MultiLingual WordPress in 13 Languages for Oxford University FreeSpeechDebate

The FreeSpeechDebate project, funded by Oxford University, set out to create a truly global online platform for open discussion. With contributors from around the world and a mission to promote dialogue in multiple languages, the project needed a website capable of handling a diverse and complex set of requirements.

After a lengthy discovery and introduction phase, Make Do were invited to redesign and redevelop the platform from the ground up. Our team worked with Oxford University stakeholders to map out both the technical and design solutions needed to serve a worldwide audience.

Project Goals

• Deliver a modern homepage with a flexible grid layout to highlight the 10 Free Speech Principles
• Create dedicated landing pages for each principle
• Improve article presentation by removing sidebars, enhancing typography, and simplifying layout
• Redesign navigation for clarity, accessibility, and mobile-first usage
• Refresh the overall design while keeping a focus on usability across devices

A Multilingual Challenge Without Plugins

Perhaps the most significant challenge was making the site fully multilingual without relying on any off-the-shelf plugins such as WPML or Polylang. The FreeSpeechDebate platform already ran on a complex legacy custom-coded system for managing translations and language variations, which Oxford University asked us to inherit and refine rather than replace.

This meant reworking, debugging, and extending existing code to ensure it could scale across 13 languages—including right-to-left languages like Arabic and languages with Latin and non-Latin character sets. Our solution provided editors with the flexibility to manage and publish content in multiple languages while ensuring a seamless user experience.

We also implemented a fallback system: when content wasn’t available in a user’s chosen language, the platform intelligently displayed English content instead, ensuring that the site was never empty or fragmented for any audience.