[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #51873: Middle East countries all missing country codes

[WordPress Trac]

#51873: Middle East countries all missing country codes
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 Reporter:  HackYaaaaa       |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  feature request  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal           |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  General          |    Version:  5.6
 Severity:  normal           |   Keywords:  country codes
  Focuses:  multisite        |
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 Currently, WordPress does not support country codes for any Middle East
 countries such as Qatar, UAE, or Saudi Arabia.

 They are all lumped into one as "ar."  There is no ar-QA, ar-AE, etc.

 https://wpcentral.io/internationalization/

 This may not be an issue for a simple blog site but WordPress is
 increasingly being used for commercial applications and ecommerce sites
 now days.

 I do realize that current WordPress internationalization scheme is based
 on language, not based on country.

 This poses a serious inconvenience and added development cost for a
 business application that wishes to serve contents and services based on
 country, not language.

 Let me illustrate one example. Nigeria, the largest country in Africa (in
 terms of population) does not have its own country code.  So based on
 WordPress scheme of things, Nigeria has to be lumped with one of the six
 English codes WordPress provides since Nigeria's official language is
 English.

 If "en" is chosen, Nigeria is then has to be grouped with many other
 countries that use English as their official language.  What does Nigeria
 have in common with Tonga?

 I am not making this proposal for our current needs. We have already
 implemented our custom router scheme to address this issue.  But coming up
 with a solution wasn't easy. It certainly wasn't cheap.

 I am pointing this out for other businesses and startups that will run
 into this issue in the future.

 Regards,

 Matthew S. Park
 General Counsel & CTO
 MM Global Services, Inc.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/51873>
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