Translate a WordPress site

What you need

A self-hosted WordPress site (the wordpress.org kind) and an administrator login.
Somewhere to put a few lines of PHP: a child theme you can edit, or a code snippets plugin.
On WordPress.com, custom code and plugins are limited by plan. Check what your plan allows before you start.

Where the snippet goes

1
Copy your snippet

Open your site in the Verbafy dashboard and copy the embed snippet. It carries your own site id and public key.
Your page, before </body>
```
<script
  src="https://cdn.verbafy.app/widget.js"
  data-site-id="site_abc123"
  data-api-key="pk_live_your_key"
></script>
```

Add it to the front end, and only the front end

Put this in your child theme's functions.php, or in a code snippets plugin set to run on the front end. Paste your own snippet in place of the one below.

functions.php

add_action( 'wp_footer', function () {
    if ( is_admin() ) {
        return;
    }
    ?>
    <script
      src="https://cdn.verbafy.app/widget.js"
      data-site-id="site_abc123"
      data-api-key="pk_live_your_key"
    ></script>
    <?php
} );

Save, and load your site

Nothing to build and no cache to prime. If you run a page cache, clear it once so the new footer is served.

Keep it off your admin

Why the snippet is scoped, and not just pasted in the footer

wp_footer is the front-end hook: WordPress' own reference describes it as printing scripts “before the closing body tag on the front end”. It is not quite exclusive, though. Since WordPress 5.8 it also fires on the block-based Widgets screen, which is an admin page. The is_admin() guard closes that gap. Without it, every editor opening that screen would translate your back office and spend your monthly word allowance on pages no customer ever sees.

Check it is working

Open your site in a private window. The language switcher is in the bottom right corner.
Switch language. The page text changes where you stand, with no reload.
Open /wp-admin. There should be no switcher there. If there is, the is_admin() guard is missing.

Worth knowing on WordPress

WooCommerce needs nothing extra

Shop, category, product, cart and checkout are front-end pages rendered by your theme, so the same hook covers them. Prices, variation names and anything WooCommerce swaps in with JavaScript after the page loads are picked up as they appear.

Page caches are fine

The snippet is the same HTML for every visitor, so it caches like the rest of your footer. The translation itself happens in the visitor's browser, after the cached page arrives.