Hi there, trying to really open a support ticket, and not just get answers from the AI that do not ressolve my issue. Apparently, WPML does not change the permalinks in any widget and in the page excerpts. And if I do it manually, the sticky links does not point to the respective language. Instead, it shows always to the original languange, no matter on which language version of the site I am. I already run the sticky link script several times with the widget checkbox checked, updated the internal links in WPML -> configuration. The site uses the Classic Editor Plugin because of the outdated Edin theme. Anything else works just fine. Looking forard to your helping. Thanks
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hello,
I can not yet confirm the reported issues on a new test site.
You can use the following link to log in to my test site: hidden link
At this moment, I am unsure if your report relates only to the "Sticky Links" addon or WPML's internal link behavior. Please clarify.
Note that for internal links to work as expected, these links need to remain locked on the Advanced Translation Editor. Once unlocked, the links need to be translated manually.
See screenshot.
Could you please confirm if your links are still locked inside the WPML Translation Editor and the linked content is translated and published?
In doubt, please save the translations of the posts again.
thank you very much for your answer! And also for the provided test site. I tried to replicate, at least partially, my scenario. I'll come back to the results I got later.
Let me first clarify some points and reply to your questions.
We have a very peculiar scenario because this website project grew over many years and got through many adaptions. Its a multisite installation but ended up with just one site. As I mentioned, we use the Edin Theme with some custom code. This theme is not maintained any more by WordPress and does not support Gutenberg. So we use the Classic Editor and also the Classic Widget Plugin. The translations for three different language pairs were made in Matecat, a CAT Tool. We used the WPML - Matecat integration for that and ran into many issues on Matecat (I wouldn't recommend any more Matecat...). Somehow, we got it done, reimported all the translations back to WPML/Wordpress. But, sometimes, we had to do several exports of the same content from WPML to Matecat because of Matecat's blocking of some translation projects. So, we ended up with some little mess of exported, cancelled and re-exported and then re-imported content in WPML.
But as far as we can see, this doesn't affect the final result with one exception: We think that this could be a possible cause of the fact that in some widgets the links do not point to the correct language. In other Widgets the links behave correctly. What get messed most during those export and re-import attempts were primarily some strings of the text widgets, although we fixed this later manually in the string translator of WPML.
Please, note that, because of our particular scenario, we had to use the WordPress Editor in the case when translated content had to be modified after it got reimported from Matecat. We couldn't use the Advanced Translation Editor. Another reason for that were some advanced custom fields in some pages that needed individual modifications in the WordPress Editor after translation.
So, what are our issues exactly at the moment:
1) Permalinks in page excerpts do not get changed into sticky links and always point, hard coded, to the original language, no matter on which language version of the site they appear. The Edin Theme has a feature to show selected page excerpts on the main page of the site. That's the reason why we'd like to fix this issue.
2) Permalinks in widgets neither get changed to sticky links, but, in some cases, point to the correct language, although still hard coded as links pointing to the original language. Here, WMPL seems to recognise these permalinks correctly and changes their link target on the fly to the correct language depending on the selected language version of the site. Sincerely, I wouldn't have expected this behaviour since they are permalinks and not sticky links. But it really works in one case, in most cases not.
3) If I change the permalinks in the page excerpts manually to sticky links, inserting the correct page ID, they neither get resolved, and always point to the original language target.
As I mentioned, I tried to replicate this scenario on your test page. Obviously, I wasn't able to replicate also the export, translation and re-import of content using the WPML - Matecat integration. But the page excerpt and widget issue I got replicated. Here the results:
1) Permalinks in page excerpts do get changed into sticky links correctly, but, as on our site, do not get resolved correctly and always point to the original language, no matter which language version of the site is selected. Please, check the main page of the test site. There is a page excerpt and a footer widget at the end of the page tho show this behaviour.
2) Permalinks in widgets do not get changed to sticky links (at least under appearance -> widgets they remain unchanged as permalinks) but point to the correct language depending on the selected language version of the site.
My questions are:
1) How could we fix the issue that permalinks in our page excerpts do not get changed to sticky links?
2) Why does any link in page excerpts, no matter of permalinks, manually or automatically (by WPML) created sticky link, always point to the original language? Is this a limitation of WPML? Please, check your test site. It is neither working there...
3) Do you have any idea how we could fix the widgets where the permalinks do not get resolved correctly by WPML, pointing always to the original language? The links in the text of the three penultimate "Featured page" widgets at the bottom of the main page of hidden link are affected. Whereas the link in the text of the last "featured page" widget (a link to the blog) behaves correctly.
Concerning question 1 and 3, we have already tried to update the internal links under WPML -> settings and scan all posts under WPML -> sticky links several times, always in vain.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hello,
Could the reason be that the "Custom Permalinks" is used for such links that are not redirecting or converting correctly?
I'd be happy to take a closer look at this and request temporary access (wp-admin and FTP) to the website to investigate the issue further.
I may need to install a plugin called "All In One WP Migration" to create a copy of the website on which I can investigate the problem more thoroughly.
I would also be very grateful if you could provide a staging site on your server for this purpose.
If you have any questions about creating such a staging site, please contact your hosting provider. Please ensure that WPML is also registered on this staging site at https://wpml.org/de/account/websites/
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Andreas, just a note on the ftp link a sent you: Please, disconsider all that comes after "kasserver.com/" Your ftp user account will point you directly to the correct folder, no need to use the folder path in the URL.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
When it comes to Widgets, you will create the translations at WPML > String Translation, and I see that the links are not translated here. In this case, you will need to adjust the links in the translations, as internal linking only works for content created on the WordPress Editor.
See screenshot for an example of a widget translation.
I am still investigating the issue, when it comes to the internal links on the pages and their excerpts on the homepage, for I need to ask you for some more patience.
Well, initially I thought that the links in widgets will get changed to sticky links by WPML too. But as far as I understood now, they have to be translated "hard coded", as to say...
Actually, we didn't translate any link in our content, since we thought that they will get or got already changed into sticky links. But what's quite confusing to me now is that, apparently, the links in the widgets that are working correctly, those that point to the respective language correctly, got "translated", both on your test site and on our site. See the screenshots. But I do not remember that I have translated any links in any widget, neither on your test site when I tried to replicate our scenario there. Could it be that WPML injects the correct link for the respective language in case of an internal link? Or did I really translate the links in those widgets and just do not remember?
Looking forward to your further investigating. Thanks.
Best,
Johannes
Most links in text widgets on our site are internal links, as is the link to the blog in the screenshot above. But even so, fact is that just one text widgets is working correctly, or in other words, may be I just translated the link of this particular widget only and forgot the others or WPML injected the correct language specific link in just this widget only and failed on the others... What do you think?
I ran some tests on a sandbox, and I can not confirm such issues here while using "Edin Theme", "Classic Editor", "Classic Widgets", "Sticky Links", and "Custom Permalinks".
You can log into the sandbox here if you would like to revise my test: hidden link
---
I ran further tests on your site:
First issue:
The issues with wrong links on content or pages disappear on your site once I disable the plugin "Custom Permalinks".
Second issue:
The issue will remain on the homepage's excerpts, even if you disable "Custom Permalinks, which might be theme-related. If I switch to the Parent theme, I even see the unexpected issues that the translated homepage will only show pages from the site's default language.
This means we are handling various issues:
1) Custom Permalinks break internal linking
- I am not yet able to confirm this in my sandbox (more about this at the bottom)
2) Edin Theme Homepage does not display translated pages (Theme issue)
- I am trying to replicate this on my sandbox, but the Featured Pages are not showing up on the homepage. Could you please take a look at that in my sandbox and try to replicate the issue?
Still, in the now translated witget int he sidebar, the links for "Kettenfilme" will not adapt automatically.
The translated pages use a different slug:
Original (altered with Custom Permalinks): hidden link
Translation: hidden link
The slug /project/ is expected here, but you are trying to alter the WordPress page hierarchy with Custom Permalinks. The original page usually exists at: hidden link
I would not recommend doing this, as it overrides WordPress’s native permalink structure and can cause conflicts with WPML.
I replicated the main principle of our site (with the featured pages on the front page) on your test site and also ran some test with quite interesting but confusing results. More about that later.
You wrote: "Sticky Links will only take effect on the contents of pages or posts, but not on WPML String Translation." But the link you provided clearly states that
"By default, WPML will turn all links in the post body to sticky links. You can also turn links in widgets and strings into sticky links." This is also the behaviour I would expect since there is an option in the sticky link menu to include widgets in the scan process. And since the content of widgets is translated as a string, it makes sense that strings also can be turned into sticky links.
But that's not exactly what is happening on our test site. May be because of Edin theme issues, as you mentioned. I don't know.
You also wrote "Custom Permalinks break internal linking" (on our site?) I cannot confirm that. What I observed is that, except in Custom html Widgets and the notorious page extracts, all the internal links on any page got turned into sticky links correctly, pointing to the correct respective language depending on the selected language version of the site.
The incoherency between the slugs of original content and those of translated content got fixed now. Thanks for pointing that out! I had already fixed it on the staging site, but the test site was created as a clone before that fix. So I had to fix it on the test site too. Besides me, there was also a WP developer working on this site, that's the reason why, sometimes, I'm not aware of some adjustments that were made during development. As far as I remember, the custom permalink plugin was only used to make the breadcrumb hierarchy differ from the page hierarchy due to a requirement from an earlier stage of website development. But I guess, the plugin isn't necessary any more now, so I deactivated it.
About the tests I ran on your test site:
1) As you can see, the front page now has three different featured pages and, below that, three different custom html widgets (similar to our website layout).
2) All three pages got translated in the WordPress Editor. There are Test Page A, B and C (English), and Test Seite A, B and C (German). The English and German pages A and B you created. I just renamed them and created page C (English, German). This detail main explain the astonishing results of my test, see below.
3) Each page contains a manually created internal sticky link and an internal permalink in the body text.
4) Similar to the page content, each page excerpt contains as well a manually created internal sticky link and an internal permalink.
5) The contents of all three widgets got translated in the string translator and also contain a manually created internal sticky link and an internal permalink.
6) Unlike the link texts, the slugs were not translated by purpose, just to see, how WP and WPML would behave with that. Or in other words: The internal links in translated content (German), both of excerpts and widgets, are pointing to the original language (English).
After setting this up, I updated the internal links under "WPML -> settings" and scanned all posts under "WPML -> sticky links" for several times.
The results I got were quite surprising and confusing:
*Links in the body text of pages*
1) All permalinks in the body text of the pages were turned into sticky links, as expected. That's great! But...
2) On "Test Seite A" (German), in the backend, the ID number of the transformed permalink shows to the English target, so the target language wasn't altered. The ID number of the manually created sticky link remained untouched, also still showing to the English target. Now, in the frontend, both links, appearing as permalinks here, point to the English target. Note: we are on the German version of the site, but the links on the frontend still point to the English pages, no matter if they are sticky links in the backend that were created manually by me or automatically by WPML from permalinks. Is this expected?
3) On "Test Seite B" (German) the results are different: In the backend, the same happened as on "Test Seite A", the permalink turned into a sticky link and both are pointing to the English targets. In the frontend, surprisingly, both links point to the German targets, as if the link targets are changed on the fly between backend and frontend! Note that in the backend the ID numbers of the sticky links are still from the English pages. This is what I would have expected, but it differs from "Test Seite A"
4) "Test Seite C" (German) is even more confusing: In the backend, the ID number of the manually created sticky link got altered and is pointing to the German page now, whereas the sticky link created automatically from the permalink has the ID number of the English page in accordance with the link target of the earlier permalink. In the frontend, there are no changes "on the fly", the manually created sticky link points to the German page, according to its ID number in the backend, and also does the automatically created sticky link, pointing to the English page.
So, I'm really confused about what of the three behaviours would be expected concerning links in the body text of pages.
*Links in the excerpts of pages*
Let's check now what happened to the links in the excerpts appearing on the front page:
1) In the backend, the links in the excerpts of "Test Seite A" and "B" remained unaltered. The sticky link is still sticky with the same ID number, pointing to the English page, and the permalink still is a permalink pointing to the English page too. On the frontend, the sticky link still appears as a sticky link with its English ID number, or in other words, he does not get reverted back into a permalink as it happens with the sticky links in the body text of pages. Only when you click on it, you will get redirected to the respective page and the permalink appears in the browser address bar. Concerning the target language, there are no changes "on the fly", so both, the sticky link and the unaltered permalink, still point to the English page on the frontend.
2) "Test Seite C" is, similar to its behaviour described above, a unique case again when it comes to links in the excerpt: In accordance to what happened to the links in the body text, the ID of the manually created sticky link got changed from English to German target, and the permanlink were turned into a sticky link that is still pointing to the English target page. Here too, hoovering with the mouse above the sticky links in the frontend, they do not get reverted into permalinks, they appear as sticky Only if you click on them you will be redirected to the corresponding page.
Conclusion: The behaviour of links in the excerpts of the German pages A and B makes sense, in the case that this would be, somehow, a limitation of WP, WPML or the Edin theme. But the behaviour of the links in the excerpt of "Test Seite C" is really confusing and not at all what I would expect. Why WPML shouldn't be able to turn permalinks in excerpts to sticky links, when it, in contrary, is able to change the ID number of a already existing sticky link (that were created manually) according to the correct language target???
*Links in widgets*
When it comes to the Custom HTML Widgets, the behaviour concerning sticky links and permalinks even gets more confusing! Let me resume:
I created the English widgets with its content in WP as normally. Then I went to the string translator and noticed that the third widget's content (widget C) didn't get registered as a string. So I did this in the "Admin Text Translation". Then I translated the content of all three widgets normally in the string translator. But, as I mentioned earlier, I did not translate the slug of the permalink, neither did I change the ID number of the manually created sticky link. In other words, all the links in the translated widget contents pointed to the respective English pages (the original language).
As far as for this, everything was fine. But what happened now, was really strange: I refreshed my tab in the browser with the open backend to check my just concluded string translations (Note, at this point, I haven't run the "update internal links" nor the sticky link scan yet). And bum, the manually created sticky links were reverted into permalinks!!! And in addition, some stayed with the same target language (English), some got altered to German. The permalinks, in contrary, stayed permalinks, but sometimes the target language got changed to German.
Here the details:
1) Widget A: The manually created sticky link with English target turned into permalink with German target. The permalink remained a permalink, but its target language was changed to German too.
2) Widget B: The manually created sticky link with English target turned into permalink with still English target. The permalink stayed unaltered, with still English target.
3) Widget C is a mixture of the behaviours in A and B: The manually created sticky link with English target turned into permalink with German target. The permalink stayed unaltered, with still English target.
The behaviour of these links, when you check them in the frontend, reflects exactly their hard code in the string translations. In other words, no changes "on the fly" between backend and frontend. They appear and work on the frontend as they are hard coded in the backend...
That is not at all what WPML promises in the support article quoted above!
Note, Classic Editor and Classic Widget plugin are activated. I'm not familiar with the Gutenberg Editor...
If you'd like to, you could try to reproduce these results. May be there are really some undiscovered bugs in WP, WPML or the no more maintained Edin theme. My own conclusion is that it's not worth spending more time on troubleshooting this, it looks so messy and contradicting, and I pretend to just adjust all the links in excerpts and widgets manually in this particular case of our project.
That's what I'm thinking at the moment. But I'm curious to hear your opinion and advise... 😉
Andreas, just an additional point: You may have noticed that, in contrary to the links in the content of any page excerpt on the frontend, the title and the "Read more / Weiterlesen" link behave correctly! They appear as permalinks in the frontend, pointing to the correct language target. Taking this in consideration, it's more than astonishing, I think, that the links in the content of the excerpts do not behave accordingly, deviating from all logic and consistent behaviour....
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hi,
Sticky Links:
Indeed, taking a closer look at the documentation, it says:
By default, WPML will turn all links in the post body to sticky links. You can also turn links in widgets and strings into sticky links.
On my test site, I can not confirm this for WPML String Translation or Widgets. The sandbox currently runs only with WPML, and if you go to /wp-admin/widgets.php you will see that the HTML Links inside those widgets are not converted, even after running a new scan in WPML > Sticky Links.
I have confirmed this by revising the entries inside the database.
I will escalate this issue now internally, so that the Second Tier Support takes a closer look at this.
Custom Permalinks:
In fact, I gave this another test on my sandbox, and even after removing the parent slug from the permalinks using the Classic Editor and Custom Permalinks, the Sticky Link will still be applied correctly in the second language at my test.
Homepage's Featured Pages
Also, testing this feature on the sandbox results in working translations and correct internal linking, including correct conversion into Sticky Links.
This said, so far I can not replicate issues 2) and 3) on the sandbox, which means that these seem to be specific issues that only occur on your production site.
IMPORTANT:
You should not self-adjust links to be Sticky Links. The links need to be converted by the Sticky Links plugin. Simply enter original links, and Sticky Links will place the correct post IDs for each link in each language.
Further, if you currently revise the sandbox, I can see a theme related issues, that does not have anything to do with WPML.
I changed the content of Page A, Page B, and Page C, but on the homepage you still see the old content.
This also happens as long as WPML is disabled, which means that this seems to be a theme issue that is not caused by WPML, and it should be reported to Automattic.
---
I will investigate on your site further today and get back to you about it later.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hi,
I took another look at your site.
Also, on your site, the "Featured Pages" section on the homepage is not updating its original content when testing the site without any further plugins.
This is a theme issue and should be reported to Automattic.
How to replicate:
Change the content of one of your page, like for example "DAS PROJEKT".
I added the word "UPDATED" at the beginning of the content and saved the page.
The changes are not showing up on the homepage.
As the original content is not rendering as expected, it would also be expected that translations do not show up correctly.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Further, I have created a fix that will allow Sticky Links to adjust permalinks on widgets, but this will require code interaction inside the Sticky Links plugin.
The plugin yet does not consider the new widget structure inside newer versions of WordPress.
If you would like me to implement the fix on your site, please let me know. It solved the issue on my test site. Otherwise, it might be better to first wait for the reply from Second Tier Support and Development.
1) The behaviour of internal links in the body text of pages is as expected, both on my site and also on the sandbox: The permalinks get changed into sticky links by WPML and point always to the correct respective target language.
2) According to your tests, links in the content of page excerpts are changed into sticky links by WPML correctly and point to the correct respective language (in the Sandbox test example: On the German front page, they link to the German subpages and not to the English ones). You wrote that you weren't able to reproduce this issue on the sandbox and, consequently, attributed it to the Edin theme or to an issue related to my development environment, custom code or what ever. Correct?
3) Also according to your testing, widgets do not get scanned by WPML, neither on my site, nor on the sandbox. Consequently, permalinks in widgets do not turn into sticky links and don't point to the correct respective language. Right?
As for 1), this is what I have reported here in the chat since the beginning. My issues are related to 2) and 3). And I cannot confirm your results concerning 2) and 3), at least not fully:
Concerning 2):
As I wrote yesterday here in the chat and according to my tests on the sandbox that you can replicate easily, the internal permalinks in the content of page excerpts do not get changed into sticky links by WPML and always point to the original target language (English), except for the one in the excerpt of page C's content! In my tests on the sandbox, the internal permalink in page C's excerpt turned into a sticky link, yes!, although still pointing to the English target site, independently on which language version of the front page you are, or in other words: on the German front page the link points to the English subpage instead of the German. But it's a sticky link created by WPML!
Did you try to reproduce this on the sandbox with Edin theme? Or did you test this on any other theme? Could you show me your results, please? Where is it working correctly in your test environment?
Concerning 3):
I can confirm that internal permalinks in Custom HTML Widgets in the sandbox test environment (Edin theme, WPML, Classid Editor and Classic Widget plugins activated) do not get changed into sticky links by WPML. They stay as permalinks. But...: Whereas the unaltered internal permalink in widget B and C still points to the original English target page on the frontend, the permalink in widget A got changed and points to the German target page correctly, without being changed into a sticky link!
Can you confirm this, please? For me, the behaviour of the internal permalink in widget A is the desired and also expected one, independently of his being changed into sticky link or not by WPML. I just want the links to point to the correct target language. Why isn't this happening in the case of widget B and C? They are all the same? Did you try to replicate this on the sandbox with Edin theme? Or did you test this on any other theme or in any other environment?
I disconsidered now my testing with manually created sticky links, since you wrote that one should avoid to do this and, instead, always let WPML create them automatically. But even with permalinks, I really cannot fully confirm your results. Internal permalinks do not work correctly on your sandbox with the Edin theme and WPML plugin activated, neither in page excerpts nor in widgets. At least, they do not behave in a consistent and replicable manner in my tests!
Last but not least: I neither can confirm the issue you reported about the "Featured Pages" section on the front page not getting updated when content is updated in the backend of the subpages. On the sandbox, this works just fine and normally. You just have to insert your updated text in the "excerpt" box of the Editor in backend! Only changing the body text of the page won't alter the content of the excerpt, you have to do that manually in the excerpt box. See the two screenshot attached to my post here.
Looking forward to your explaining more in detail your results!
Kind regards,
Johannes
