Getting started
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After purchasing a WPML account, you should receive an email with your account information. Sometimes, you might not be able to find it in your main inbox. This page offers…
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Never miss out on important emails about account information and WPML updates. To make sure you get this information in your inbox, be sure to whitelist WPML’s email address. Why…
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WPML includes its own automatic update and install process. After you install the base WPML plugin once, you can auto-install its components and receive upgrades directly to the WordPress admin….
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WPML features a String Translation add-on that allows you to translate texts coming from themes, plugins, and sources outside of posts and pages. String Translation also adds important features to…
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If you are not receiving WPML updates automatically, you need to update manually. As part of this manual update, you can register WPML and receive automated updates to future versions….
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If you have a very old version of WPML on your site, you need to update the WPML plugin manually and in steps. Updating the WPML plugin keeps your site…
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By default, you should use the stable and fully tested versions of WPML. However, in some cases, you may want to test versions that have not yet been officially released….
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We offer you a complimentary download of Toolset Types right from your account’s download page. You can use this plugin on sites with or without WPML. If you have WPML…
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Your registration site key is unique to the site’s domain. If you are frequently moving the database between production, development, and staging, you can avoid re-entering the site key by…
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WPML offers automatic translation with the Multilingual CMS and Multilingual Agency account types. It is an optional translation method. Our automatic translations are powered by leading translation engines DeepL, Microsoft,…
Error messages
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This error message occurs when WPML can’t match a translated XLIFF file with the original one. There are a couple of ways you can fix this issue. When you download…
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You may see this message after trying to upload WPML 4.5 or later via the Plugins page in WordPress. Learn how to solve this issue.
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A 500 error means that there is an error in the PHP code that your site runs. When errors are not caught, the server stops everything and returns a page…
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If you see an error message saying that WPML is unable to connect to WPML.org, it is because of an issue from the server or your internet connection. Here are…
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There are two error messages you might see if WPML has a broken table that needs to be fixed in the database: “There is a problem with the String Translation…
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Error when registering WPML Things that you can check when getting an error message like this: Do you have a working internet connection? Can the webserver…
Compatibility
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WPML always tests every release with the latest WordPress versions. However, because WPML is not listed in the WordPress repository, it will always show as Compatibility with WordPress: Unknown. When…
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Some plugins use a special configuration file in order to be fully compatible with WPML. For many plugins, this configuration is stored on a WPML repository and the file is…
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The WPML support team can nearly always help you resolve issues faster when we know which theme and plugins you use. The WPML plugin can send us a report of…
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Untranslated post object and page link fields do not show on the back-end of the duplicated post despite the fact that the post is associated with the correct value for the post object and page link custom fields…
Troubleshooting
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When you activate WPML, it adds language attributes to all existing content. If the activation process is interrupted, some content may be missing because it has no language. Read this…
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There can be many reasons why translations may disappear or go missing. The simplest and most common cause is not following a consistent translation workflow. WPML offers a robust translation…
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If you translate a string in String Translation but you don’t still see it translated in the front-end, in most cases this happens because your WP Memory Limit is set…
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If you’re using the Classic Translation Editor, you could have trouble finishing a larger page’s translation. For example, a page that has been 100% translated and saved may appear to…
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Having trouble registering WPML on your site? Here are some common troubleshooting tips to help you. I don’t see the registration link for WPML in my site’s admin. This means…
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If you can’t get past the language configuration wizard, there’s probably something wrong between WPML, your theme and other plugins. This FAQ will help you identify these problems, so that…
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Does your site feel slow? Here are a few steps that you can take to speed it up. UpdateUpdate WordPress, the theme and all plugins PHP 7Make sure that you…
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Every plugin that you add to your WordPress site will add execution time and database queries. In this tutorial, we explain how to check where execution time comes from. With…
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If your site shows question marks for non-English characters, most chances are your database character encoding is different than UTF-8. Don’t worry, you can fix this easily. If you’re using…
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As of WPML 4.3, WPML uses MO files to deliver String Translation without loading the database. For this to work, WPML needs to be able to write to the languages…
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When using WPML’s Advanced Translation Editor, your translations may appear “stuck”. You might also see a message saying “WPML didn’t manage to translate this page” or “WPML tried to translate…
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The language controls on the WooCommerce Products page are hidden by default. When enabled, they can increase the loading time of the page. The recommended place for translating products is from…
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Sometimes, you will want to show translated breadcrumbs on your Product pages and have them include the Shop link. Because of how WooCommerce works, this functionality requires two things to…
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The WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway extension features a Test mode for testing the payment system before activating it on a live production site. When the Test mode is enabled, the extension adds a test…
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WPML does not display translations of admin strings in your site’s backend. This means you will always see these strings in the default language, even if you have translated them…
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WPML allows you to add and customize language switchers to your site menus, widget areas, and footers. You can do this from the WPML → Languages page. If you enable flags…
Getting support
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Save time in the support queue by checking these four easy fixes before you open a ticket. Even if they don’t immediately solve your problem, completing this checklist will give…
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If after following all the instructions from our checklist before opening a ticket in WPML support, you are still having issues or struggling to translate your site, it may be…
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Sometimes, when you report an issue, our supporters might ask you to reproduce it on a test site. They’ll also provide you with such a site. Here are some simple…
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Sometimes, our supporters may ask you to provide them with a copy of your site. They will do this when issues you are reporting need to be investigated in greater…
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When you contact the WPML support team, you may be asked to provide debug information. This information allows our support team to help you in a quicker and more efficient…
How-to
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When developing your site, one common thing you may want to do is get the current language using code. There are two WPML hooks that offer similar ways of doing…
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By default, the Advanced Translation Editor hides URLs from translated material. To translate URLs, you first need to find them using the search. This same method applies to other hidden…
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As you develop your site, you may need to be able to get the other languages of a current post. You can get this information using several of WPML’s hooks….
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Sometimes, you might want to completely remove a specific translation of a page. Follow these simple steps to do this. Please note that translation memory saves your original translations. The…
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If you create your own custom post types, custom fields, or custom taxonomies, you need to make them translatable before you can translate them. To make custom types in WordPress…
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If you run a site such as an established blog, a content-heavy site or an e-commerce store you might have a lot of taxonomy terms to translate – far too…
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WPML 4.0 version introduced the possibility to translate custom taxonomy base slugs. For example, let’s say you have a custom taxonomy called “Book Genres”, with some terms like “Science Fiction”…
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If you have a page that is a translation of another page, you can link them together using the Connect with translations feature. To link pages to their translations: Open the…
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WPML allows you to easily create a PO file for any plugin or theme on your site. PO file contains a list of all texts in a plugin or a…
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If you have multiple secondary languages on your site, you may not want to automatically translate your site’s content into all of them. In this case, you can choose to…
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WPML allows you to remove a language you are not using. If you are not planning on activating it again, you can delete that language’s translations from your site’s database….
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WPML provides a reset feature that deletes WPML tables from the site’s database and deactivates the plugin. WPML reset cannot be undone. We recommend that you create a backup of…
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Once you save the options for your site’s default language or a custom language, it is not possible to change their language code. If you want to use a different…
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Sometimes, you might need or want to manually install plugins on your WordPress site. To manually install a plugin, you need to have a ZIP file containing it. Usually, you…
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If your translated pages appear slower than the original pages, there are a few things you can do. First, be sure to check where problems are coming from. You can…
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Many themes, plugins, and even WordPress Core use English as a default language. Because of this, if you use a different default language for your site, you will have strings…
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If you add a sidebar language switcher to a site using the Twenty Seventeen theme, there is a slight visual issue in its appearance. Front-end glitch…
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If you add a footer language switcher to a site using the Twenty Seventeen theme, it is not visible on the front-end. It is actually rendered, however, the default styling…
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Disconnecting a translation can be useful if you would like to turn the translation into an independent post, or if you would like to make it a translation of a…
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Sites that you register as development sites show a banner on the site’s admin and front-end. You can easily remove this banner by changing your site key from development to…
Misc
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You should not bundle WPML with any theme, free or commercial. WPML comes with GPL license, but is also trademarked. In practice, removing all the trademarked material from WPML would…
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By default, WPML does not load every single string onto the String Translation page. In order to add strings to that page, you may need to scan your theme or…
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This is currently not possible with WPML. Once you have set any page as your Front or Post page on the Settings → Reading page, WPML will immediately assign their…
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First, thank you again for buying WPML from us. We’ve made it easy for you to get a tax receipt with everything needed for your accounting. Where To Find Your…
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In WordPress, the text domain is a unique identifier that allows WordPress to distinguish between all loaded translations. It also makes it easier for WordPress to know which strings belong…
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HTML tags are letters or keywords enclosed in <> brackets that define how a browser will format and display content. For example, let’s say you have some words in a…