Giving users the ability to translate your plugin is important. So you should be using __, _e, _x …etc in your plugins as myuch as possible.
In your plugin folder, create a lang sub-foldder to store your language files. In your init plugin file, make sure you have the localisation code:
$domain = 'your-plugin-name'; $locale = apply_filters('plugin_locale', get_locale(), $domain); // let user customise the lang in a dfferent folder. load_textdomain($domain, WP_LANG_DIR.'/my-plugin/'.$domain.'-'.$locale.'.mo'); // load plugin locale load_plugin_textdomain( 'your-plugin-name', false, dirname( plugin_basename( __FILE__ ) ) . '/lang/' );
next download poedit from http://www.poedit.net/
1) Open poedit and fill in the project info.
2) Under the paths tab, fill in the base path, eg /home/username/your-wordpress-project/wp-content/plugins/plugin-name/. Then add a “.” under the Paths input box below.
3) Under the keywords tab, add “__” and “_e”
4) Click ok and when prompted to save the file, save it in your plugin lang folder in the form of your-plugin-name_lang_locale format, eg your-plugin-name_en_AU
You should get 2 files of with the .mo and .po extension.
good luck.