Background of the issue:
I am trying to address an issue where unpublished clone drafts are sometimes showing up as public linked translations on our site. We noticed this when SEMrush flagged internal links as broken, and upon investigation, we found links like these: ES: hidden link, PT-BR: hidden link, which are unpublished translations for DE: hidden link. This issue seems to affect multiple pages, and these draft ID URLs are appearing in the XML sitemap. A team member also reported seeing these URLs publicly in the page language dropdown, although I haven't seen this myself. There might be caching involved, but it's unclear why these URLs are included in the sitemap XML.
Symptoms:
Unpublished drafts are appearing as public linked translations. These draft URLs are showing up in the XML sitemap and possibly in the page language dropdown.
Questions:
Why are unpublished drafts appearing as public linked translations?
Why are these draft URLs included in the XML sitemap?
Could caching be causing these URLs to appear publicly?
As I said via chat, I suspect this is a broader compatibility issue between ACF and WPML. To confirm that, I've created a Sandbox (testing website), so we can check the feature in isolation. You can access it here:
hidden link
Please set up the sandbox, with only the minimum necessary to recreate the issue. If I got it right, you need:
1. Install and activate ACF and ACFML;
2. Create a post and translate it.
3. Set the translation as a draft;
4. Create a "Post Object" field that shows the post from #02 in a page;
5. Create a page that shows the post;
6. Translate the page;
Let's see if the translated page shows the link to the draft. Please note that the idea here is to isolate the issue, so don't create anything not directly related to the issue, one post and one page are enough. The Sandbox is already with WPML installed and setup. Let me know when you're done.
I know this takes some effort, so I really appreciate your cooperation.
I don't understand what you mean by step 4 and 5. Wont I need to be able to custom code php templates on this site in order to do that? Is that what this is assuming I'm going to do?
Yes, it's the same implementation you have on the live website. You can copy the code that displays the ACF, for example. The idea is to reproduce the behavior of the live website in the Sandbox, in isolation.
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