It’s been over a year since we started, and we’re excited to announce a first working version of WPML with WP E-Commerce.
The new versions of WP E-Commerce and WPML allow building fully multilingual e-commerce sites with WordPress, with easy and intuitive management.
Highlights:
- Translatable products and categories
- Robust display using any URL language structure
- Consistent language throughout the purchase process
- Inventory and shipment tracking in a single language
In short, this means that you can run a multilingual e-commerce site without the fuss of setting up products in each language. WPML now auto-synchronizes product properties in all languages. You need to create the products in the default language and then add translations. WPML will automatically synchronize product cost and other attributes, copying them from the default languages to all translations.
Downloads
To test this, you’ll need to use the current Beta version of WPML (login to your WPML.org account, click on Downloads and get the Beta Package).
Also, you’ll need our version of WP E-Commerce and WPEC Multilingual:
- WPEC 3.8.6 Dev (once we’re done with testing, this will become the official WP E-Commerce release)
- WPEC multilingual (the glue plugin that makes WPML and WP E-Commerce play nice together)
Install and enable all three plugins in your site.
How it Works
The glue plugin, WPEC multilingual, will create translations for the standard WPEC pages.
Then, as you translate products, it will help by copying product attributes from the default language to the translations (you still need to translate product names and description).
When customers make their purchases, shop owners will see the purchases in the default language, regardless of the language of the purchase. This functionality is intended (and took a lot of time to build), so that inventory tracking can work properly.
When purchases complete, customers get back to WPEC in the language in which they started.
Theme Changes
Many e-commerce themes include hard-coded elements. A comment example is a link to the catalog and checkout pages. You’ll need to turn these links multilingual. To do that, use WPML’s icl_link_to_element function. It will display these links with the correct label and pointing to the right URL (in the current language).
Look for any place where you point to a hard-coded URL and replace it with a call to icl_link_to_element.
Testing and Reporting Problems
Multilingual e-commerce is a huge topic, so it got a forum section of its own – Multilingual E-Commerce Support Forum.
Please report anything that you find there.
Bare in mind that it’s also difficult to debug, so help us out. When you report issues, provide:
- Link to a test site where we can see it happening
- Indicate exactly what’s wrong, what you expect and what you’re seeing instead
- Whenever possible, create a video that shows it in action (we love Jing)
Thanks for helping us test WPML and WPEC. With your help, we’ll get it perfected and ready for release soon. Now, it’s up to you!