Migrate from Bogo — your translated posts come with you

Bogo is beautifully simple: one post per language, linked together. Simplicity is also its ceiling. This page is the honest version of what moving to TranslateRocket — a free multilingual WordPress plugin — actually involves: what comes across, what does not, and how long it takes.

What this plugin does — and where it stops

Bogo makes a separate post for each language and links them. That works, but everything outside post content stays untranslated — menus, widgets, theme strings, WooCommerce, SEO meta — and every new page means creating and maintaining a copy by hand, in every language.

Where your translations actually live

Bogo stores two pieces of post meta: _locale, the language of that post, and _original_post, which ties the versions together.

What comes across

• Post and page titles, excerpts and body content, paired exactly.
• Every language you created, not just one.
• Custom post types too, not only posts and pages.

A note for the technically curious: _original_post is not a pointer to the original — it is a group key that every version carries, the original included, and Bogo puts the post’s GUID in it. Reading it as a parent ID looks right and imports nothing. We found that out by generating the test data with Bogo’s own function instead of writing it by hand, which is also why our importer works on a real Bogo site rather than on a tidy example.

How to migrate, step by step

1. Back up your site. Nothing here modifies your content, but a migration without a backup is a bad habit whatever the tool.
2. Install TranslateRocket from wordpress.org. It is free and there is no account to create.
3. Pick your languages in TranslateRocket → Languages: the language your site is written in, and the ones you already have translations for.
4. Open TranslateRocket → Import. The screen looks at your site and tells you what it found, with a count. If it says nothing was detected, nothing is guessed at.
5. Press the import button for this plugin and let it run. Your original content is untouched.
6. Fill the gaps for free. Whatever the old plugin never covered — menus, theme strings, WooCommerce — can be translated with the translator built into Chrome and Edge: no API key, no account, nothing sent anywhere. We timed it: 464 strings in 42 seconds.
7. Check it, then remove the old plugin when you are satisfied — not before.

What life looks like afterwards

After the import you have one set of pages plus stored translations, instead of two parallel sites to keep in step. New content is translated once, from the page itself.

You also get the things a translation plugin is judged on once the novelty wears off: /es/-style URLs with correct hreflang, translated slugs, a language switcher as a shortcode, block or widget, per-page visibility rules, and a translation memory so the same sentence is never translated twice.

Questions people ask before switching

Will my duplicated posts be deleted?

No. Nothing of yours is touched or removed. The import only reads, and writes the translations into TranslateRocket’s own tables.

Does it handle custom post types?

Yes. Whatever Bogo paired is read, whatever the post type.

What about menus, widgets and theme strings?

Those are exactly what Bogo could not do — and what TranslateRocket picks up automatically as you browse your own site.

Is it free?

Completely. No paid tier, no language limit, and no API key needed if you use the translator built into Chrome and Edge.

Coming from something else? WPML · Polylang · TranslatePress · Weglot · Loco Translate · Bogo · WPGlobus · WP Multilang · Multilanguage · qTranslate

Leaving a paid plugin? Read the honest comparisons: WPML alternative · TranslatePress alternative · Weglot alternative · GTranslate alternative