New Plugin Adds Persian Calendar and Language Support to WordPress

WordPress is available in more than 80 different languages, due in large part to the many community volunteers who have submitted translations. Translating WordPress into a new language makes it possible for people around the world to take advantage of this open source publishing platform to make their voices heard. In addition to translations, some languages and cultures have different requirements for post meta data.

WP-parsidate is a relatively new plugin that was created to be a Persian package builder for WordPress. This plugin adds support for the Shamsi or Jalali Calendar, which is the traditional Persian calendar based on the sun. It rewrites dates in posts, comments, pages, archives, search, and categories to utilize the Shamsi calendar. WP-Parsidate also features the following:

• Shamsi (Jalali) date in Posts, comments, pages, archives, search, categories
• Shamsi (Jalali) date in Permalinks
• Shamsi (Jalali) date in admin sections such as posts lists, comments lists, pages lists
• Shamsi (Jalali) date in post quick edit, comment quick edit, page quick edit of admin panel
• Shamsi (Jalali) archive widget
• RTL and fixed tinymce editor
• Poweful and fast function for fixing Arabic (ي , ك) to Persian (ی , ک)
• Poweful and fast function for Persian numbers

Essentially, this plugin provides a better Persian language experience with WordPress. It has already received many five star ratings and positive reviews. I installed it just for fun and it’s amazing how it completely transforms the WordPress frontend and backend. This screenshot is from a test site where I didn’t even have the Persian translation active:

Though Persian-speakers may be a small portion of worldwide WordPress users, it’s quite inspirational to see a plugin that changes WordPress to present content in a better way for their language. If you have friends who blog in Persian, make sure to share the WP-parsidate plugin with them.