We are preparing to migrate our website to a new WordPress site.
We are encountering a problem importing blog posts and their translated versions.
Our current WP site includes:
English (371) | French (381) | All languages (752)
We use WPLM export/import plugin last version (3.1.14)
From this current WP site, we export a category of blog articles, which downloads an .XML file, and we import the XML into the new WP.
We then use WPML Importer to activate the import. Activation is possible.
We have tested with a total number and a reduced number, and the problem is the same: the translations are not imported.
In the small-scale test, we have 8 articles on the current site. In the imported articles, we only find 8 articles in French, and not the English translations.
Out of a total of 371 articles, only about 20 articles are imported when we run the process for all articles.
We only use categories and no etiquettes. We already done this export import from another WP including support articles, and it worked well.
Furthermore, the number of articles displayed is incorrect when we perform the import (33 instead of 16 with translation or 8).
Since the chat was idle for a while, I converted it into a ticket. No worries, though, we can continue the conversation here until your issue/concern is fully resolved.
Please check the chat transcript. It explains the recommended export-import steps and how to run the importer so that the content and its translations are imported correctly and stay properly connected. Follow those steps and let me know how it goes!
If you need any help along the way or have questions, feel free to reply here and I will be happy to assist.
Here is a video showing their procedure, which successfully retrieves the English articles, but when I go to WPML => Export - Import, I don’t see the command to connect the French articles with the English ones.
Since you're using the default WordPress Export/Import tool, there are some important preparation steps you need to complete before exporting to ensure WPML properly handles the translation relationships.
Before you start exporting:
1. Navigate to "WPML → Export and Import" on your source site
2. Choose "I'm exporting the content from this site" and click Continue
3. Select "I'm using the built-in WordPress export/import tool" and continue
These steps are crucial — they tell WPML to prepare the content for export with the standard WordPress tools.
Once you've completed the preparation steps above, follow this process:
1. Go to Tools → Export on your source site
2. Choose Pages (or whichever post types you want to export)
3. Keep the default settings and click Download Export File
On your destination site:
1. Go to Tools → Import
2. Upload the exported file
3. Make sure the default language is selected before submitting the import
After the import completes successfully:
1. Go to WPML → Export and Import on the destination site
2. Now you should see the "Run Importer" button
3. Click this button to allow WPML to connect the translated content with the original content
4. Once complete, check your Pages section to verify that the default and translated pages are correctly linked
After completing all steps, you should see in your Pages list that the original pages and their translations are properly connected.
Please follow these steps carefully and let me know how it goes. I'm here to help if you encounter any issues or need clarification on any step!
Thank you so much for taking the time to record that video – it was really helpful.
I've gone through everything you shared, and I can confirm that your process was fine. I actually tried replicating this on my local setup following the same steps, and sure enough, I was able to reproduce the exact same issue.
Now that I've confirmed this is a real issue (and not just a one-off situation), I'm going to escalate this to our internal team right away. I'll make sure this gets the attention it deserves and push for either a fix or a solid workaround as quickly as possible.
The moment I hear anything back or have an update for you, I'll surely let you know!
I really appreciate your cooperation on this and your patience while we get it sorted out.
I’d like to share an update regarding the issue you reported when exporting posts from a specific category. Our team investigated this and was able to identify the root cause. A patch has already been created, and the issue is now fixed in our development environment.
In the meantime, I can share a workaround that you can apply on your site to resolve the issue right away. Please follow the steps below:
- Log in to the site where you are exporting the content from.
- Go to "Plugins → Plugin File Editor"
- Select the "WPML Export and Import" plugin
- Navigate to: `classes/Integrations/WordPress/` and open the file HooksFactory.php
- Scroll to line 72
- Replace this code:
if ( admin_url( 'export.php' ) !== $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] ) {
Once this is done, please try exporting posts from a specific category again. The exported file should now include the language and other necessary translation information correctly.
Just as usual, the export/import workflow remains the same (export from both languages and then import). No changes are needed on the import side, since the issue was happening only during export.
Please try it out and let me know how it goes. I’ll be happy to help if you need any clarification or run into any issues.
It seems the following part was missing from the fix I shared earlier:
admin_url( 'export.php' )
Please update the code accordingly, and it should work fine. I tested this same solution on my side and can confirm that it resolves the issue.
Please try again by following the same steps I shared, and let me know how it goes. I’ll be happy to help if you need any further assistance or clarification.
thank you for this update.
We were able to get all the articles in both languages FR and EN.
But, now, we still face an issue.
When we navigate onto an article on the front, if we switch this article to english (toggle at the bottom of the page), the french is still displayed.
You can test there : hidden link
It seems that the link between french and english version of the articles is not correctly done.
When I go to wordpress > list of articles. I can see the french article, the icon for English version is set to the pen, meaning the english version is existing and I shall be able to edit.
when I try to edit the english version, I can see a list of notifications, the content is mainly french as if the export was not done correctly - see shot attached
Thank you for the update! Glad to hear that the French and English version appear connected after the changes.
Regarding your concern about switching to the English version still showing French content — I checked and can see that the language switcher is indeed pointing to the French URL even when English is selected.
However, when I manually edited the URL and added the /en/ directory, the English version loaded correctly without any issues.
You can check it here: hidden link
So it looks like the translations are correctly connected, but for some reason, the URL generated by the language switcher seems to be broken.
Could you please try the following steps and see if it helps?
- Go to WPML > Support > Troubleshooting
- Click the following buttons:
-- Disable cache for language switcher templates
-- Clear the cache in WPML
-- Set language information
-- Update domain name in language switcher settings
Once done, clear your site/server cache (if any) and also clear your browser cache, then test again.
Please check and let me know how it goes. I’ll be happy to help if you need any further assistance or clarification.
Thanks for your answer.
We are still facing some issues :
1. A lot of imported images cannot be used. We dont see them in front, and in the backoffice, we can see an error and see a grey image which parameter cannot be changed - see shots.
The error is in french - meaning: impossible to get the main image data
2. lots of images are not appearing after the import of blog articles.
This is only appearing in the english part of the blog - see attached shots
You can see that navigating through the english blog pagination : hidden link
We tried to use the OTGS plugin. I uploaded it but we cannot activate it in the WP extension part.
Maybe the plugin WPML Media Translation coud be used there ? Can you provide us with it ?
