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WPML 2.4.3 is a comprehensive stability overhaul and fixes a number of bugs, glitches and notices.

Although there’s no big new feature, this update is highly recommended for everyone. This release fixes some 36 issues. None of these issues was a showstopper, but they needed fixed none-the-less.

Fix highlights:

  • URL preview display bug for some pages
  • Non-English characters not converted to equivalent English chars in post slug
  • Language switcher CSS positioning on the admin dashboard
  • Inconsistent messages about translator actions with WPML’s Translation Editor
  • Warning popup messages showing in wrong places
  • Compatibility problems with WordPress 3.0.x and 3.1.x (are you still using that?)
  • Pagination and search not working together for String Translation
  • Gravity Forms integration issues
  • IE7 Javascript issues
  • Sticky Links not processed correctly for some links
  • Stick Links not reverting correctly in some cases
  • HTML entities not processed correctly for some fields when coming back from ICanLocalize.com translation
  • Fixed the display of the admin language switcher for RTL WordPress administrators

and a bunch of PHP notices in different place…

You’re probably wondering how comes we got so obsessed with hunting down every tiny little issue.

Well, meet Bigul. Bigul is our new QA chief. He’s taking WPML and shaking it like never before. Then, he shakes some more and doesn’t stop until all the bolts and screws are fastened properly.

The changes are applied to all of WPML’s components. Please update WPML core and every addon plugin that you’re using. I hope that you enjoy this new release and the additional stability it brings.

Now that we’ve handled all these issues and we have a solid QA process, we’re getting back to adding more new features. I’ll write much more about it as we’re getting closer to WPML 2.5.0.

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

29 Responses to “WPML 2.4.3 – A Stability Release”

  1. Thank’s for the update, but String Translation broke down. It seems to ignore previously translated theme strings.

    • This sort of thing doesn’t appear in our testing. We can help you debug and check what’s wrong. Please start a thread in our support forum. The support folks may need login to your site to see the problem. In that case, they will email you privately.

  2. I can confirm that we have the same issue. String Translation doesn’t work anymore for already translated stuff.

  3. We found it: /wp-admin/admin.php?page=sitepress-multilingual-cms/menu/theme-localization.php. There ‘Translate with WPML’ is resetted to .po files only. Enable it again fixed the issue.

  4. Hi Amir,

    The problem of Non-English characters not converted properly in post/page slug persists.

    We use WPML for English/Hebrew sites and when creating a new page or post the slug is created with hex chars (a percent sign followed by two hexadecimal digits).

    In Chrome and FF the URLs are presented properly in the address bar, but not in IE 8-9.

    This behavior is manifested also in two other annoying and troubling problems:

    1. Changing the slug to something readable in Hebrew breaks the link to the page – I guess this is what you refer to by “Non-English characters not converted to equivalent English chars in post slug”.
    2. The other problem: When editing the page in Quick Edit mode the slug is presented properly but when saving the page the link breaks.

    Many thanks in advance for a remedy.

    P.S.

    We run a test server and a production one. In the test the upgrade went smoothly while in production we get an error: An error occurred while updating WPML Multilingual CMS: Update package not available.

    • This is not a bug in WPML, but how WordPress works. You can test this in a WordPress site that doesn’t use WPML (just Hebrew) and you’ll see the same thing.

      I don’t like the way it works and we’re going to add a new mode that bypasses the standard WordPress functionality. It will be available in WPML 2.5.0.

      The fix that we added is for characters that have English alternatives, such as ñ and ó. These will be replaced by n and o. Hebrew characters don’t have English replacements.

      • Thanks for the prompt reply.

        Will be waiting anxiously for 2.5.0.

        The Update package not available error was caused by wrong passwd to WPML. My bad. Sorry for the falce alarm.

      • we’re having trouble with translated URLs/slugs that contain zh characters (Chinese). I specify readable Chinese in the slug fields and replace the %% code that WP defaults to when I get the chance. some pages load. others don’t. is this related to Amir’s problem?

        it’s really difficult trying to get WPML work correctly with my en/zh-hant/zh-hans site and I’m getting a little worried that it’ll never work the way I envisioned it.

        cheers.

      • based on what Tamar and you wrote, I went back and tried replacing the Chinese slugs for my Pages with english text. it worked! the WPML drop down widget now gets the correct URLs for the non-default language.

        but this also stinks! I want to use the language of the reader in the URLs, not English placeholders.

        if 2.5.0 will completely rid us of this limitation, I’ll be very very happy!

        note that the widget still cannot see the correct en URL when a non-en page is loaded.

        cheers again.

        • It stinks, but that’s the case. Non-English URLs are very problematic. They look nice in the browser, but the web server gets confused by them. This has nothing to do with WPML or even WordPress. It’s an issue between how browsers encode URLs and how Apache (the web server) sees them.

          To see what I mean, copy the URL with Chinese characters and paste it into a plain text editor. You’ll see this mess. It’s due to the way Chinese characters are encoded in the URL. Same goes for Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Arabic and many other languages.

          I’d love to help with the widget issue. Please open a thread in our forum, give more information and our support people will help.

  5. How can I upgrade? I’ve purchased it some time ago, but when I try to update via wordpress it says:

    The update process is starting. This process may take a while on some hosts, so please be patient.

    Enabling Maintenance mode…

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

    Disabling Maintenance mode…

    All updates have been completed.

    — thanks!

    • It’s difficult to tell what’s causing this error for you. The message says that WordPress did not manage to fetch the new version of the plugin.

      If automatic upgrade is not working for you, you can always upgrade manually. Login to your WPML account, download the current version and upload to your server.

  6. Hi!
    I have updated plugin and now css changes I made are lost. Will that happen in future updates?
    Please try not to. :((

    Thank you.

    • Every future update will overwrite changes that you do manually in the plugin files. To customize the CSS, you should create your own CSS file and load it in the theme. CSS attributes are meant to overwrite each other, with the last one loaded taking precedence over all others. WPML (and all other plugins) load before the theme. If you add CSS to your theme, it will determine the appearance.

  7. Hello,

    When I try to sync the menu in my website it shows that some element is not translated, such as homepage. I actually dont know where to translate it. could you help,

    • This can come from a number of causes. Please write about it in our forum, let us see what you’re referring to and try to explain where these pages are coming from. Links to your site and screenshots showing the problem would be great.

  8. With this version, I am now unable to add a local translator in the translation management menu. The button isn’t clickable in Firefox and Chrome, but is clickable in IE. However, when proceeding in IE, I cannot click the blue “add translator” button once I have typed/selected an account from the list. Everything else appears to be working much better though. Hopefully it is an easy fix…

    • It’s not a ‘problem’. This is how browsers and web servers encode non-English URLs. It has nothing to do with WPML or even WordPress. You can go to any Russian site that uses Russian URLs, copy the link and paste in Word and you’ll see the same thing.

      Personally, I don’t like it and I think that it causes SEO problems (among others). We’re going to add a feature to WPML which lets you remove non-English characters from URLs automatically.

  9. when i changed in russian language it will repeat 2 times ru like this

    http://www.romerealestate.com/ru/ru/category/Объекты

    i will use this function: function curPageURL()

    when i login this function replace /ru but when i logout this function not work. how can i slove this problem?

    function curPageURL() {
    $pageURL = ‘http’;
    if ($_SERVER[“HTTPS”] == “on”) {$pageURL .= “s”;}
    $pageURL .= “://”;
    if ($_SERVER[“SERVER_PORT”] != “80”) {
    $pageURL .= $_SERVER[“SERVER_NAME”].”:”.$_SERVER[“SERVER_PORT”].$_SERVER[“REQUEST_URI”];
    } else {
    $pageURL .= $_SERVER[“SERVER_NAME”].$_SERVER[“REQUEST_URI”];
    }
    return $pageURL;
    }
    $cur_url = curPageURL();
    $repeats = array(“/ru”, “/it”, “/es”, “/de”, “/fr”);
    foreach($repeats as $repeat){
    if(strstr( $cur_url, $repeat.$repeat.’/’ )){
    $cur_url = str_replace($repeat.$repeat.’/’, $repeat.’/’, $cur_url);
    header( ‘Location: ‘.$cur_url ) ;
    }
    }