New features

This is a screenshot of WPML’s menu: A bit scary, isn’t it? It’s not entirely our fault. WPML adds languages, translation process, theme localization, CMS navigation and Sticky links. You can also get support directly from it. Lots of functionality… But, when you think about it, almost everything here is for the web developer building [...]

Running a multilingual site is a challenge. It starts with the theme development, continues with building the site and ends with administering multilingual contents. The next major version of WPML aims to improve on all aspects. Just a year ago, people used WordPress mainly to build blogs. Most themes were blog-oriented. Then, came magazine themes [...]

One of the most exciting new features in WordPress 3.0 is the core support for multisite. We’re not using MultiSite for real, so we’re asking your opinion before we get started. Are you using WordPress MU right now? If so, what for? Already tried the MultiSite feature in WP3.0? Is it working for you? To [...]

We’ve started working on supporting the new CMS features in WordPress 3 and would love to get some early feedback from you guys. Menu system One of the best things about WordPress 3, came from WooThemes. It’s the new menu builder system. Instead of getting menus auto-generated according to page IDs you can now control [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]