I see a few Google searches for “code for language switch in gengo” and, since I’m actually using it in my theme, it’s a shame that people land here without finding what they’re looking for.

So here’s the code you should add to your WordPress theme to show the language switch.
I’m currently using this code:
<div class="post_translations" style="float:right">
<?php if (function_exists('the_translations')) the_translations('pre= &post= &title_exists=Read this in ') ?>
</div>

First of all, the “if function_exists” part gives you the ability to switch off the Gengo Plugin avoiding any error. It says, if PHP finds a function named “the_translations” is declared and available, it is safe to proceed using it otherwise the following code is ignored.

The function “the_translations” returns a string representing the HTML code to display a list of translations for the current post. It must be used in “The Loop”.

I use a single string as parameter, providing more parameters in one “querystring” (param1=value1&param2=value2 …).

Providing values for “pre”, “post” and “inner” you could specify which HTML tags should respectively be opened, closed and be in between of the resulting list of links to other language versions of the article.
Well, since this blog is bilingual (English/Italian) I’m only using two languages, this means I don’t need a “list” of translation but just a link to the “other” language. This is why I provide a space (or blank) value for pre and post. So a single link to the opposite language will appear in my theme, no need of useless tags.

The “title_exists” parameter specifies the text or label to show before the link/s, only if other languages are found for this post. If no other parameters are provided (as in this case) if a post is written in a single language, no other versions, nothing appears and this is what I wanted.
Otherwise you should add the “title_none” parameter telling what to write in case no other language is available.
For both parameters, you could write your own string -in a specific language, as I did in English- otherwise you could use for both, as value, the keyword “GENGO_DEFAULT”: this will result respectively in strings like “Other languages” or “No translations”.

In my case the result is wrapped in a DIV, which is right floated as directly specified by the inline style and the rest of its appearance is decided in my style sheet .css file under a class named “post_translations” but this is another story.

The results of my code of course is visible simply browsing my posts, reading a single article (click on its title) since in a list of posts the switch is not visible in my theme.

About new wordpress plugins I’m adding, I gave up trying to validate my Api Key for Akismet, one week of patience is enough I suppose. I see no obstacles on my hosting side that can prevent a call to the Akismet server. I can understand that a service has to be validated to avoid massive unknown request from nowhere but… I would like to speed up things, I give up.

So I added Spam Karma 2 (SK2) that seems very efficient:
well it’s too early to judge because the blog system is new, so still unknown to spam attacks… we’ll see. Anyway I had very massive ones in other sites I ran and it’s a real bother.

Ack, WordPress is great but its default-installed anti-spam Plugin, Akismet, is giving me troubles instead of helping me. The required API Key -received along with the wordpress.com account registration- is rejected by the Akismet configuration panel. It keeps saying:
«The key you entered is invalid. Please double-check it.»

The wordpress.com support kindly replied as follows:

The error message is because Akismet cannot access the Akismet server. The problem is one of three things [four actually]:
- either Akismet is being denied access to the internet if you are hosted locally behind a firewall, or
- the server you are on lacks the ‘fopen’ function which Akismet needs.
- your host might need to know that the default-installed SELinux security precautions (on Fedora4) causes this problem. With SELinux disabled, it works.
- ask your host if they mod_chroot enabled. If they do, that is what has caused Akismet not to work. They will be able to advise on what they can do for you.
Do talk to your host and see if there is anyway they can help.

I contacted my hosting support but they excluded all cases (i was sure about the first two but I ignored the rest).

Some say -at the wordpress.org support forums- that Akismet need a 24-48 patience period, let’s wait another day… then i’ll choose between Spam Karma 2 or Bad Behavior, other comment spam fighting plugins.

What about your Akismet activation? All smooth?