This is a minor release of WPML, including fixes for several glitches and a potentially big performance improvement for sites using W3TC and Object Caching.
We’re very happy to see that the recent major version of WPML (3.3) went smoothly for almost everyone. This quick release addresses a number of issues found during the last week.
Performance improvements with W3TC Object Caching
W3TC implements object caching in a unique way. This uniqueness caused sites using object caching and WPML to typically decrease performance, instead of increasing them. It was due to incorrect interpretation of missing objects from the cache. In WPML 3.3.1, we added specific code to handle the way W3TC reports items that are not cached. As a result of this, WPML and object caching (via W3TC) now play nice together.
Object caching is especially helpful for sites that cannot cache entire pages. We see a lot of it in e-commerce, membership and directory sites. In these sites, many visitors are logged-in and the site displays customized pages for different users. So, there is no way to speed up these sites with page caching, because every logged-in visitor sees a different version for the same page.
Object caching offers a significant performance improvement. Instead of caching the entire page, themes and plugins can cache smaller ‘objects’.
If you are using W3TC and WPML, update to WPML 3.3.1 and try again object caching. Until this version, you might have gotten worse results with object caching, because the cache kept flushing for no good reason. Now, object caching works as it should. Please remember that the effectiveness of object caching still depends on many factors.
Bug fix and improvements
- Split ‘word count’ to multiple AJAX calls – the new ‘word count’ functionality may have failed in sites that have a whole lot of content. Now, no matter how much content your site has, it should work for you. The ‘word count’ functionality lets you see how much content needs translation, so you can estimate the cost and schedule.
- Resolved a conflict between the caching engine of WP Engine hosting and WPML.
- More related to performance – resolved performance issues when editing WooCommerce products and W3TC is active.
- Improved polling translation jobs (more robust and recovers well from communication failures).
- Fixed get_permalink() returning wrong url, when there is a category in the permalink structure.
Download and update
As always, the best way to get WPML is automatically, via the WordPress admin. For this to happen, make sure that you have registered your site. You can register all your sites, including development and production sites. You can also download all of WPML’s components manually from your WPML account. It’s a good idea to back up your database before running updates, even minor ones like this one.
Coming next to WPML
WordPress 4.4 is upon us, with great improvements and new features. Generally speaking, WPML 3.3.1 runs fine on WordPress 4.4. We are working on adding full support for translating taxonomy meta. This will be ready in WPML 3.4 in a few weeks. It’s taking a while because we could only start working on taxonomy meta recently (that code was a bit of a moving target before).
Also coming to WPML 3.4 is a complete overhaul of the translation UI. The current UI in WPML has been around for a while and it’s time to freshen it up. The new interface will look nicer for sure. More importantly, it will be faster and more convenient to use. The new UI is a result of comprehensive usability experimentation that we did in the last few months. The biggest winners from this new UI would be people running multilingual WooCommerce sites. We’re consolidating UI elements and making the translation workflow for WooCommerce a lot simpler. We’re targeting a first beta just before Christmas, so that you have something nice to play with, when you’re looking for a break from high-calorie food and noisy nephews.
Finally, planned for WPML 3.4 is a major improvement to the built-in language switchers. The CSS in different themes has come a long way since we originally created WPML’s language switcher. This coming update will make WPML’s language switchers work nicely with modern themes, including all default WordPress themes, Bootstrap themes and others.
Feedback?
You already know that we love getting your feedback. Post your comments and we’ll reply.
Hello Amir,
just a quick note to confirm that this update still does not solve the problem with VIEW’s Ajax filtering when having different domains per language!! – Still not working!!!!
Yeah Yeah….. tell me more beautiful stories. I even didn’t bother to read it. WPML is always talking to their advantage. And to be honest, why shouldn’t they.
The fact however is that WPML delivers a product, maybe suitable for straight foreward WordPress users but, when you create a child theme or do any other customizations it poorly fails…….
On functionality, on updates….. errors, errors, errors……….
Sorry to sound a bit mad but I am. It costs me days and days.
Stop updating third party plugin and themes before you have your own act together.
Regards,
Adri
Adri, can you tell us what problems you had and what broke due to updates? If there’s a forum thread about it, please add the link here, so I can follow up.
Hi Amir,
How many examples do you want? I think it is not just about me. Every time when WPML does an update a lot of things went wrong. Next to that when I get it working I anticipate several problems on the line. This fails, that is going wrong…… and on and on and on.
So…. the examples.
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/updates-fail-versions-wrong/#post-763691
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/site-returns-a-500-error-after-latest-update/
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/can-not-update-som-plugins/
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/language-switcher-is-not-working-on-product-archive-page/
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/wpml-string-translation-plugin-causes-404-errors-after-update-to-2-3-part-2/
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/links-for-downloadable-products-broken-in-other-language/
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/multiple-site-languages-but-just-a-bbpress-forum-in-english/
Not enough? You should be in a process of developing a website an loses this amount of time and therefor money to cope with this all.
I’m getting really mad about it. Although some of the issues are fresh and Tia is trying to help me out. She’s great! It is just the fact that it is always and always going wrong when WPML is changing anything and it costs me days to sort it out. WPML is a big money leak. Sorry but that is my experience. And I am not talking about your sales price but time it costs me over and over again.
For now I am with WPML because of the trnslation service. It is possible that my site and all of my products has to be translated to many different languages. However at this point I’m hasitting.
I wish you good luck but according to the BAD qulity I don’t have high hopes.
Regards, Adri
I see. I’m asking Tia to look at all these things and work with you until you’re all set. There is no point in getting different answers from different support people. Is this OK?
That’s ok. It was not my point to get everyone at your site crazy. It is more a general thought. Over at WPML there are in my opinion a lot of things wrong. Get your act together and if needed take a step back to solve the issues at hand before proceding to new functionality or so.
And again: thumbs up for Tia, so far she is helping me great!
This updates is bad. It is supposed to improve performances when using W3 Total Cache. Instead it breaks everything…
See ticket: https://wpml.org/forums/topic/when-i-click-to-switch-language-it-takes-me-to-a-random-post/#post-764563
The developer who worked on compatibility with W3TC will take this support ticket and will see what’s happening there. There might be a configuration that we didn’t notice, or something else that didn’t come up in our testing. The best way to find it is to see what’s happening in your site.