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WPML includes full support for untranslated content, using the new Content Duplication feature. It also lets you translate custom fields using a Visual WYSIWYG editor.

Displaying Untranslated Content

It turns out that displaying untranslated content across different languages is not as simple as you’d think. WPML 2.4.2 supports this by allowing you to duplicate that content to different languages. For example, if you want English blog posts to appear in Spanish, you can duplicate them all in one go.

To see how to duplicate content in different languages, have a look at the previous post about it.

There are interesting results to this and we hope that we have them all covered.

For example, if your Spanish blog now includes English posts, you want search engines to understand what’s going on.

Google will assume that your Spanish blog contains Spanish content. We’re added a way for you to tell Google that these duplicate posts are indeed in English and where they’re coming from.

First, all Spanish posts will include the rel=”canonical” tag, linking to the original English post.

Then, your index page (where different posts are displayed) will include a mix of content in different languages. There’s a way to handle this as well.

We’ve added a new API call – wpml_get_language_information.

This returns an array that contains the locale, language name, text direction and other useful information. If you’re planning to display untranslated content, we recommend that you call this function in your theme and wrap texts in language information. This will tell Google exactly how to understand what it sees.

Translating Custom Fields using a Visual Editor (WYSIWYG)

If you’re using Types to manage custom fields and custom post types (and you should), you now have a way to create custom fields that use the native WordPress Visual editor. This means that you can have different full-featured editors for different parts of posts.

WPML 2.4.2 follows and allows your translators to use WYSIWYG editors. When you use WPML’s Translation Editor and send content to translation, WPML automatically adjusts the translation interface to display fields in the same way writers see them.

It supports single-line fields, text-area (multiple lines) and now, also WYSIWYG fields.

SEO Love with Per-Language Sitemaps

This version of WPML also includes a fix for a very old problem. When you use languages-per-domains, you’ll need a separate XML sitemap to give to Google. If your single sitemap includes all pages, in all languages, Google rejects it.

WPML 2.4.2 adds support for creating per-domain sitemap with Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin (which we use and recommend).

When you use WPML 2.4.2 together with WordPress SEO (version 1.1.1 and above), you’ll get individual sitemaps – one per language.

Open your sitemap_index.xml and you’ll see links to the different sitemaps per type and language. It will look like this:

  http://wpml.local/post-sitemap.xml
  http://wpml.local/page-sitemap.xml
  http://wpml.local/category-sitemap.xml
  http://fr.wpml.local/post-fr-sitemap.xml
  http://fr.wpml.local/page-fr-sitemap.xml
  http://fr.wpml.local/category-fr-sitemap.xml
  http://de.wpml.local/post-de-sitemap.xml
  http://de.wpml.local/page-de-sitemap.xml
  http://de.wpml.local/category-de-sitemap.xml
  http://es.wpml.local/post-es-sitemap.xml
  http://es.wpml.local/page-es-sitemap.xml
  http://es.wpml.local/category-es-sitemap.xml

In the Google Webmasters console, you need to submit all the sitemaps for each language. So, for instance, in our Spanish domain, we’ll need to submit:

  http://es.wpml.local/post-es-sitemap.xml
  http://es.wpml.local/page-es-sitemap.xml
  http://es.wpml.local/category-es-sitemap.xml

It’s been a pleasure working with Joost on this functionality. You can expect more great stuff for multilingual SEO in the near future.

Bugs Fixed

The joy is never complete without a few bugs to crush. In this release, we’ve significantly improved handling duplicate slugs. This is something that we added to WPML 2.4.1, but had some glitches in some cases. Now, it looks like all cases are handled.

We also included fixes for everything reported in the forum until now. I you have anything that’s not working as expected, don’t hold hack. Let us know about it.

Oh, and I almost forgot, Happy WordPress 3.3! (yes, WPML has been WP 3.3 compatible for a few weeks now)

How can we make WPML better for you?

Share your thoughts and comments about our plugin, documentation, or videos by booking a Zoom call with Agnes, our Client Advocate. Your feedback matters and helps us improve.

Book a call with Agnes

25 Responses to “WPML 2.4.2 – Content Duplication and WYSIWYG Custom Fields”

  1. Hi ! When I try the automatic update, I have these errors :

    Updating Plugin WPML Multilingual CMS (1/2)
    An error occurred while updating WPML Multilingual CMS: Update package not available..

    Updating Plugin WPML String Translation (2/2)
    An error occurred while updating WPML String Translation: Update package not available..

    What’s wrong :s ? I have WordPress 3.2 with MU enabled…

    • If you’re running a network and have network activation, I strongly suggest downloading and installing the new version manually.

      First, back up your database, then, install the new versions over the ones you’re using. There’s no database migration, so you just need the new files.

    • WPML appears to be working fine with Domain Mapping. We are almost ready with a comprehensive how-to that will list all the steps required.

    • You should start a thread about it in our technical forum and provide information that will allow to reproduce the problem you’re having. As a start, try to use the default WP theme. Anyway, report it in the forum, where are support people can help.

  2. Hi,
    Thanks for this update but is it possible to have independant XML sitemap when we use this kind of website structure?
    domain.tld/fr
    domain.tld/es

    Hope we can use a special tricks do have the same result as unique domain sitemap ^^

    • We intentionally enabled this functionality only when sites use languages in domains. What’s the point of having different sitemaps when all content is in the same domain?

      • Simply because we need for each language to have a proper sitemap XML in one language only. Even with the same TLD. As long as we subscribe the domainname.tld/fr… and others as well in GWT.

        A good exemple with dell
        http://www.dell.com/es-sitemap.xml

        Tell me if you have a tricks to activate the feature for this case

        Thanks in advance

    • Works for us. We’re using content duplication in our own site. If you’re having trouble, can you get help in our forum?

  3. Could anyone point me to information on how WPML deals with the issue of duplicate content caused by this ‘content duplication’ feature?

    For example, we might have a website where we translate all pages but can’t translate all blog posts. We therefore duplicate the posts to other languages. From an SEO point of view I am worried that Google will see a site as having lots of identical posts.

    Is there a solution to this? For example, to automatically no index duplicate posts? That way they can easily be found through the navigation on the site, but hopefully dont confuse Google.

    • WPML uses the canonical header to tell Google where the original content is. This way, Google knows that a page is duplicated and will return search results to the original one.

      Google looks at URLs and cannot see your DB content. It doesn’t matter if the post is duplicated or not. Anyway you display the same content in different URLs, you’ll have this issue. When you use WPML’s content duplication, you have the advantage of including that ‘canonical’ information for Google.

  4. Amir:
    I want to buy WPML but first I want to know if it solve my problem: I distribute the products to all Latin American countries and they use 8 different ways to name the main word of my texts.
    Imagine I am Real State and sell houses in US and UK. I want my site in english but detecting if visited from US or UK and show the content correctly. Then, the only thing I want to change in the text of the posts is: “bathroom” for “swimming pool” and “flat” for “apartment”. ALL the rest of the content remains the same.
    ¿Can it be done without making the change manually? Something that applies to a particular post or to the whole website?

    • I think that you should use a custom post type, with custom fields to build that content. You can use WPML’s Translation Management to manage the translations. You can tell WPML to synchronize some fields and to make other fields translatable. This way, the special words will be translated and the other fields will be synchronized.

      • Ok. I understand that is possible. Then I will buy the plugin today and try. If I need help, then I come back to you. I will try to do it myself the more I can.

  5. we run a site in german and english and want to create an extra sitemap per language. we use wordpress and word press SEO, the plugin for creating the second sitemap does not work (error 404).
    what is the problem?
    how can we create a second sitemap with the second domain to finally submit at Google (both sites as we want a ranking in both, the German and the UK google).
    many thanks, sabine

    • Yoast SEO plugin produces correct XML maps, per language. If it’s not working for you, please start a support thread in our forum, give us the details about what you are doing and what you are seeing and we should be able to help. If it’s for Yoast SEO, please indicate that this support thread is for Dominykas.

    • Thanks for answering, unfortunately we are not allowed to open a new topic at SUPPORT to get support for our prob!! Can you please let me know how/where we can post our problem to get needed help???
      Thx
      Sabine