Whether it makes sense or not – after some time of thinking about it, I decided to offer this site in English as well. Then I looked at different possibilities, how I can realize this best. And as always there are different tools for this. In the end I decided to use the WordPress plugin “Polylang”.
Unlike other plugins that offer a similar range of functions, the use of the basic functions is free of charge. And because this site is still “just” a hobby, I do not like to spend amounts of 99 and 299 euros per year. Polylang is doing everything I need in the basic version. Nevertheless, the effort was not to be underestimated. I had to duplicate the entire page structure, i.e. create widgets, menus and categories in English as well. There were sometimes strange effects here. But these helped me to understand the functionality of Polylang better and better. After the structure was finished, the hard work followed: translating all the posts. Here I was surprised how many of them there are in my virtual museum by now. For each of these contributions I had to create an English version. The neural network of the translation service “DeepL” helped me with the translation. Except for a few corrections, I was able to use the translations without any problems.
Changing the language is now done by a toggle switch on the right side of the main menu. Thus, the language can be changed no matter what content is currently displayed. The switch is immediately to the English version of the post (or back to the German one). There is also a separate link for RSS subscriptions in the English version; the feeds appear in English, of course.
And on this occasion the start page has also got a slightly changed layout!