Background of the issue:
I am trying to access pages on my site that have the same name but are in different directories. When I enter an address with non-escaped characters, WPML performs an inappropriate redirect. This issue occurs in at least two languages. The error does not occur if the characters are escaped, and in other languages (under the same conditions). Here is the information I see about such a redirect: Redirect Source wp_safe_redirect WPML_WP_API->wp_safe_redirect WPML_Query_Parser->parse_query SitePress->parse_query do_action_ref_array(‘parse_query’) WP_Query->parse_query WP_Query->get_posts WP_Query->query WP->query_posts WP->main wp. hidden link is redirected to hidden link while hidden link is not. hidden link is redirected to hidden link while hidden link is not.
Symptoms:
WPML performs an inappropriate redirect when accessing pages with non-escaped characters in the URL. The issue is language-specific and does not occur when characters are escaped.
Questions:
Why does WPML redirect pages with non-escaped characters in certain languages?
How can I prevent inappropriate redirects for these pages?
With WPML disabled, there is no erroneous redirection.
There should be no such links. But Google found them. That's how I found out about the bug. Google, referring to the results of a fresh scan, shows that the page hidden link is linked to the page hidden link. I don't see that, I see a link from it to a page with a little c in the address. On the other hand, it doesn't matter. Because Chrome sees the address in this format hidden link as containing a capital C (and in this format the address can be written in any 'human readable' document), which should cause a redirect to the address with a small c (but it causes a redirect to a completely different page). It's the same in Icelandic, but Google shows that not only hidden link but also hidden link, i.e. the Estonian version of the Icelandic page in question (hidden link), supposedly links to a variant of the page with a capital C in the address. I cannot confirm this either. And I haven't changed anything in that part, and Google, I repeat, refers to a scan from a week ago.
Languages: English (English )German (Deutsch )French (Français )
Timezone: Europe/Zagreb (GMT+01:00)
Here’s what we tried to investigate the issue:
1. We created a new WordPress site with no plugins installed, including WPML, and set the site language to Azerbaijani.
2. We removed the sample content and created a post titled "Sənədlər."
3. This generated a URL as shown in the WordPress UI: `hidden link`.
However, when entering the URL `hidden link` directly into a browser, it results in a 301 redirect to a version of the URL with character encoding.
For reference, here’s a screenshot of the behavior.
Additionally, when checking the database, we noticed that the `post_name` field in `wp_posts` contains the encoded version of the URL. This confirms that encoding and redirects occur even in the absence of WPML.
We’ve set up a sandbox environment for you to reproduce this issue under the same conditions (no WPML, etc.): hidden link
Could you check if the same redirect behavior occurs there?
If I understand you correctly, this is typical, expected and correct behaviour: all URLs on my site are always encoded, whereas when a page is opened, we see a human-readable address in the address bar, which is visually different for addresses containing characters outside the basic Latin alphabet.
Let me remind you that this is not my problem. It's that the redirect is to a completely different page. Literally different. The problem is not the redirect per se within the variants of the same page's address. The redirect is to another page with exactly the same slug (I suppose that could be important) but in a different directory. It's like example.com/news redirecting to example.com/blog/news.
Languages: English (English )German (Deutsch )French (Français )
Timezone: Europe/Zagreb (GMT+01:00)
This has been escalated to our 2nd tier team team and may take some debugging time, I'll get back to you as soon as I have any news or questions for you.
