There are a couple of languages written and read from right to left (RTL) direction - like Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Urdu and others. Using WordPress and WordPress themes which support RTL you can switch your website to RTL very easily. Enabling RTL for your WordPress website is quite simple and we would like to guide you on how to activate RTL for your WordPress website in this mini tutorial.
What is required to run a WordPress website in RTL? #
There are a few essential requirements that need to be fulfilled in order for your website to display in RTL. First, the RTL language you want to use for your WordPress website must be supported by WordPress. You can check whether your preferred language is supported and to which degree it has been translated when looking at this overview.
Second, you need a WordPress theme that supports RTL languages. That basically means that the WordPress theme you are using must include two stylesheets - style.css AND rtl.css. The rtl.css stylesheet manages to display all important site elements from right to left and partly overrides the style.css wherever necessary. If RTL support is available, most WordPress themes mention support for RTL in their features overview - our popular MH Magazine WordPress theme supports RTL out of the box, which is ideal for languages like Hebrew, Arabic or any other RTL languages.
How to enable RTL for your WordPress website? #
When those two requirements are given (RTL language which is supported by WordPress AND a WordPress theme which supports RTL) you are ready to enable RTL for your WordPress website.
Provided that you have WordPress installed and have a WordPress theme for RTL languages activated, the only thing you basically have to do is to switch your WordPress installation to your preferred RTL language, to do so, please follow the instructions below.
Navigate to Settings => General in your WordPress dashboard and select the preferred "Site language" - don't forget to hit the "Save Changes" button. WordPress detects whether your chosen language is a RTL language and when your WordPress theme supports RTL, the rtl.css stylesheet is loaded automatically and your website will be displayed in RTL. That's it.
