New features

We’re ready with the first release candidate of WPML 1.6.0. This version allows translating other plugins, includes a much improved string translation interface and fixes many bugs.
New features in WPML 1.6.0
WPML can translate other plugins too
WPML can now translate everything in your site, include other plugins. You can do that without asking for any .po [...]

One of the new features in WPML 1.4.1 will be language fallback for blog posts. This means, your translated blog can show either:

Only posts that have translation.
All posts – if there’s translation, show it, otherwise, show the post in the default language.

Our site includes pages and posts. We’re translating almost all pages, but very few [...]

We’re adding an option to set WPML’s language switcher design from within the admin screen. This will include setting all the colors of all elements, so that the language switcher matches the site.
In addition to letting users manually enter their own language switcher colors, we’re going to include several preset color schemes to choose from. [...]

We’re working on new and exciting features for WPML, but before all, we want to make sure that no bugs are left behind.
So, just before diving in to the first theme multilingual packs, we’re ready with another bugfix release:
WPML1.4.0.4_dev
Who should upgrade
If you’ve reported an issue in the forum, most chances are that a fix is [...]

We reviewed dozens of sites using WPML, trying to figure out what are the most important features missing from WPML – the results are not very surprising, but it’s good to get them from actual sites.
1. Butt-ugly language switchers
WPML creates a drop-down language switcher. It’s fully functional, but the default design doesn’t match any website.
Many [...]

Raise your hand if you like Googling for .mo files.
WPML is going to make .mo files a thing of the past. All translations will be saved in WPML’s String Translation memory. It will automatically download translations for your themes and plugins and will let you edit them (if they’re missing, or you want to change [...]

We have a big challenge on our hands and are looking for your suggestions.
How do we make WPML’s admin as simple and friendly as possible, while keeping all the advanced features available?
The idea is to give WPML two modes – Basic and Advanced. Basic mode will be for people who want to run a multilingual [...]

WPML includes API functions that allow themes and plugins to get multilingual services from it, but it seems that no major theme framework or plugin is using them – and they’re right!
Most people who use WordPress don’t run multilingual, so it actually makes little sense for theme designers to add support just for us. And, [...]

One of the most frequent issues we’ve seen with multilingual WordPress sites is that themes are not localized. This release will make theme localization much simpler.
How to use WPML’s theme localization
Go to WPML->Theme localization.
There are three options. Not to localize the theme at all, to translate the theme’s texts with WPML or to provide .mo [...]

We’re going to add integrated theme localization to WPML and are looking for early feedback.
The ways it’s going to work is:

The theme must be localization ready with all texts wrapped in gettext calls (most themes are built like that already).
WPML will scan the theme and extract the texts from it.
You will translate the strings using [...]

One of the new features in WPML 1.1 (out soon) is translation for general strings (blog title and tagline) and widgets. Widget translation includes titles for all widgets and translation for text widget contents.
If your blog/site needs widget and string translation, you’re most welcome to give the new development version of WPML. The development version [...]

WPML 1.1 is just around the corner with support for translation of texts created by other plugins.
What this means is that when you’re using WPML and other plugins, WPML will let you enter translation for texts that the other plugins create. For example, if you’re using a contact form plugin, you’ll be able to enter [...]

wpml.org is now translated to Spanish, German, Japanese and Chinese. Between ourselves, we speak English, Spanish and some German but not a word in Japanese or Chinese. How can we handle contacts in these languages?
It’s pretty important. Some of these contacts are from potential clients. They see our website in their language and figure we [...]

We’re getting close to completing the first stable version of WPML and are looking forward to what’s next. The roadmap page includes a host of features that are planned but the question is what’s going to come first?
In the spirit of doing something useful, I thought it would be a good idea asking WPML users [...]

We’ve just released WPML 0.99 with a host of new features and fixes to annoying bugs.
New in this version

Country flags are added to the language switcher
WPML allows creating your own language switcher
Compatible with WordPress 2.6

Although we’ve added some long awaited features, this release is still all about fixing bugs. This time, we’ve gotten a lot [...]