[Closed] WPML functionality

Hello Marc,

Thank you for sharing this information.

I checked it and your site has German as the default language.

The automatic translation only works from the main language to the secondary languages. This means that WPML won't be able to automatically translate content from Dutch to German as long as German is the main language of your site.

In your case, you'd first need to make Dutch the main language of the site, wait until the whole content has been translated and then switch to German as the main language.

When you switch the main language, you might need to go to WPML -> Settings -> Translation Mode and change it to Translate what you choose and then change it back to Translate everything to get the automatic translation resumed.

Also, I checked the menus and it is built mainly of custom links not actual pages that you drag and drop from the sidebar, WPML isn't able to sync custom links, you need to go to Appearances > Menu and switch to the secondary language in the admin top bar, then you need to manually add the custom links once your Dutch pages have been translated to German.

Thank you, please let me know if you still have concerns.
Mateus

Hello Marc,

Yes, I believe this setup(a domain per language) would work better for you.

But since your existing content is in Dutch, you need to make the .nl language/domain the main language of the site in order for you to be able to use the automatic translation. Once your content has been translated you can make the switch and make German the main language if needed.

One thing to bear in mind is that for you to use this setup, the subdomain should have no actual content as you observed, it needs to be an empty domain that works as an alias, I checked it and it looks like you're hosted in Cloudways, is that correct? I found an article showing how to add the domain as an alias, it is available in the steps 7 and 8:
hidden link

Given the fact that you already started translating content on aedcenter.de, if you want to switch to 'a different domain per language' here's what I'd recommend you to do:

1- Make a full backup of aedcenter.nl and aedcenter.de just in case
2- Migrate the content from aedcenter.de to aedcenter.nl so that you don't lose the content that has already been translated
3- Remove aedcenter.de as an actual site
4- Add aedcenter.de as an parked/alias domain, you know that it is configured correctly, when you access it before setting the 'a domain per language' and it redirects you to aedcenter.nl
5- Configure 'a domain per language' in WPML -> Languages and add aedcenter.de as the domain for the German Language
6- Finish translating the content(using automatic translation or the manual translation what fits you better)

With your content fully translated, you can switch the main language and proceed to the menu setting I approached above.

Thank you, please let me know if you have doubts.
Mateus

Hello Marc,

I checked it and it looks like both domains are pointing to different IP addresses(this also aligns with the setup in the screenshot that you shared):

hidden link - 162.159.136.54 / 162.159.137.54
hidden link - 165.232.91.87

This won't work with WPML, the domains need to be pointing to the same IP as per our guidelines. And there could be no redirect from de DE domain to the NL one, they need to point to the same thing so that WPML can make the language switch work properly.

Another test you can make to see if it is ready for WPML is:

1) Create a text file(for example WPMLTest.txt)
2) Upload it to the root directory of hidden link
3) Then make sure you can access the file from the German domain even without a redirect configured, like the following: hidden link

This will indicate the DNS setting is correct and ready to be activated in WPML -> Languages.