A WordPress site in Arabic and English
A second language is not a button added at the end. A bilingual WordPress site in Arabic and English is, in practice, two sites that share one design and one dashboard, and it is best planned that way from the first day.
What does bilingual really mean?
It means each page exists twice, once in each language, at its own address. A visitor who switches language lands on the same page in the other language, not on the home page. Menus, buttons, form messages and the footer all exist in both. It does not mean a widget that machine-translates the page on the fly, which leaves you with wording you never read.
How is it set up in WordPress?
There are two common routes. One is a multilingual plugin that stores both versions inside a single site and links each page to its translation. The other is two connected sites, one per language, sharing the same design. The first is easier to manage day to day. The second gives more separation when the two audiences need different content. Which fits depends on how alike the two versions will be.
What changes in the Arabic version besides the words?
The direction of everything. Arabic reads from right to left, so the layout mirrors: the logo moves, the menu order flips, columns swap sides, arrows and sliders run the other way, and forms align to the right. Arabic also needs its own font, chosen to sit comfortably beside the English one. Images that contain text need a second version too.
Who should write the second language?
A person, for a reader. Machine translation is a useful first draft and a poor final text, especially for headings and buttons where every word carries weight. The Arabic should be written as Arabic, not as English in Arabic letters, and the same holds in the other direction. Do not forget the small texts: error messages, confirmation emails and the cookie notice are read too.
What extra work comes after launch?
Everything you publish, you publish twice. A new service page, a news item, a changed phone number. Decide early which content must exist in both languages and which can live in one, such as a blog written only in Arabic. A site where one language is updated and the other is forgotten looks worse than a site with a single language kept current.
How do search engines treat the two versions?
As separate pages, which is what you want. Each version has its own address, its own title and its own description, written in its language. The site should also tell search engines that the two pages are the same content in different languages, so the right one is shown to the right reader. This is set up once in the build. It helps the pages be understood, and it promises nothing about ranking.
How I handle it
Tell me at the start that the site needs both languages, because every project I build is designed in Figma first, and the Arabic and the English layouts should both be in the design you approve before the build. On WordPress I build with Elementor Pro, and you receive the dashboard to edit the text and images of each language yourself. You have 180 days of support, starting the day the site goes live. Write to me about your site and which language your main audience reads.
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