When it comes to content management, choosing the right platform is vital for a business. You don’t want to set yourself up with a workflow, only to find out your software no longer meets your needs.
There are plenty of content management systems (CMS) to choose from – WordPress and Sitecore being two of the most popular. We’ll be looking at these two specifically as we ask which one is better for managing multilingual content.
How does WordPress handle multilingual content?
WordPress comes with support for multilingual content as standard. You also get several translation plugins that promise to translate your content for you. That might sound promising when you read the product description but you don’t want to count on machine translation for web content.
First of all, you won’t get anywhere near the kind of accuracy you need for published content. Secondly, depending on how your domain is set up, you could get a duplicate content penalty from Google for using machine translations.
If you use professional translation, however, Google can distinguish the two pages from each other. Most WordPress themes that offer multilingual support will cover the technical side to tell search engines which language/region the content is designed for.
WordPress comes with all the basic requirements for multilingual content; it’s a cheap option too, but it’s the management side of things where it begins to struggle.
How does Sitecore handle multilingual content?
Because Sitecore is designed for enterprise businesses, it puts more of an emphasis on content management. This includes a full suite of multilingual support features with far more to offer than WordPress.
Once again, however, you don’t want to rely on the built-in translation software. Although Sitecore has fall-backs to avoid search penalties, you still can’t expect accurate translation from a machine. Luckily, there are a number of language service companies that specialise in Sitecore translation, and the platform comes with a number of features to make the process smoother.
We handle a lot of Sitecore translation projects, as well as projects where our clients use WordPress and other CMS platforms. We can safely say Sitecore is up there with the best for corporate businesses with multilingual sites. WordPress is fine for smaller projects but the workflow can become complicated if you need a lot of content published in more than one language.
Other things to consider about WordPress and Sitecore
Overall, Sitecore is the better platform for serious content management – that’s precisely what you’re paying for. There’s a fundamental difference between the two that you need to be aware of, though.
WordPress is built around the open-source PHP programming language, while Sitecore is built using .NET. To get full control over each platform, you’ll need programmers with the right language skills. You don’t want to sign up to WordPress if your team works in .NET or vice versa.
Other PHP CMS platforms include Drupal, Joomla and Magneto, just to name a few. While SharePoint is another .NET platform, Sitecore tends to rule this bracket.
Note: For a detailed comparison of WordPress and Sitecore, you can check out this head-to-head from Comparisons.finnancesonline
Price is another factor worth mentioning here. WordPress is usually free but it requires more time input. Sitecore doesn’t disclose its prices (quote on application) but it’s designed for enterprise businesses that need the next level of content management.
One particularly appealing aspect of Sitecore is that you can change content based on visitor actions to generate more sales through your site. You also get built-in reports and a host of feedback to make better publishing decisions. There are WordPress plugins that can do some of this, but nowhere near to the same extent.
In conclusion
To answer our first question, Sitecore is definitely the better platform for multilingual content if you have the budget – it’s actually the better platform for content management in general. The truth is that WordPress and Sitecore aren’t actually competitors: they’re designed for two different levels of enterprise.
WordPress is great for smaller enterprises but too restrictive for anything larger. That’s absolutely fine because we want a range of tools to meet different needs. If you’re a larger firm with multilingual content needs, then Sitecore is certainly the way to go.