Split: Translated Custom Fields Returning Different Data

This thread is resolved. Here is a description of the problem and solution.

Problem:
The client is experiencing issues with managing WPML credits across a multisite environment on WPEngine, which includes a main site and a child site, as well as staging and development environments. The client is unsure about the correct workflow for handling WPML credits when copying from production to staging and development environments.

Solution:
1. We requested the client to provide the full addresses of the domains currently available under their wpml.org account, including the protocol and whether they include WWW.
2. After receiving the necessary information, we cleaned up all previous instances of the client's sites, including duplicates and old domains.
3. We then linked all 6 URLs together to ensure that all credits and content are linked, preventing the creation of new instances.
4. We advised the client that no specific workflow is needed when moving sites between different environments, as long as the URLs remain linked.

If this solution doesn't look relevant to your situation, please open a new support ticket.

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.

This topic is split from https://wpml.org/forums/topic/translated-custom-fields-returning-different-data/

Tagged: ATE

This topic contains 36 replies, has 4 voices.

Last updated by Ilyes 1 year, 2 months ago.

Assisted by: Ilyes.

Author	Posts
November 17, 2023 at 2:21 pm #14863533
johnM-108	I cannot test this out until I get an issue related to multisite in a development environment figured-out as I can't do this on my live site. I'm having trouble figuring out how to open a new ticket for this issue. WPML support keeps sending me in circles.
November 17, 2023 at 2:24 pm #14863541
Nicolas V. Supporter Languages: English (English ) French (Français ) Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)	Hello, We can look at your multisite issue in this ticket. Please share as much details as possible, it will help us understand the issue.
November 17, 2023 at 2:50 pm #14863979
johnM-108	I have a multisite environment on WPEngine with a Main site and one Child site. I have both of these registered as the Production sites in my account. WPEngine allows me to have a Staging and Development environment that mirrors my Production environment. I want to know if there is a correct workflow for this situation when WPML is involved. Today, I tried to remove credits from my Staging and Development environments, intending to do this before copying the Production environment to the Staging environment, because the last time I did it the Staging environment said there were no credits associated with it when there were. So I went through the process of returning credits from the Staging and Development environments, but now the WPML Admin says the only site with credits associated with it is the Staging Child site (see attached "Admin Credits Listing.png"). But looking at the WPML > Translation Management > Tools tab of each of the sites associated with the WPML admin, the only site with credits attributed to it is the Production Child site (see attached "marshberry.com-eu Tools Admin.png" attachment). Am I doing something wrong? I will need to be able to overwrite the Staging and Development sites on a regular basis for feature development. Is there a proper way of configuring the STG and DEV sites or is there something specific I need to do before/after the copy process?
November 17, 2023 at 8:08 pm #14866079
Nicolas V. Supporter Languages: English (English ) French (Français ) Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)	Hi, From the screenshots I think that you are sharing credits accros sites. Let's try 2 things here: 1. Try to remove your credits directly from your WPML account. See "Admin Credits Listing.png" you have a button to add/remove credits. 2. If you don't want to share credits between your sites, then on "marshberry.com_eu_Tools_Admin" open the "Connected sites" tab and unlink the other sites. Having said that, if you plan to make translations on dev and staging then it would be better to keep your sites connected (to share credits, translation memory etc...) More info: https://wpml.org/documentation/automatic-translation/automatic-translation-subscription-for-multiple-sites/
November 20, 2023 at 2:29 pm #14878121
johnM-108	Regarding Option #1 above: - If I click the "Add/remove credits" button for the marshberrystg.wpengine.com/eu/ site (this is the only site with credits assigned to it according to the WPML dashboard), I get a modal window with a button to "Remove credits". - When I click that button it sends me to the WMPL > Translation Management > Tools tab. There is nothing on this page giving me the ability to return credits (see "marshberrystg - eu - wpml - tools.png" attachment). - This is essentially the problem I'm discussing. The WPML dashboard's credits assignment does reflect what the WPML admin is showing for these sites. Regarding Option #2 above: - Sharing between my sites isn't the issue I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about the discrepancies between the WPML dashboard and the WPML plugins. - See "wpml - dashboard.png" -- This says I have 9962 credits available and the marshberrystg.wpengine.com/eu/ site is the only one with credits assigned to it with 5806. - See "marshberry - eu - wpml - tools.png" -- The plugin admin says I have 33342 prepaid credits left. This is for marshberry.com/eu/ not marshberrystg.wpengine.com/eu/ - Why is there such a massive difference between what the WPML dashboard says and the WPML plugins? - Also in "marshberry - eu - wpml - tools.png" it lists marshberrystg.wpengine.com/eu/ twice in the connected site list. Why is that? Overall Questions: - The items above don't address my concerns with maintaining WPEngine's multiple environments properly. I was hoping you would have feedback on a proper workflow for copying the Production environment sites down to the Staging and Development environments without causing configuration issues with WPML. I feel like I've done this in the past and might have assigned or re-assign site keys incorrectly.
November 20, 2023 at 10:22 pm #14880981
Nicolas V. Supporter Languages: English (English ) French (Français ) Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)	Hello, Could you please provide me with a temporary admin access (wp-admin and FTP) to marshberrystg.wpengine.com/eu/ – so I can further investigate with credits don't match. I will activate a private field for your next answer where you can provide that information safely (this field is only visible by you and the support team). Don't share your own admin account, create a new one that you will delete when we finish troubleshooting. IMPORTANT: Before we proceed, please backup your site and database.
November 23, 2023 at 1:01 pm #14908139
Nicolas V. Supporter Languages: English (English ) French (Français ) Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)	Hello, The good news is that I found the information in our systems (AMS). hidden link Deposited credits: 60000 Used credits: 26658 Available credits: 33342 hidden link Deposited credits: 10000 Used credits: 4194 Available credits: 5806 However the UUID (Website ID) in our system for hidden link doesn't match the information I could find in your dashboard "WPML > Support > Troubleshooting". I contacted our AMS team and I'm waiting for their feedback. I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
November 23, 2023 at 4:22 pm #14910367
Nicolas V. Supporter Languages: English (English ) French (Français ) Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)	Hello, It seems that you are using an old key from previous registration of your staging URL. Could you please try to register a new Site Key for that staging site? 1) Go to https://wpml.org/account/sites - Delete the Site Key for that site - Create a new one and copy it 2) In your WordPress Dashboard - Go to "Plugins > Add new > Commercial (tab)" and click "Unregister WPML" - This button will change to "Register site", click it again and paste the Site Key you just created Let me know if it solves the issue.
November 24, 2023 at 5:03 pm #14919891
johnM-108	NOTE: If there's another way to do this in realtime, via a Google Meet or Microsoft Teams or something, I'm open to it. These responses are a lot to read. Let me know. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nicolas -- I think we're getting somewhere. So by going through your process I think I see where things might have gotten messed-up and decided to move forward with the multiple environment issue. 1. I've copied my Production environment (hidden link) to my Staging environment (hidden link) and things on the surface look good. The content between the front-end of the sites is consistent. 2. When I login to the admin of each of the Staging sites (hidden link and hidden link) I get the message seen in the attached screenshots ("marshberry-stg-main-after-copy-from-production.jpg" and "marshberry-stg-europe-after-copy-from-production.jpg"). 3. For both of these sites, I chose "Yes / This is only a copy" and on the next screen chose to attribute translation credits on my own. 4. On https://wpml.org/account/sites/ I removed both Staging sites (hidden link and hidden link) from my Registered Sites list. 5. I goto the Network Admin section to Add Plugin and click the commercial link (hidden link) and here I "Unregister WPML from site". NOTE: This is the NETWORK ADMIN because in the multisite environment, the "Add Plugin" option isn't available. 6. On https://wpml.org/account/sites/ I added hidden link to the Registered Sites list, adding automatic translation credits and got the site key. Now, this is the part where I get confused. 7. I go back to the Network Admin of the Staging site and to the Plugins commercial tab here (hidden link) and choose to Register the site using the new site key. At this point, the WPML > Translation Management > Tools (tab) of both Staging sites (hidden link and hidden link) show no translation credits are available (see attached: "marshberry-stg---wpml-tools-tab.jpg" and "marshberry-stg-eu---wpml-tools-tab.jpg"). The Sites Using Prepaid Credits still doesn't reflect the WPML admins for each site, not to mention one site is listed twice and I don't have an option to add credits to one of my registered sites. (See attached "sites-using-prepaid-credits-list.jpg"). Do you see something wrong in this workflow? This is what I need to figure-out how to do: 1) Copy Production environment down to Staging environment 2) Attribute automatic translation credits to the Staging environments Am I doing something wrong? Should I be doing this in a different way?
November 24, 2023 at 8:13 pm #14920753
Nicolas V. Supporter Languages: English (English ) French (Français ) Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)	Hello, 1. Migration OK 2 + 3. The right choice is "YES THIS IS A COPY" (to have 2 different sites with different keys) Else WPML will be deactivated on your production site. 4. OK 5 + 6. You're correct, about the network plugins. Here you have our documentation: https://wpml.org/documentation/support/multisite-support/ Basically register a SiteKey at the multisite level and all your subsites will use that Key. So the key created should be with the main domain URL and credits should be added only to the main domain URL: hidden link (don't worry I can help afterwards to get your credits back from hidden link - I just want to make sure that we have the right setup first).
November 25, 2023 at 2:17 pm #14922501
johnM-108	Nicolas -- Great, it sounds like I've set-up the multisite environment correctly up to this point. Reading the "Using Automatic Translation on Multisites" section of the link you sent me, it looks like we need to get the hidden link domain added to the "Sites Using Prepaid Credits" list. The attached file ("sites-using-prepaid-credits-list.jpg") shows the current state of the "Sites Using Prepaid Credits" list. Question #1: According the info on the multisite support page, am I correct in assuming that the "Sites Using Prepaid Credits" list should ONLY have the main site URLs in it, for example: * hidden link * hidden link * hidden link Question #2: At the moment, the main site in the production multisite environment (hidden link) in the WPML > Translation Management > Tools > Connected Sites list, it's listing the staging environment's main site (hidden link). I'm assuming that I should A) remove this staging site URL and B) add the child site of this multisite environment (hidden link). (See the attached "marshberry.com---Connected-Sites.jpg" for reference.)
November 25, 2023 at 2:23 pm #14922569
johnM-108	Nicolas -- I've added your admin account as an administrator on the main staging site at hidden link as well. If you need to be a super admin for the multisite environment to continue to help, let me know. I just wanted to make sure you could see the WPML > Translation Management > Tools screen on the main site for now. At the moment, that site doesn't have any automatic credits assigned to it or the ability to connect the European child site. I'm assuming this will be remedied once the main site is added to the "Sites Using Prepaid Credits" list and we add some credits to it.
November 27, 2023 at 6:52 pm #14934211
Nicolas V. Supporter Languages: English (English ) French (Français ) Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)	Hello, As the main sites also use WPML and are registered, your subsites (/eu) don't need a key. It will use the Sitekey from the main site. That why you need to register only your main sites in WPML.org and assign credits or link only those sites to share credits. I have opened a ticket with our ATE team because I found 14 sites UUID (Site ID in our system) and 4 of them have credits, so I think it would be better that someone review the situation and reassign credits to the correct sites. I'll get back to you as soon as I have some feedback.
November 28, 2023 at 1:44 pm #14940349
Nicolas V. Supporter Languages: English (English ) French (Français ) Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)	Hello, I had a call with our team and there is something wrong, as I mentioned you have 14 sites UUID registered. Normally when you copy your production site to staging back and forth, the same UUID should be used and credits should remain. We don't think it's a bug (technical error) but rather a workflow issue. But either way, the system should not allow his kind of behavior. They want to review in details your set up on the production and staging sites to understand better. I would like to request access to the production site too (I will reactivate the private field) and your permission to delete and register new siteKey. This will be done by our system team (we don't have access to your WPML.org account on support).
November 28, 2023 at 9:13 pm #14944695
johnM-108	Can you give me an idea of any downtime that might occur with these changes, as well as anything else that might go wrong? This is our most important client and we cannot afford much downtime or anything fatal to happen to the site. We may need to coordinate a specific time to do this to minimize downtime and risk.