Links do not redirect correctly after default language change

This is the technical support forum for WPML - the multilingual WordPress plugin.

Everyone can read, but only WPML clients can post here. WPML team is replying on the forum 6 days per week, 22 hours per day.

Tagged: Not WPML issue

This topic contains 13 replies, has 2 voices.

Last updated by Mateus Getulio 1 year, 10 months ago.

Assisted by: Mateus Getulio.

Author	Posts
April 12, 2023 at 2:28 pm
cindyL-2	We changed the default language from English to French on this site: hidden link Everything appeared to be working correctly except for broken links. For example Go to hidden link * Click on the "Active" link/icon (hidden link; * It takes you to the French page instead of the English
April 12, 2023 at 4:03 pm
April 12, 2023 at 5:48 pm #13458671
Mateus Getulio Supporter Languages: English (English ) Portuguese (Brazil) (Português ) Timezone: America/Sao_Paulo (GMT-03:00)	Hello again, It seems that the credentials are not working anymore. Could you please review it? Thank you, Mateus.
April 12, 2023 at 5:56 pm
April 12, 2023 at 9:20 pm #13459871
cindyL-2	I have managed to create a version of the website prior to changing the default language setup here: hidden link I've setup an administrator account for you there with the same credentials I sent you previously.
April 13, 2023 at 2:29 pm #13465643
cindyL-2	Good morning Mateus, Have you had a chance to look at the new site I setup? Hopefully you are able to switch the default language to French on it, without any link issues 🙂 This is a critical issue for our client and we need to get an answer to them as soon as possible. Thank you, Cindy
April 13, 2023 at 2:31 pm #13465821
Mateus Getulio Supporter Languages: English (English ) Portuguese (Brazil) (Português ) Timezone: America/Sao_Paulo (GMT-03:00)	Hello Cindy, Thanks for providing the access and the test version. Sorry the late response, I have double-checked the problem, but so far I haven't been able to find a fix. I asked my colleagues to take a look to see if there's anything I'm missing. I'll come back here as soon as one of them answers me (which shouldn't take long). Thank you in advance for your patience! Regards, Mateus.
April 13, 2023 at 8:37 pm #13468483
Mateus Getulio Supporter Languages: English (English ) Portuguese (Brazil) (Português ) Timezone: America/Sao_Paulo (GMT-03:00)	Hi, I have escalated this ticket to our 2nd tier of support where our 2nd tier specialists will take a deeper look at this issue and will try to find a solution. I will get back to you as soon as I get an answer from them. Best regards, Mateus
April 13, 2023 at 9:02 pm #13468539
cindyL-2	Hi Mateus, I thought this had already been escalated. Our client's site has now been broken for more than two days. We really need this fixed soon. Thanks for your help, Cindy
April 14, 2023 at 6:58 am #13470949
Mateus Getulio Supporter Languages: English (English ) Portuguese (Brazil) (Português ) Timezone: America/Sao_Paulo (GMT-03:00)	Hi Cindy, Thanks for your reply. Please bear in mind that as far as we can see it seems an expected behavior, since we're able to reproduce it in a clean install with only Avada components and WPML. We're checking if we can find a workaround for this and as soon as possible we provide more updates. One recommendation that we can give, however, is to also contact the Avada support, so that our teams can work together on this. Thanks for your understanding. See you soon!
April 14, 2023 at 4:28 pm #13475317
Mateus Getulio Supporter Languages: English (English ) Portuguese (Brazil) (Português ) Timezone: America/Sao_Paulo (GMT-03:00)	Hey there, I checked this with our 2nd tier team and this is an expected behavior. There's no feature that will automatically fix the redirect links if you change the default URL of a site. I'm afraid you'll have to manually fix the URL by pointing it to the correct one. Alternatively, you might be able to fix it by using a redirect plugin to point the wrong URL to the new one. Kind regards, Mateus
April 14, 2023 at 6:29 pm #13475903
cindyL-2	Hi Mateus, We do not agree that breaking a website is "expected" behaviour when changing the default language. There were bigger issues in the backend as well, not just broken links in the content. We will get a detailed list of the issues to you after the weekend.
April 14, 2023 at 10:17 pm #13476869
Mateus Getulio Supporter Languages: English (English ) Portuguese (Brazil) (Português ) Timezone: America/Sao_Paulo (GMT-03:00)	Hi Cindy, When I meant 'expected behavior', I'm just saying that this will be reproducible in a clean install, and thus, it is not specific to your WP install. Here the link of the Sandbox where we replicated it, if you want to check it: hidden link Unfortunately, there is no feature that if you change the default language, WPML creates a redirect to the correct URL. The redirect we see are coming from WP redirect_canonical function. See the curl example in the Sandbox: curl -I <em><u>hidden link</u></em> HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Server: nginx/1.22.1 Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2023 12:08:53 GMT Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Connection: keep-alive Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0 X-Redirect-By: WordPress Location: <em><u>hidden link</u></em> It redirects to the first closest match of URL. Based on the order of posts created. Either you can place redirect manually using redirect plugin or correct the URL in the content. Sorry, but these are our options here. Regardless, I understand that this can be frustrating and compromise your project, so I'll wait for your updates and thoughts in the next message. Waiting for your feedback. Thank you.
April 18, 2023 at 6:55 pm #13498949
cindyL-2	Hi Mateus, We have re-created the website to a backup from before we changed the default language from English to French. It is at hidden link. All we want to do is make the French side of the website the one a visitor sees when they browse to hidden link. Is there another way to do that, besides changing the default language in WPML? Thanks, Cindy
April 18, 2023 at 9:17 pm #13499571
Mateus Getulio Supporter Languages: English (English ) Portuguese (Brazil) (Português ) Timezone: America/Sao_Paulo (GMT-03:00)	Hello Cindy, Thanks for your reply. Let me check it again with our second-tier specialists. As soon as possible I bring you updates. Regards, Mateus.