WPML versions

One of the best new features in WordPress 3.0 has to be the new menu system. And now, it’s multilingual too.

We’ve already gone through two developer releases and are thankful for the help we got testing it.

In a nutshell, menus now have languages. When you view the public pages, you’ll see the menu for that language. Got several languages? Add menus for each.

I’m going to recycle Mihai’s how-to video and show it again. If you haven’t yet seen how to translate menus in WordPress, check out the following video:

We know that there is room for improvement, but not having multilingual menus at all is a bit of a pressing issue. We checked and cleaned this version with the basic functionality and will consider adding more multilingual power to menus in the near future.

Next Up – Systematic Translation Process

The next (huge) leap for WPML is a complete translation process. We wrote a bit about that before highlighting side-by-side translation. This is going to take a while to complete, but when it’s done, you’ll get a brand new WPML.

Web developers are not going to feel much difference. The folks who will enjoy this are the actual content managers and translators. They’re going to have a world-class tool for managing translations. With WordPress turning into a real CMS, we believe that now is the time.

We Love Feedback

Let us know how it’s working for you. We’re doing our best to accommodate feature suggestions and fix bugs. Remember that if you need immediate attention, the fastest route is via a support subscription.

If you’re running a blog farm and wanted to use WPML, you now can. This release fixes a few problems which prevented WPML from running MultiSite with WordPress 3.0.

MultiSite Support

MultiSite Support boils down to sitewide activation. Until now it just didn’t work, producing all sorts of errors. As of WPML 1.7.9, sitewide activation works just fine, so you can power a multilingual blog-farm with WPML.

WPML now also scans plugins in the MU plugins directory for texts to translate.

Theme Localization for Sites With no English

If your site has a default language other than English, it was pretty much impossible to use WPML’s theme localization. WPML assumed that the theme’s texts were in the default language of your site.

On the surface, this makes sense, but since almost all themes are written originally in English, it was a mistake.

It’s fixed now. You can have a site in any language(s) and still translate the theme from English.

Celebrity Bugs

We’ve fixed a fair number of bugs in this release. Many of them are very rarely noticed but some are more ‘popular’. Here they are:

• Pagination for custom types didn’t work.
• Search returned everything in all languages.
• Thickbox popups were broken.
• post_parent function with auto ID adjustment was broken.

Next Up – Multilingual Menus

We’ve been planning to add multilingual menu support for a few weeks now, but it kept getting pushed back. No more. This release of WPML closes the bugs that we know of and we’re finally back on track.

We hope to have WPML 1.8.0 with multilingual WordPress menus in about 3 weeks from now. Hang in there, it’s not so long!

WPML 1.7.8 is out with two major additions for using WordPress as CMS. It includes full multilingual support for the new custom post types and also offers commercial support for developers.

Translation for Custom Types

When you define a new custom, you choose if it needs multilingual support. If you’ve enabled multilingual support, the translation controls will be part of the edit screen.

As custom types are a bit beyond the basics, you need to enable WPML’s Advanced mode for all of this.

Then, go to WPML->Translation sync and scroll to the bottom. You will see something like this:

Translation controls for a custom type

If you choose Translate, this custom type will have all the normal translation controls, just like standard posts and pages.

Also, WPML hooks to the WordPress API calls and will filter items of that custom type according to language.

If you’ve selected Do nothing, items of that custom type will not have any language associated with them. When you query these items, they would return from any language.

There’s no right or wrong. What you choose depends on what you need.

Commercial Support for Developers

As WordPress grows complex, giving technical support is becoming a real challenge. With close to 2000 downloads each week, the forum support isn’t enough.

Professional web developers, using WordPress and WPML as their tools, need timely and reliable support.

WPML now includes a new Support section. You can find it under the WPML menu. From there, you can get direct support from WPML’s developers.

With a commercial support subscription you can create support tickets right from within WordPress. WPML developers will respond in 24 hours or less. Normally, much less.

Support tickets from within WordPress

If you’re building commercial sites, a commercial support subscription is essential. You’ll be able to get the job done faster and better. Not only will you get fast results, but you’ll get them directly from the experts.

A commercial support subscription costs $50/year for one site or $200/year for all your sites. To purchase, go to WPML->Support and choose the subscription that you prefer.

Next Up – Multilingual Menus

The next major feature for WPML is multilingual support for the new, shiny, WordPress menu system. I’ll write about it when we have something to show.

WPML 1.7.7 is another major step towards full support for new WordPress 3.0 features. In this step, we’ve added translation for custom taxonomies.

Custom taxonomies have been in WordPress for a while, but weren’t a very popular feature. Sure, some pretty advanced folks used them from the beginning, but it wasn’t a very easy feature to use.

WordPress 3.0 changes all that. Custom taxonomies together with custom post types turn WordPress into a fully featured content management system.

We’re sure that soon after WordPress 3 comes out, we’re going to see many themes and plugins use both custom posts and custom taxonomies. Want an example? The WP E-Commerce plugin is going through a massive change from using its own tables to the new WordPress 3.0 features. Pretty classic example.

WPML 1.7.7 supports the WordPress custom taxonomies fully. When you create custom taxonomies WPML offers you to translate them.

To access this, you need to use WPML in Advanced mode (have to admit, that is pretty advanced).

Then, click on Translation sync. WPML will list all the custom taxonomies that you’ve defined and will ask you if they need to be translated. If so, you’ll get the language controls for each new custom taxonomy.

Of course, our professional translation also supports this. When you send posts or pages that contain custom taxonomy for translation, all that taxonomy will get translated.

Bug fixes

WPML 1.7.7 also includes fixes to a large number of bugs. Most of the bugs revolve around tags and categories.

If your blog has any problem with tag or category translation going to the wrong place, try out this version and see if these problems are gone. They should be.

Performance improvements

Another major improvement in this version is caching that we’ve added to WPML’s auto ID adjustment feature. This powerful feature allows WPML to run on any theme out there, without having to be designed to work with WPML.

However, until this version, every call that the theme did to fetch posts, pages, tags and categories also produced calls to WPML’s language table. This is fixed now. WPML will cache that information and it will only be queried once.

The speed improvements are huge. For some sites, it would mean a reduction of 90% in database access and can mean the site will respond in milliseconds.

Important announcement - premium support is coming

Ever since starting WPML, we’ve done every effort to help anyone who needs help. Most of our technical support is given in the forum.

As WordPress turns into a CMS and WPML evolves, giving high quality and timely support is becoming increasingly difficult to us. WPML powers thousands of sites, many of them taking WordPress to its limits.

In order to provide better and more reliable support, we’re going to offer it as a paid service. We’ll still do our best to answer the forum, but that’s going to be more up to WPML’s thriving community to handle.

WPML 1.7.8 will offer support from WPML’s developers. You’ll be able to get this support directly from WPML’s admin screens. This would be one-on-one help, private and secure. It would allow us to get information about your site (if you choose to send it), check changes and fixes and apply patches.

I’ll talk about this more once we know the specifics. What I can promise now is that you’ll make up for the cost very quickly by the time saved handling issues.

The yesterday WPML 1.7.4 release didn’t go so well due to a bug that managed to slip through. The translated homepages of sites using the ‘page on front’ WP option and the WPML’s ‘Different languages in directories’ setting were affected – instead of showing the translated homepage, the blog page or a 404 page was being displayed.

Luckily, thanks to a number of well intentioned users on our forum, we’ve been able to track it down and fix it today. Before we did that, in order to avoid having more sites get affected by this bug we released WPML 1.7.5 which as an intermediary version and which is actually the latest stable version before 1.7.4.

WPML 1.7.6 includes everything 1.7.4 did except that unfortunate bug.

This version of WPML includes small bug fixes and changes that make it work with WordPress 3.

WordPress 3 is not out yet, but it’s just around the corner, so it’s a good idea for everyone running a WP site to start testing. WPML 1.7.4 doesn’t yet support all the new cool features of WP3, but it makes all existing functions run fine on WP 2.8-3.0.

Most of the changes are behind the scenes, without any effect on functionality. WordPress internal functions have changed considerably in version 3, so WPML had to follow.

Still, we managed to include several fixes for bugs and some new features – all reported in the forum.

Bugs we’ve fixed

• Fixed bugs causing wp_list_pages(), wp_list_categories() and get_pages() to fail when Adjust IDs is on.
• Sync default categories upon change. Wasn’t happening before.
• Fixed a bug in the library used for communicating with ICanLocalize to work with HTTPS.

New features

• Author links by language.
• Include private pages in the CMS navigation.
• Allow synchronizing the private flag between translations.
• Added argument $return_original_if_missing to icl_link_to_element(). This allows returning empty strings.

Let us know

We hope that you enjoy this release and keep building exciting projects with WordPress and WPML. Leave comments on how it’s going for you. As always, if you need us to follow-up and help fix things, the best place is in the forum.

And, don’t forget to head back to WPML’s download page and leave your feedback there too!

WPML 1.7.3 includes two major features, which were always high on the wish-list. You can edit languages and translate texts from the theme admin.

Language editing

WPML ships with a list of many popular languages, but sometimes it’s not enough. For instance, a recent red-cross site needed to add Creole (the language spoken in Haiti). Others, want to have both US, UK and Australian English variants.

So, without further ado, head over to WPML->Languages. There, you will find a new link Edit languages.

Language editing screen

You can existing languages and add new languages. No more need to manually edit WPML’s table for your own languages.

In case you didn’t notice, there’s a little Reset languages button there as well. Up to this release, WPML always automatically reset the languages on every upgrade. Now, since you can edit languages, it might not be such a good idea to do. WPML no longer changes your language tables. If you want to revert to the preset values, use that button.

Translation for texts in the theme’s admin

Many themes let you enter your own texts in their admin screen. For example, let’s look at the settings for Arras theme:

Arras theme settings

As you can see, there are some texts that which should be translated. Let’s see how!

Go to WPML->String translation and scroll to the bottom of the page. There, click on Translate texts in admin screens.

Choose admin-texts for translation

This screen lets me choose which admin-options need to be translated. You’ll see everything that the theme saves. Many of the fields don’t need to be translated, but some do.

I’ve selected the feed_url, comments_feed_url, footer_title and footer_message. This means that I’ll be able to enter translations for these entries.

Next, click on the link to go to the String translation page. WPML already selects just the theme-admin texts. You can translate them and they would appear on site when viewing in different languages.

Entering translation for Arras home title

In a perfect world…

We tried to make this mechanism as robust as possible, but some limitations remain. WPML cannot translate texts that are registered dynamically in themes. It happens in many premium themes.

We’ll try to improve this in future releases and work with theme developers to allow WPML to know which texts can be translated.

Bugs fixed

And, we also managed to crush another few annoying bugs in this release.

The one bug that many have reported was a conflict between WPML’s new Auto adjust IDs and category translations. It’s fixed now and you can safely enable back the Auto ID adjustment feature without breaking category and tag links. Thanks to all the folks who reported it in the forum.

WPML 1.7.2 doesn’t contain any new features. Instead, we’ve spent the last few weeks ironing out big and small issues reported in the forum.

If celebrity came of to visit you, what you do? Probably clean up the house and tidy anything you can. This is exactly what we’ve done too.

Next week, WPML is going live in a very high-profile site (more news about that coming). For us, this represents a major milestone and we wanted to prepare as well as possible.

We always keep a close eye on forum issues, but this time it’s special. We decided not to add any new features and instead put all our effort into straightening anything we can see.

Stuff that we fixed in WPML 1.7.2

• Bullet proof compatibility with WP Super Cache.
• Fixed bug related to using a revision for a translated page.
• Fixed language names Magyar, Croatian, Persian, Latvian.
• Set correct locales for Chinese (traditional and simplified).
• Fixed potential Cross Site Scripting (XSS) security hole.
• Sticky links work with single quote links too.
• Implemented Sticky links for strings.
• Fixed bug related to special (UTF-8) characters in translation body.
• Added warning on the reset function, to avoid accidental plugin data reset.
• Dozens of small PHP / MySQL errors, which could lead to real errors when combined with other plugins and theme functions.

WPML’s professional translation got a major overall in this release. Yup, you guessed right. This major site is using our professional translation and we wanted to make sure it’s all ticking like a clock.

The professional translation now automatically manages links between pages and posts much better (really well). This means that if one page is linking to another, the translations will link to other translations and not to the original.

If you’re translating a large site, you probably know how much hassle this can save.

Planned features for WPML 1.7.3

We’re almost ready with two major features for WPML. They were supposed to go in to WPML 1.7.2, but this house cleaning pushed them to the next release.

• Language editor – you’ll be able to add and edit languages without hacking the database. So, if you want to have US, British and Australian English, it’s going to be much simpler now.
• Translation for texts entered in theme admin pages. If your theme lets you enter texts for stuff like your copyright or anything else, WPML will make it possible to translate them.

We love feedback

As always, let us know how it’s working for you.

If anything goes wrong, report it in the forum. And, don’t forget to rate WPML in the download page.

When you click on Home you want to get to the home page in the language you’re browsing. WPML 1.7.1 now makes this happens as it automatically adjusts the home page link to the correct language.

Before this version, you either had to edit your theme and use WPML’s API function to get to the correct home URL, or it just went to the default language. Now, WPML does this for you.

For 99% of WordPress themes (the ones that use WP calls to get the home URL and don’t just send you to ‘/’), WPML now adjusts the home-page URL according to the current language.

Language switcher upgrades

The language switcher got two handy additions in this release:

1. The widget can display as a drop-down list or as an open list of languages.
2. WPML can display a title for the widget (Languages).

We found that these two additions make WPML’s language switcher display better for some themes, where the drop-down menu doesn’t fit in.

Other changes this release

There aren’t any major new bells and whistles, just a lot of work under the surface.

We’ve fixed about a dozen bugs such as galleries getting images from the wrong page, sub-pages not displaying correctly (in some configurations) and WPMU issues. You can see the full list in WPML’s change log.

We’ve also added WPML’s .po file to the locale directory so if you want to translate WPML itself to a different language, feel free to use that file.

WPML 1.7.0 represents a whole new approach to multilingual WordPress sites. Any theme or plugin that uses WordPress correctly becomes multilingual out-of-the-box.

Want a fully multilingual theme?

Remember that 1300 words tutorial about how to create multilingual themes? It’s history. Your theme is now multilingual without any edits.

We’ve tested WPML 1.7.0 on many themes, including popular free themes like Atahualpa and Arras and lots of premium themes from WooThemes and StudioPress and it just works. The little magic switch is located in WPML->Languages and looks like this:

Control for making themes multilingual

When set, WPML automatically turns the theme into multilingual. This feature will be disabled for existing sites and enabled for new sites. If you’re upgrading and want it enabled, you need to put WPML into Advanced mode, go to WPML->Languages and look under More options.

More language switcher controls

Multilingual sites need to allow visitors to choose their language. WPML included a drop-down language switcher from day one and we’re constantly improving it and making it more flexible. Now, it also has a kid brother.

We’ve added an optional footer language switcher, which produces a list of languages at the bottom of your site. The controls are located in WPML->Languages under Language switcher options.

Language switcher with footer option

This new language switcher is controlled from WPML’s admin, so you don’t need to hack any CSS, PHP or HTML to make it look right.

You can choose one of the lovely predefined color schemes or create your own.

Where next?

We’d love to take a long break in a tropical escape, but that’s not what we’re planning now

Instead, we’re back to work on WPML.

WPML’s magic auto-multilingual still misses two important features:

• Home page link is not adjusted (but there’s a workaround).
• No easy way to translate texts you enter in the theme’s admin, like footer text, ads, etc.

If all goes well, these features should go into WPML 1.7.1.

Let us know how it’s working for you

We love getting your feedback. That’s what makes WPML grow and improve.

If it’s working for you, drop a note here. You’re also welcome to add your site to our showcase.

For reporting problems, the best way it to open new threads in the forum. And, of course, don’t forget to rate WPML in the WordPress download page.

WPML can now translate texts in the theme and other plugins without going through .po and .mo files. It also has an improved String Editor for faster and more efficient translation.

This is what I’m doing in this movie:

1. Enable WPML’s Advanced mode, to gain access to the Theme and plugin localization menu.
2. Go to Theme and plugin localization and allow WPML to handle the translations.
3. Scan the theme and plugins that we want to translate.
4. Go to the String Translation interface and enter translations. There, we can use the new show-in-source and show-in-page features that allow us to see what we’re translating.
5. We also use the Search tool to filter the texts. This allows us to translate special phrases consistently.
6. When we save, our translations are applied immediately. There’s no file to export or import.

Wondering what’s next?

We want to help people translate WordPress, themes and plugins using WPML – everyone, not only when running multilingual websites.

The next major version of WPML will allow it to run in a single language, other than English and use WPML’s string translation capabilities to translate themes and plugins from within WordPress, without going through .mo files.

WPML 1.5.0 included a bunch of new features and with new features came new bugs. This release addresses all reported bugs and puts things back in to place.

Major issues

Fixed broken link to media library

A one-line code bug cause WPML to kill the media library. It’s fixed now and the media library is accessible and usable again.

Fixed custom language selector appearance

When ICL_DONT_LOAD_LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_CSS is defined WPML should not load any CSS for the language selector, leaving the language switcher design up to the theme.

A bug in WPML 1.5.0 caused this not to work if ICL_DONT_LOAD_LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_CSS is defined in functions.php.

Now, if this constant is defined, WPML doesn’t create any default design for the language switcher.

Tested WP 2.9 compatibility

WPML 1.5.1 is fully compatible with WP 2.9 (the current Beta version). We’ll keep testing it against new release candidates and the final WP 2.9 when it comes out. There were no compatibility problems to fix since WPML 1.5.0. The only things we changed were in WPML’s own test code.

Added compatibility package for Headspace2 SEO plugin

Headspace2 (by Urban Giraffe) is a great SEO plugin. It allows controlling titles and meta information per page, increasing your site’s performance with search engines. WPML now includes a compatibility package for it, allowing to run fully multilingual SEO optimized sites.

With this package, folks who use our translation service can send posts and pages to translation and not worry about SEO. All the Headspace2 SEO data is also sent to translation.

Small issues fixed in this release

• Fixed Ukranian flag
• Added support for PHP setups without json_decode
• Fixed bug in the ‘icl_object_id’ template function (now it either echos or not, depending on a new optional argument)

Thanks to everyone who reported bugs in our forum. This is what makes it possible for WPML to improve!

Normally, we include the new features in the post title, but it wasn’t possible for WPML 1.5.0, `cause there are too many of them!

So, without further delay, here are the new features in WPML:

Compatibility packages for themes and plugins

Much of WordPress’ strength comes from the thousands of plugins folks have created for it.

Now, WPML allows people to write their own mini-plugins that make themes and plugins fully multilingual.

Right now, WPML 1.5.0 includes compatibility packages for Thematic theme, ThemeHybrid and Atahualpa theme. You’ll be able to use any of these themes to power multilingual sites without having to make a single change. And, it’s upward compatible, so even if the theme updates, the multilingual support keeps working.

Seeing is believing. Have a look at this clip showing how Thematic works with WPML 1.5.0:

Language fallback for blog posts

Most folks translate every page in their sites, but not all blog posts. Pages stay forever (the Internal forever), but posts fly by, so not everyone has the time to translate every post to every language.

WPML now allows to display the translated blog with a mix of translated and original posts.

If there’s translation for a post, it will be shown. Otherwise, you’ll get the post in the default language.

To control this, go to WPML->Languages and look for More options. It’s available only when WPML is running in Advanced mode.

Blog posts filter

A special thanks is due to Łukasz Sielski who suggested it in the first place. We didn’t quite follow that implementation, but we did get excellent ideas from it.

Language switcher customization

Remember our recent post about 3 most urgently missing functions in WPML?

Well, you can strike the first item -- Butt-ugly language switchers.

As of WPML 1.5.0, you’ll be able to easily customize the language switcher to match it to your site’s look, from within WPML’s language menu. Your language switcher can still be butt ugly -- but it’s not our fault anymore

WPML's language switcher designer

You can choose what to include in the language switcher (flag, native language name, current language name) and all colors in the language switcher.

All your changes appear instantly in the preview, so you can see how it looks before updating the site.

There are even three preset color schemes to choose from -- white, gray and our butt ugly blue (which actually looks fine in wpml.org).

Other cool features

Besides these major new features, there’s a whole list of other, less notable new features:

Read the rest of this entry »

This release of WPML aims to make it simpler for everyone.

Beginner users will see just the minimal functionality for running a multilingual site. This will include only a single page for language setup.

Then, click on ‘Advanced’ and the rest of WPML’s features appear.

We’ve also simplified WPML’s professional translation interface. Now, all operations are done from the same ‘Pro translation’ page.

You’ll be able to choose your translators, communicate with them and send documents to translation – all from the same page.

Lots of bugs fixed

We’ve paid special attention to reports about bugs in the forum. This release fixes issues with Quick Edit, future publishing, admin language selection, setting for static home/blog page, some SQL errors (causing all sorts of issues) and HTML errors.

This release gives a big hug to the folks who are using our professional translation service. WPML now allows communicating with translators directly from within the WordPress admin screen.

This includes:

• Interviewing translators for your site and selecting the ones you prefer.
• Giving instructions to translators.
• Answering any questions translators have while they’re translating.
• Depositing payment for the translation.

If you’re running a multilingual site and can use a professional translator to help, click on ‘Pro translation’ and check it out.

Bugs fixed in this release

WPML 1.3.5 also includes fixes to numerous bugs reported in the forum. These include stuff like mass editing and other painful errors that escaped us before.

Show your love for WPML

And last, we’ve also added an option for WPML to add a credit link in your site’s footer. It’s optional, and disabled by default. When enabled, WPML will add a message to your footer saying that your site is running multilingual using WPML.

To enable it, go to WPML->Languages and scroll to the bottom. You’ll see this:

Then, WPML will add something like this to your site: