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This topic contains 1 reply, has 2 voices.

Last updated by Mihai Apetrei 1 year, 3 months ago.

Assisted by: Mihai Apetrei.

Author Posts
September 1, 2023 at 11:14 am #14326163

Xevi Baena Ortigosa

I really think WPML documentation should be improved to make it easier to find information for the users, specially the part of finding solutions and compatibility issues, and simple how-to's tutorials with other plugins.

Most of the time the information is already there in the support forums from WPML, but it's all mixed with thousands of threads (some closed due to unactivity so are useless, some closed but really not offering information since they are about a specific issue, and sometimes some threads have good informations but you need to browse deep into WPML website to find it. That makes it difficult to find something so users end-up opening a new ticket.

Having a system that makes it easier to find themes and plugins compatibility would improve the information the users can find online, make it more attractive for other potential clients that want to buy WPML and would also save you time with support tickets that should not be opened. I have two recent examples of issues I was having with WPML and other plugins, I could not find the correct information anywhere but at the end the information was out there in the internet or inside the WPML website itself, just a bit hidden.

The first issue it was during a compatibility issue with WPML and Yoast. Yoast was causing 404 errors on the site and because the errors disappeared when WPML String Translation was deactivated, I thought it was a issue with WPML String Translation.
At the end and after a few days testing in a dev copy of the site I was able to solve it. It was only about making a reset on the Yoast plugin using another plugin from Yoast: Yoast Test Helper plugin. Apparently a lot of people has issues with Yoast on the breadcrumbs and this plugin helps reset the Yoast without losing data. If someone else is having issues with Yoast and comes to WPML forums, knowing that everything can be solved pressing a few buttons on the Yoast Test Helper plugin would save hundreds of minutes and probably a few threads on the forum. This info could be literally pasted in the plugin page for Yoast that you guys have on https://wpml.org/plugin/yoast-seo/

The second example is clearly an example of the problematic of having a lot of mixed information (closed threads, outdated information and so on).
I wanted to translate the Thank You Pages from WooCommerce that are created using the plugin NextMove XL.
On Google the first result is this: hidden link but the information is totally outdated (the metadata of the page says it was last updated on 2018-10-26 T11:18:33).
WPML forums show me tenths of results, stuff like this
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/how-to-translate-thank-you-and-order-recieved/
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/cant-translate-order-received-thank-you-page-wpml/
https://wpml.org/fr/forums/topic/traduction-thank-you-page-plugin-next-move/
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/some-strings-not-showing-translated-and-a-section-is-missing/
The page you have specifically for the plugins, this one wpml.org/plugin does not have anything about this specific plugin.
At the end I had to do a few advanced searches on Google using advanced commands like site:wpml.org NextMove XL and site:wpml.org woocommerce thank you page and open all the tabs at once and read each of them to find a description of how to solve my issue, specifically on this thread: https://wpml.org/es/forums/topic/thank-you-page-2/
The information is there, but is just very difficult to find.

I think it would be very positive to have a better user friendly forum system, for exampe a forum that uses filters on a sidebar so you can find forum threads tagged with a specific plugin tag. Or also that all the forum threads that are about a specific plugin or theme, can be found on the page you have for this specific plugin on wpml.org/plugin or for the theme page.

I think in general a better interaction among "Support Forums", "Plugin" pages, "Errata" pages, and "Known issues" pages would make it easier to find all the information you want around WPML and specific plugins or themes.

September 3, 2023 at 7:36 pm #14332739

Mihai Apetrei
Supporter

Languages: English (English )

Timezone: Europe/Bucharest (GMT+02:00)

Hi there and thank you so much for all the time that you spent writing these recommendations.

I will definitely share this with our team!

Have a lovely rest of the weekend.

Mihai Apetrei