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WooCommerce Multilingual in Beta

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Using WooCommerce and want to run a multilingual site? Now you can. We’re ready with (beta) versions for WooCommerce, WooCommerce Multilingual and a new WPML version that supports them.

The nice thing was that WooCommerce uses WordPress in a very clean way. This allowed us to turn it multilingual without resorting to any hacks.

We added a few filters to WooCommerce, created a new glue plugins called ‘WooCommerce Multilingual’ and added a bit of support for the new functionality in WPML.

To try all this, you’ll need to download:

  • WooCommerce 1.4 or above (it’s always a good idea to use the most recent version)
  • WooCommerce Multilingual
  • The recent WPML version (from your WPML account)

How it works

The glue plugin doesn’t have any GUI and there’s nothing to configure. It hooks to WooCommerce and makes it multilingual.

You’ll need to add translations for the standard shop pages and add the same shortcodes to them. This will let the checkout and other standard WooCommerce pages appear.

There’s a complete WooCommerce Multilingual Users Guide which you should read when you get started.

Translating products

Go to a product page. You’ll see the languages box. Add on the + icons to add translation. WPML automatically synchronizes the product attributes, such as cost, weight and other properties that should be the same for all languages.

You can also use WPML’s Translation Dashboard to mark products for translation and send all at once.

Shipping and inventory tracking

Shop owners will see all orders going through on the products in the default language. When visitors add products to the cart, WPML will convert them to the products in the default language. It coverts back to the current language for display purposes.

This means that you’re tracking inventory only once per product, no matter in which language it was ordered.

Email notifications

WPML will set the locale to the client’s language when you send your client emails. Meaning, if a client ordered a product when viewing it in French, the client will receive the notification emails in French. For this to happen, you need to have the .mo files for WooCommerce in each language.

Feedback?

This release is the result of weeks of planning and development. We’re eager to receive your feedback and hear about how it’s working for you. Once we know that things are good and complete, this will go into the WooCommerce official code and continue being maintained there.

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.

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33 Responses to “WooCommerce Multilingual in Beta”

  2. I’ve purchased WPML and a WooCommerce-ready theme from Themeforest (Propulsion) to build a website for my client but then I realized woocommerce is not yet ready for multilingual setup…
    I’m testing this patched versions, and so far many things work. I noticed that woocommerce shortcodes don’t work at all (also there is no WooCommerce rich text editor button for easy inserting of shortcodes), and this completely breaks homepage settings of the Propulsion theme, which has a nice “Latest products” kind of slider (http://www.kriesi.at/themes/propulsion/).
    Is there any kind of a quick/temporary fix that would allow the use of shortcodes?

    • If shortcodes are not working for you, there might be a Javascript error somewhere. You can use Chrome to see them. Click on Tools->Javascript console.

      The WooCommerce people are working to incorporate our changes into the stable version of WooCommerce. They are mostly away on holiday this week, so it will probably be another week before they can complete it.

      I think that it would be better for you to wait for their final release, including their testing, and then switch to it.

      • Thanks for replies! I’ll test this all with a fresh wordpress/twentyeleven setup to see if it works there.

    • Shortcodes should work, maybe there’s something wrong with your woocommerce set-up, if you want I can check it

  3. Hi Amir,

    Have installed all new WPML files, including the WooCommerce 1.3.2, but getting no multi-lingual features appearing. Product menus give no translation check marks, string translation no WooCommerce widgets, and all WPML plugin version info is still showing old (pre-beta) numbers.

    Is the WPML beta download file on account page the ‘old’ v2.4.2 by any chance? I cannot find ‘woocommerce’ in any of the beta files.

    Happy New Year.

    Richard
    Hong Kong

    • The released version of WooCommerce still doesn’t include our changes. We’re working on the final touches now with the WooCommerce team and it will be integrated into the next WooCommerce release. You can test it from their GIT repository, but I strongly recommend waiting until the tested release. It shouldn’t be much longer.

      • Thanks Amir.

        I was using your WPML-supplied WooCommerce version which I thought was supposed to work in beta at least. Will wait a few more days as suggested. Been hanging on for months now for a good ecommerce solution so hopefully all’s well very soon. Fingers crossed very hard.

  4. Dear Amir,

    Q1: Further to above have you got a release date for next WooCommerce release?

    Q2: Can you explain why your beta files do not work? Is there something I can do to actually carry out some beta testing and load second language strings and products?

    Note that I have been trying YOUR supplied files to get cart away but you seemed to think I was using the officail WooCommerce release.

    Look forward to some good news here. I am well overdue on WPML cart delivery and client has initiated another to recommend alternatives like Magento, etc. Maybe good news if I get thrown off job. ??

    Richard

    • All our changes are now included in WooCommerce GIT trunk. WooThemes developers say that they expect to release WooCommerce 1.4 (which already includes these changes) by the end of this month.

      I don’t recommend grabbing this version quite yet, as it must contain other uncompleted or untested functionality.

      I don’t know why our beta files didn’t work for you. This would require debug. If you can make it public and give us admin access to that server, we can look and see what’s wrong. It’s working in our testing and working fine on the shared test site that we created with WooThemes team. Of course, there are different things that may go wrong, but they would require debug.

      • Dear Amir,

        Thanks for your quick response. I am really in trouble with this installation. First Shopp, then MarketPress, then WPEC, and now WooCommerce. I really hope the latter works Ok as it looks very nice so far minus the WPML.

        Have sent admin login details to Daniel for forwarding to you. I could not find your contact info.

        Look forward to your comments and hopeful fix.
        Richard

        • The person who worked on this is actually Dominykas. He will export and send you the current development version of WooCommerce and our glue plugin. It would be great if you can test this too and get us feedback.

          • Hello Amir,

            I have this situation:
            When I add products to cart and switch the language… cart shows 0 on order total
            I have a fresh install with above plugins and nothing more.
            Do you know about this?

            Razvan

        • My biggest problem is the Shopping Cart Widget.
          If I am on the translated shop and add a product to the cart:
          – it will add the product but not the translated one
          – View Cart and Checkout, links to the default pages

          The second problem is the link to the Shop page in the Main Navigation. It doesn’t work.

          • after installing all wpml plugins my cart page did not work. it jumped straight to checkout. i deactivated all wpml and it works again.
            WOOC Version 1.4.2, WOO Kaboodle theme, all plugins up-to-date

            • Any chance that this is related to the theme? Please start a thread about it in our forum and let us have some details.

        • Yes, this is great. We’ll test it on Monday, see that everything is there and also release our glue plugin – WooCommerce Multilingual.

  5. Hi there,
    How can I create on WPML an account to download the Beta version of your software to test the WPEC multilanguage?
    There is no way to create one here!

    Thanks for help
    Luca

  6. Hello,

    When I switch the language on “Shopping Cart” page I get 0 (zero) on Order Total, when my default language shows the correct total price.
    Very Strange.
    I have tested with a clean install.

    Please I need a feedback for this!

    Razvan

      • I have a test site where you can see the problem:
        http://razvanstavila.com/woocommerce/?post_type=product

        Please add a product to cart and View the cart. Then switch the language. There you have 0 for Order Total

        Another thing that I have discovered is when you checkout and change the language it will refresh but with javascript console error: woocommerce_params.locale is undefined.

        Thank you

        • having the exact same problem as Stavila.
          (but I am also working on translating the currency as well, which I have partly got working now.) I’ve managed to show prices in two languages ($ and DKK). I solved the above by editing the “woocommerce template functions.php” under “order total” there is a line calling $woocommerce->cart->get_total(), although i haven’t tested it fully yet, i changed it to $woocommerce->cart->get_cart_total() and the Order total shows up in the field.

          I still need to fix it on the Checkout page where it resets to 0 when using the english version of the page. Also the website changes from english to danish when i click checkout in danish mode… I am not sure why this happens.

          Will there be support for language based currencies soon? if so i might consider not to keep working on this as i haven’t found anything useful yet?

          Thanks

  7. Hi;

    It looks like woocommerce was not built as a multilingual plugin from the ground up. Using gettext calls in your code does not mean it was designed to be multilingual. Being able to support multiple currencies for multiple languages is an issue that needs to be solved on both sides (wpml and woocommerce).

    Furthermore, despite all of its achievements wordpress is at its core a blogging platform and not a paltform for ecommerce. It will always be a challenge for plugin developers to make wordpress behave like an ecommerce platform. On the other hand, ecommerce platforms are rigid and hard to extend or hack when compared to wordpress. Sometimes wordpress plus woocommerce does the trick , sometimes an ecommerce platform like opencart.

    Looking at where the industry (wordpress ecommerce) is at now compared to two years ago I would say we will have some real good ecommerce solutions based on wordpress a couple more years down the road.

  8. Hi,

    You are doing a great work, thanks!

    Do you know when will wpml be working for woocommerce?

    Thanks & regards

  9. I’m using the latest version on woocommerce and wpml. My site is translated in french and english. Everything is working fine. Just in the french checkout page the shipping flat rate is not shown? How can I solve this