[Resolved] Products in secondary languages imported via Facebook for WooCommerce. Why?

Good morning Itamar, the issue isn’t related to the bugs you’ve already identified. It seems to be something different, and I’m not sure if it’s something that’s already been addressed in any way.

As I was trying to mention, the problem is as follows: the Facebook for WooCommerce plugin creates a product catalogue based on the products listed in WooCommerce, in order to sync them with Meta. It does this for every single product and variation—in short, everything.

When a product is translated using WPML, WPML naturally creates another product in the second language.

The problem is simple: Facebook for WooCommerce sees the translated product and imports that too.

So the result is that, say I’m selling a pencil and I’ve translated this pencil into five languages.

I then end up seeing that same pencil listed six times in my Facebook catalogue.

The only difference we notice on Facebook is that one product appears as active in the catalogue, while the other five (which are the translations) appear as archived.

Since the translated products are archived, they don’t impact the catalogue too much, fortunately.

However, the site still syncs them, which leads to a considerable waste of resources.

What we’d like to understand is how WPML handles this situation.

Good morning Itamar, and apologies for the delayed response.

What I’m describing is a sort of bug that has been ongoing for over a year.

I’d be happy to send you a link to the catalogue, but you wouldn’t be able to see the “extra” products I mentioned, as they appear as “archived”.

Only those in the primary language are shown as “online” – I believe this is something your team worked on in the past. Previously, both the primary and secondary language products were displayed online. Now at least the secondary language ones are hidden.

However, the point I was raising is that the products in the secondary languages are still being synchronised, which leads to a significant use of resources. Ideally, the Facebook for WooCommerce functions should be disabled when WPML is active, so that only products in the primary language are synchronised.

I’m sorry if this sounds convoluted – it is, a bit. But I’m confident that if you’re able to escalate the issue to whoever handled the WPML compatibility with Facebook for WooCommerce, they’ll immediately understand what I mean.

Thank you.

Here it is – I can confirm that we haven’t left things to chance, but have made only our primary language visible.

However, as the compatibility team will confirm, synchronisation is still happening because it remains enabled on the product page. This alone triggers the synchronisation process.

The sync module itself doesn’t disappear – it’s still there. WPML simply hides the products from the online catalogue.

Here’s a list of annoyances this causes:

- When a page in the secondary language is updated, a Facebook sync alert appears at the top (unless you manually disable automatic sync for every product and every variation – which would be a huge task). Regardless of the alert, the update triggers a connection between Facebook and the site, which ideally shouldn’t happen at all.

- When browsing the catalogue on Facebook, you see a flood of duplicated and archived products.

Sure, happy to! Let me first provide a bit of context to help clarify things further.

On Facebook, a product within the catalogue can either be online (and thus visible) or archived (and therefore hidden).

If I’ve understood correctly, the WPML > Languages > Facebook Visibility feature allows secondary language products to be archived by default.

This means they don’t appear in the online catalogue, which is exactly what we want.

From a consumer’s point of view, everything works perfectly – there’s no confusion.

The issue I’m trying to highlight is solely from an internal management perspective, for the reasons I’ve already mentioned.

In screenshots A and B, you can see the Facebook catalogue. Screenshot A shows the visible (active) products, while B shows the archived ones – which are essentially duplicates created from the secondary languages.

Screenshot C shows the “Products” page in WooCommerce, where the Facebook Sync column appears. As you can see, this confirms that Facebook for WooCommerce is still syncing those products with the catalogue.

And finally, screenshot D shows one of the notifications I mentioned, where WooCommerce interacts with Facebook – something that, in my view, shouldn’t be happening when the WPML > Languages > Facebook Visibility option is active.

Good morning Itamar,

Apologies for the delayed response – we’ve addressed this matter as promptly as possible.

In reply to the last message from your second-level support, following an analysis with our developer, here’s what we’ve found:

- The GroupID of the product changes depending on the language, as do the variant IDs – this confirms that within the Meta ecosystem, these products/variants are treated as entirely separate entities. If needed, we can export all metafields for a sample product in both the primary and secondary language.

- We haven’t found any “Multilingual Content Setup” metaboxes on products – neither in the primary language nor in any of the secondary ones.

- There are no custom fields controlling the sync status.

- In the database, for a product variant in the primary language, there is a parameter indicating that synchronisation should occur: meta key: _wc_facebooksync_enabled with meta_value: yes. In the translated (secondary language) version, this entry is entirely absent.

I hope this provides some helpful insight to the relevant team.

Thank you.