First-time WPML user, I had this happen twice today: I duplicated all the pages on my site and then when I deleted all the Spanish pages (from WP Dashboard -> Pages, hadn't translated anything), it broke the site. The static homepage setting in WP was reset to the default posts page and all the other pages showed a 500 internal server error. I had deleted the pages from the trash as well. I set the homepage back in the WP settings and it worked, but all the other pages kept showing a 500 error. The Elementor editor also stopped working (loading endlessly).
I had to contact my host and they said there was an issue with the htaccess file and they fixed it.
Then on the Translation Management page it would still show the pages as having been duplicated despite them not existing anymore. This meant that the automatic translation wasn't working for those pages. To fix the issue I duplicated them again and then I selected all of them and chose Translate at the bottom (but paused automatic translation). Now they show as "Not translated" which is fine, but I deleted the duplicates again and again the same issue. This time I left them in the trash so I could restore and publish them again, which I did, but that did not fix the issue with the 500 error on all the pages (except the homepage). I had to contact my host again to get the site running again.
Why is this happening? Did I do something wrong? How am I supposed to delete translated pages without breaking the site?
Thank you!
Symptoms:
Questions:
Why did deleting translated pages cause a 500 internal server error?
How can I delete translated pages without breaking the site?
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