WPML 3.8 is ready for public release (has been ready for over a week now), but we’re holding it back for a little while longer. The end of August is vacation time for many and we want to avoid any drama while clients are away and trying to relax.
Delaying WPML 3.8 is a difficult decision for us. This is one of the best releases of WPML so far. We’ve been running it on our own sites for the last two weeks and the results are wonderful. Most pages on our sites (wpml.org and wp-types.com) load at around 1/2 of the time they used to load before.
This speed improvement is a result of two major changes. Many of the internal calls in WPML (especially around String Translation) are improved. And, more significant, WPML 3.8 allows us to run without loading .mo files. Our sites, like many other WordPress sites, use plenty of plugins that each loads a translation file. All these translation files build up and take a long time to load. WPML 3.8 loads the right translations for each page, avoiding the need to load all these .mo files with thousands of strings that don’t display.
Besides the speed improvements, this version of WPML packs a complete redesign for the Theme and plugins localization admin screen. This greatly simplifies usability and adds much-awaited features.
We’ll press the Publish button at the first week of September. If you want to switch to WPML 3.8 already, log-in to your account, go to Downloads, switch the channel to Beta and download.
Remember to update ALL of WPML’s components and not only the main plugin. You cannot use the ‘production’ version of String Translation (or any other WPML component) with the beta of WPML core.