Background of the issue:
I am trying to translate custom taxonomies, but often find that the translated pages return a 404. Here is a link to a page where the issue can be seen: hidden link
It's gotten so bad that I've been using a third party tool (uptimerobot) to ping a translated taxonomy and alert me if it finds a 404. I did this last week (on the 24th of March) and am yet to have a day where that translated page was available 100% of the time. You can find the status page here: hidden link
Symptoms:
The translated taxonomy pages return a 404 not found error.
Questions:
Why do translated taxonomy pages return a 404 error?
How can I fix the 404 error on translated taxonomy pages?
Welcome to the WPML support forum. Before passing this thread to my colleague, I would like to share some suggestions and possible solutions for the issues you mentioned.
We hope this bug happens randomly. Please try the following troubleshooting steps after a full site backup{mandatory} and make sure the issue exists or not.
1) Go to WPML>>Support page, click on the Troubleshooting link (blue link in the middle of the page)
2) On the Troubleshooting page, please click on the following options of the *Clean up* section. Wait for confirmation of processing after each one.
- Clear the cache in WPML
- Remove ghost entries from the translation tables
- Fix element_type collation
- Set language information
- Fix WPML tables collation
- Assign translation status to duplicated content
- Fix terms count
- Fix post type assignment
3) Clear all types of caches
4) Visit Settings>>Permalinks, reasave the settings
Thank you for your answer! I've setup the staging website and went through all the steps you said. Since the issue doesn't immediately pop up, I will monitor the situation the coming day(s) and let you know if I see it happen again.
I followed your suggestions but unfortunately just now ran into the issue again (both on production as well as staging). This means the issue is not resolved, unfortunately.
I think it's best if I give you access to staging so that you can do troubleshooting yourself. How do I do this?
Oh by the way, I've setup a monitor for the staging website as well that can be found on the same link: hidden link
There you can see that both staging as well as production never had 100% available custom taxonomies in a full day (it checks every 5 minutes).
Thank you for the updates. Maybe you are facing this issue because of compatibility conflicts. So to make sure, if possible, please do the following steps on your staging site and let us know your feedback.
a) Backup your site first[Mandatory]
b) Switch for a moment to a WordPress default theme like 2025
c) Deactivate all the plugins that are not related to WPML except the ones must required to replicate the bug
d) Then check if the issue exists or not
e) If the issue is gone, activate the plugins as a group of three or four to find which one has an interaction issue
f) Switch back to the original theme of the site
I did the steps you mentioned but can't seem to pinpoint the issue. It seems to only occur with the WPML plugins enabled, too. I have a staging website setup, if you don't mind taking a look that'd be great.
I removed the credentials from your post. Please consider that this is a public forum, so they have been exposed.
I suggest you check your site and change them.
I am enabling a private reply so you can share new ones safely.
**IMPORTANT**
- Please make a backup of site files and database before providing us access.
- If you do not see the wp-admin/FTP fields this means your post & website login details will be made PUBLIC. DO NOT post your website details unless you see the required wp-admin/FTP fields.
Thanks, but I think that the user provided doesn't have admin privileges. Please check the attached screenshot. Can you please change it?
To see the 404 you need to follow this steps:
- Go to: hidden link
- Switch to NL -> all good
- Switch again to EN -> the URL is wrong: hidden link
and you get a 404
Can you please confirm?
How was the custom taxonomy created? A plugin, the theme, custom code?
Thank you for looking into this! I changed the permissions of the user, all should be good now.
And wow, I didn't even know that bug was there too... That's indeed not working properly. It could be that that's the actual cause of this happening! The reason I created this ticket was purely because we noticed 404s on pages/posts/URLs in general that shouldn't return 404s. So I used an external service (uptimerobot) to see if the issue was big or not. Turns out, it happens quite often (I get at least 20 emails/day saying the service is down and then back up again). It's got nothing to do with the server either, as uptimerobot actually checks the HTTP code. Also, whenever I receive an email I immediately go to our website and can access it just fine, it just shows a 404 page. So the server is not down, but the frontend displays a 404 when it shouldn't.
The custom taxonomy was created by the creators of the theme, it was there by default (we didn't do anything to create it ourselves). Then for the translation itself, it's just translated with WPML.
Thank you for looking into this, I finally have some hope to get this sorted out!
I fixed what I think is the root cause of the issue in the staging site.
Now, if you go to a destination and switch languages twice, it's working as expected.
I did it following these steps:
- I went to WPML > String Translation
- I searched for "destinations" and checked the "Exact match" checkbox
- I deleted all the translations of the string "destinations" (without capital letter)
- Then I went to WPML -> Settings -> Taxonomy translation and translated again the slug for the taxonomy
Then, it's working as expected again.
On the other hand, the theme you are using is not on our compatibility list: https://wpml.org/theme/
But the author claims that the theme is compatible with WPML (check the screenshot attached). So, I kindly suggest checking with them too 🙂
Thank you so much for fixing this! I will do the same on the production website and monitor it the coming days. Is it okay if we keep this open for a bit to see if I still get 404s? I think a day or two will be enough to see if all 404s disappear.
You've been a great help already. Thank you so so much!
And yeah, I am in contact with the creators of the theme as well. A couple of months ago they helped me with a similar issue but this time their support has been a bit slower. Thank you for looking at the issue and hopefully fixing all the 404 errors 🙂
I'll perform the changes on production and keep you posted. It's looking good!
