I have a site stirlingaustin.com with English as a primary language. It is currently set to a domain per language and the Hebrew version has its own domain stirlingaustin.co.il. Both are working fine, but I want to add French.
I have set up the French in wpml languages and a page, but I see from the documentation that it’s not possible to mix domains and subdirectories. Therefore, I tried creating a subdomain on my cpanel. (Fr.stirlingaustin.com) when I did this it will not validate. Can you tell me what I am missing?
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hello,
The site URL (subdomain) and the language switch FR language option will only appear if a translation in FR exists. This means, in order to access hidden link the homepage needs to be translated to 100% and published in French.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hello,
Indeed, I do see a 404 error here.
I would like to offer to take a closer look and request temporary access (wp-admin and FTP) to the website to investigate the issue further.
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I may have to install a plugin called "All In One WP Migration" to make a copy of the website where I can investigate the issue further.
However, I would also be very grateful if you could provide a staging site or copy of the website from your server yourself for this purpose.
If you have any questions about creating such a staging site, you can consult your hosting provider. Please note that WPML must also be registered on this staging at https://wpml.org/de/account/websites/.
If you are unable to provide such a copy of the site for testing, please let me know on this ticket.
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I created the A record, it's pointing correctly and it looks like the propagation is fine for the French subdomain, unfortunately, am still getting a 404 when I change to French.
For the moment I have changed back to using sub-directories, but if you have a suggestion please let me know. To be honest, if it doesn't make a big difference to SEO I'll keep subdirectories.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hello Stirling,
Yes, Google is fine with "Language in Directories" - only "Parameters as Languages" is not recommended by Google.
Guides: hidden link
hidden link
About the 404 issue:
I can offer to use the plugin "All in One WP Migration" on your site in order to take a copy and test it on localhost with a few test domains. Do you agree with that?
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hello Stirling,
I am about to set up the copy for testing, just one sidenote:
In your site the WP MEMORY LIMIT was too low - I have adjusted it now - see screenshot.
Then I wanted to test again and try to set up the domains without validation the FR domain.
Now, according to WPML domains should get applied when using the language switcher, and I also resaved the permalinks, but the language switcher keeps redirecting me to language directories which still appear to work, even though this is not the current WPML settings.
This is kind of unexpected - I actually had to edit the header template, edit the menu block and then save the template again for the changes to appear inside the menu.
Anyhow, the 404 persists. I have set the site again to language in directories now and will continue testing on localhost.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hello Stirling,
According to the copy of your website, this seems to be a bug in WPML, as the issue occurs if I run the site only with WPML on the default theme.
The problem only occurs when using different domains per language and if the active language is set to be hidden from visitors of the site in WPML > Languages > Hide Language.
I will try to recreate this issue on a new test site and let you know the results shortly.
