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Before opening a support ticket, ensure your WordPress, theme, and plugins are up to date. Verify that your hosting environment meets both WordPress and WPML requirements. And, identify theme or plugin conflicts that may be causing the issue.

1. Are your WordPress version, theme, and plugins all up to date?

One of the advantages of WordPress is its modularity. It means the possibility to enhance your WordPress installation with your choice for a theme and several plugins to accomplish your project.

However, it also requires a lot of maintenance as plugins and themes evolve, provide more functionalities or solve bugs. This means you need to constantly check that your WordPress core and plugins are up to date.

  1. To check if your WordPress installation is up to date, please go to Dashboard → Updates.
  2. To check that your theme and plugins are up to date, please go to the Appearance → Themes or Plugins page respectively. You shouldn’t see any upgrade warnings.
  3. If you want to check your WPML package versions, you can also go to your account and compare them with the versions available there.

2. Does Your WordPress Installation Have All the Needed Resources?

Your server is a crucial part of having a WordPress site running smoothly. One way to make sure your server provides the needed resources is by checking a couple of basic settings:

  • PHP Memory Limit is the total size of memory that your server provides for you.
  • WP Memory Limit is the memory assigned to a particular WordPress site on the server. It can never be bigger than the server’s main PHP Memory Limit. In other words, if your server’s PHP Memory Limit is 64M, even if you set WP Memory Limit to 128M or more, the actual memory limit for your site will still remain 64M.

How much memory your site needs depends on different things, including:

  • Which and how many other plugins you have installed
  • Your site’s content (size, type, etc.)
  • The number and behavior of the site’s users

That being said, sites that have high traffic, use many resource-intensive plugins, and have a lot of dynamic content will likely need more memory.

What resources does WPML require?

WPML requires at least 128M of both PHP Memory Limit and WP Memory Limit to work correctly using a WordPress default theme (like Twenty Twenty) and no other plugins.

We recommend that you request as many resources as your server can provide or you can afford.

How can I check my site’s resources?

WordPress provides an easy way to check these values. In the admin, go to the Tools Site Health page, click the Info tab at the top of the page, and expand the Server section. There, you can find the PHP memory limit value:

Checking your site's PHP Memory Limit on the WordPress Site Health page
Checking your site’s PHP Memory Limit on the WordPress Site Health page

On the same page, expand the WordPress Constants section to see your site’s WP Memory Limit:

Checking your site's WP Memory Limit on the WordPress Site Health page
Checking your site’s WP Memory Limit on the WordPress Site Health page

How can I increase my site’s memory limit?

WordPress lets you set two different memory limits:

  • A memory limit for your front-end pages
  • A memory limit for wp-admin, your WordPress back-end

It’s relatively easy to increase the WP Memory Limit. All you need is the ability to edit your site’s wp-config.php file. Once you know which is your PHP Memory Limit (see the previous section) you can add or modify the code in your WordPress installation’s wp-config.php file.

WPML only sees the WP Memory Limit you set via the wp-config.php file. If you increase the PHP Memory Limit only via php.ini or .htaccess files, WPML will not be able to see it.

For your front-end pages, add the following example code:

/* Memory Limit */
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');

Before the following line:

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

For your back-end administration tasks, you can increase or decrease memory from the WP Memory Limit by defining the WP Max Memory Limit:

define('WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT', '512M');

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

Again, setting your WP Memory Limit to a higher value will not help if your server’s PHP Memory Limit is too low.

To modify the PHP Memory Limit, you need to be able to adjust your web server settings. If you don’t have this control, you need to contact your server hosting and ask for this.

3. Does Your Hosting Environment Meet WordPress and WPML Requirements?

If you have not done it before, it is a good moment to check if your hosting environment fulfills WordPress requirements. This way, you can guarantee that your site has all the tools needed to work correctly. It recommends a recent PHP and MySQL version, and HTTPS support.

Again, you can check if your site meets the requirements by clicking the Info tab on the Tools Site Health page.

To check the PHP version, expand the Server section:

Checking your site's PHP version on the WordPress Site Health page
Checking your site’s PHP version on the WordPress Site Health page

WPML has its own requirements. Beyond a recent PHP and MySQL version, it is also necessary to install some PHP extensions such as eval(), Multibyte String for using WPML String Translation, and SimpleXML for WPML Translation Management.

If you have control over your server settings, you will be able to activate those settings directly from your control panel. However, it may be necessary to contact your hosting service in order to do so.

4. Is a Theme or a Plugin Causing a Conflict?

Many times, the theme works by itself just fine. Each of the plugins that you’re using also works fine. But combined, they can cause problems.

To identify if your theme or one of your plugins is causing a problem, we recommend switching to a WordPress default theme and deactivating your plugins. Please only do this on a staging site, not your production site. If, after doing this, you are no longer experiencing the problem, add your theme and plugins back in one at a time to see which might be causing it.

You can also check if your theme or plugins are compatible with WPML or see if there are any current known issues by looking them up here;

If you discover compatibility issues, don’t worry. The WPML team works with thousands of theme and plugin authors. We all have one goal – to get your site working smoothly. If you identify compatibility issues, let us know, so that we can handle them.

Open a Ticket

If you are still having trouble after completing the above checklist, open a ticket in our support forum. You’ve already helped our team expedite your support process by completing the first four steps of troubleshooting!