Background of the issue:
I am trying to work on my site, but I encountered an issue with the WPML plugin on the plugins page.
Symptoms:
All of a sudden, I get this message on the plugins page: 'WPML plugin cannot connect to wpml.org. WPML needs to connect to its server to check for new releases and security updates. Something in the network or security settings is preventing this. Please allow outgoing communication to wpml.org to remove this notice.'
Questions:
How can I resolve the connection issue with wpml.org?
What network or security settings might be preventing the connection?
Is this because of staging site?
I already clicked on CHECK UPDATES and that solutions I found on internet.
Thank you for contacting WPML Support. This issue usually happens when the site URL and registered site URL are not the same e.g. with www or without www. Could you please delete the existing site key and create a new one by following the below steps:
1. Please login to your WPML.org account >> Go to the Sites page: https://wpml.org/account/sites/
2. Delete the existing site key (if it exists).
3. Please login to your site and go to the Dashboard >> Plugins >> Add new plugin > Commercial tab and click the Unregister WPML from this site link if that link exists.
4. Then please click the Register WPML link.
5. Click the Get a key for this site link.
6. It will generate the Key for your site.
7. Copy the key, and paste it back into the input box, and press the Register button.
8. Then, please take a backup of your site and update WPML plugins to the latest version.
If the “WPML plugin cannot connect to wpml.org” notifications still persists, please try the below procedure:
1. Go to WP Dashboard Menu >> Updates.
2. Press the "Check again" link as you can see in the attached screenshot and see if this resolves the issue.
but this is a staging site, should I do those steps and then it will work when I push it to production? or first push it to production and then follow those steps in production? I need to continue working on the staging enviroment. Please let me know if I shall proceed
You can follow the above steps on your staging site now to fix the connection issue. However, once you push the site to production, WPML will recognize it as a different URL, and you’ll likely need to re-register it using the production URL.
So, I recommend doing the steps on staging first to continue working. Then, after pushing to production, repeat the registration process to ensure WPML connects properly.
Ok! But my question is, once I re-register on staging, will it affect the LIVE site? Or they work independently? I want to avoid breaking something LIVE because of doing something on staging
The staging and live sites work independently when it comes to WPML registration. Re-registering WPML on staging will not affect your live site. However, when you push changes from staging to live, the registration might not carry over, and you may need to re-register WPML on the live site using its correct URL.
So, you can safely proceed with the re-registration on staging without impacting the live site. Let me know if you have any other concerns!
ok I did that but once I updated WPML everything started to work strangely, I duplicate a post and it would duplicate with translation or translate pages and shortcodes got messed up so I had to rollback to the previous version, I think WPML wasn't ready to update yet still buggy.
Thank you for the update. Could you please confirm if the "WPML plugin cannot connect to wpml.org" issue is now resolved?
If you need further assistance with any other issue, please feel free to create a new chat/ticket for each separate issue with more details. This helps us focus on resolving one problem at a time effectively before moving on to the next.
What separate issue, I am only having 1 issue here, the message I get "'WPML plugin cannot connect to wpml.org. WPML needs to..." etc.
Nope, the message is still there because I restored a backup due to your indication to update WPML plugins broke everything, all the posts started malfunctioning and I couldn't translate posts so I am now on the previous version of the plugin and that message still in display.
Is there a way to get rid of that without updating the plugins so that my site keeps working? I think the new WPML update is not ready for production.
Sorry for any confusion, Yes, it's possible, please try to follow the below steps:
1. Please login to your WPML.org account >> Go to the Sites page: https://wpml.org/account/sites/
2. Delete the site key where that notification is being displayed (if it exists).
3. Please login to your site and go to the Dashboard >> Plugins >> Add new plugin > Commercial tab and click the Unregister WPML from this site link if that link exists.
4. Then please click the Register WPML link.
5. Click the Get a key for this site link.
6. It will generate the Key for your site.
7. Copy the key, and paste it back into the input box, and press the Register button.
If the “WPML plugin cannot connect to wpml.org” notifications still persists, please try the below procedure:
1. Go to WP Dashboard Menu >> Updates.
2. Press the "Check again" link as you can see in the attached screenshot.
3. Clear all sorts of site/server/CDN cache and see if this resolves the issue.
I'm not doing it again as the last time it broke everything so I'm too scared to try it again. I'll leave the wpml plugin old version that at least is working and live with this message. Thanks for the time.
