2010/08/17/new-projects-pages-and-gengo-update/ New Projects pages and Gengo update. « Silicone’s web

    [...] done a big history rewrite by moving my version of gengo to git. If ever Jamie Talbot is really seriously considering starting development again. Then I hope he can pick some patches from my [...]

  • Divxsata

    I love gengo

  • http://twitter.com/ScottMagdalein Scott Magdalein

    Jamie, we’re looking for a tool to help us localization our software by tapping into our multilingual userbase (crowdsourced, if you will). Do you consult on localization tools or freelance as a developer that might be able to build one from something like Pootle or a custom non-plugin version of Gengo? (scottmagdalein at gmail.com)

    VERY serious about this inquiry.

  • Paolo/pixline

    Hey Jamie! Nice to find you again!!

    I just did just wrote a letter to the supposed Gengo-hackers list about a refresh of Gengo. I had some troubles in mantaining Gengo by myself and I left development for a couple years.

    So, what about joining our forces and bring back Gengo in full glory? I’d love to work with you in the same time on that! :)

    http://groups.google.com/group/gengo-hackers?hl=en

  • http://jamietalbot.com/ Jamie Talbot

    Hoisted by my own petard, it seems. Guess I’m back in the game :)

  • Stefano

    Yes, i want it!!!
    Thanks so much!!!

  • Anonymous

    yes! just looking for a multilingual solution.

  • http://twitter.com/Theis Theis Kofoed Hjorth

    I’ve never tried it; But my conclusion so far is that there are no nice multilanguage solutions for WordPress, so any development on this subject is a a huge step forward!

  • Deniz

    yeah, a lot of people wait for Gengo. Yet i couldn’t use it, but i realy need a plug in like it

  • Pieter

    Interesting. We used and liked Gengo but have to upgrade rather urgently, so it would be good to know if it will be continued. Thanks a lot.

  • Cezar “ikari” Pokorski

    Yes! We do want Gengo for modern WP. 
    I spent last 3 hours looking for The Plugin and Gengo is my only candidate now. WPML would be the other one, if it didn’t want my 80 USD, which is much more than I have.