Universally Documentation

Step-by-step guides, multilingual SEO tips, and best practices to help you translate and scale your WordPress website.

Projects, workspaces and sites

Two levels, not three. A workspace holds projects, and one project is one website. The word "site" turns up in places meaning the same thing as project, which is the only confusing part.

The two levels

What it is What lives on it
Workspace your account's container the subscription, the word total, the member list
Project one website you translate its languages, glossary, translation rules, API key, statistics

Most accounts have one workspace with one project in it. Add a project per additional website; add a workspace only when you need a hard boundary, which is covered in Workspaces.

Project and site mean the same thing

You will see both. The dashboard mostly says project, and some screens and messages say site, for example "This site is already connected" during setup. They refer to the same object: one website, one domain, one set of translations.

This page uses project throughout, and so does the rest of these docs.

What belongs to a project

Everything specific to one website:

  • Its target languages
  • Its glossary rules, unless a rule is set to apply to the whole workspace
  • Its translation rules, meaning the include and exclude settings
  • Its API key
  • Its statistics
  • Its own member list, for granting someone extra access to this project only

Two projects in the same workspace share nothing else from that list. Adding a language to one does not add it to the other, and neither do translation rules or statistics carry across.

Glossary rules are the exception. Each rule is set to either This project only or The whole workspace, and a workspace-wide rule applies to every project in it. See Glossary rules.

What belongs to the workspace

Everything about who pays and who has access:

  • The plan and subscription
  • The prepaid word total, drawn down by all projects together
  • The member list and everyone's role

The pooled word total is the consequence people miss: a busy project can consume words a quieter one was meant for, because there is one balance rather than one per project. See Usage limits.

Roles apply to the whole workspace

Your role is workspace-wide, so an Editor is an Editor on every project in it. A per-project role can raise someone's access on one project but never lower it, which means there is no way to hide a project from someone who can see the workspace. See Roles and permissions.

Which one am I looking at?

The workspace switcher in the top bar shows the current workspace. Below it, the project list shows that workspace's projects. Choosing a different workspace changes the projects, members and billing you see.

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