Home›Support›English Support›[Escalated to WPML Developers team] Links on the US English variant pages redirect to the default English variant instead of the US Engl...
[Escalated to WPML Developers team] Links on the US English variant pages redirect to the default English variant instead of the US Engl...
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Background of the issue:
I'm developing a site using WPML with English as the default language and US English as a secondary variant. I've duplicated pages for the US English variant using WPML translation dashboard. The links on these pages are relative paths, such as /contact-us/. There are too many pages to change all the links to dynamic links. Link to a page where the issue can be seen: hidden link
Symptoms:
All internal links point back to the default language instead of the US English variant.
Questions:
Is there a specific setting in WPML or Elementor that I need to adjust to fix the link redirection issue?
I checked the issue in detail and found that the site links were using https, while the site was set to http, which caused the mismatch. So, I followed the below steps:
1. Updated the site URL to https from Settings >> General (screenshot attached).
2. Went to WPML >> Settings and clicked the “Scan now and adjust links” button and it fixed the internal links in French language.
However, English language variant links still didn’t work.
I’m going to replicate this issue at a fresh WP site and get back to you with an update soon.
Sorry for the delay, I was off over the weekend. I’ve checked this on a fresh WP setup and managed to get the language variant links working correctly by following these steps:
1. Edit the default-language page in Elementor.
2. Click the Dynamic Tags icon (screenshot attached).
3. Select Internal URL.
4. Set the Internal URL type to Content.
5. Search for the page by title and select it.
6. Save the changes.
With this method, the links now correctly point to the translated variant pages.
Here’s an example page where it works: hidden link
Here is the auto-login link for the test site: hidden link
Please check and let me know if this helps or if you need anything else.
Seems to be overly complicated and not a workflow anyone uses to develop websites in Elementor.
I have a follow up question regarding this US english variant. I know WPML is automatically translated to the users browser language settings. For example, if I'm in Germany checking a multilingual website I would see the English version automatically.
Would this still be the case with the US english, ie, if I had be browser language set to US English would I see the US variant rather than the default English variant?
New threads created by Noman and linked to this one are listed below:
Another thought I've had about this internal linking issue is your workaround won't work with a text block in Elementor as you could have multiple links within the text editor?
I still think it's not effectively workaround. Unfortunately, this isn't the way anyone would develop a website using this linking solution. And now it transpires it also doesn't work for Elementor text editors.
I trialled a different multilingual plugin called Translatepress and although it was lacking in other areas, it automatically switched the internal link urls out of the box, even with the free version.
I really can't see the point in being able to duplicate a language's pages and posts only to then have to go into every page / post and change potentially hundreds of button links.
Thanks for sharing your observations and the additional context. I understand your concern about handling multiple links in text blocks, that definitely needs a proper solution rather than a manual workaround.
I’ll take some time to debug this thoroughly and will also escalate it to our 2nd-tier support to ensure we find the most reliable solution for internal links in Elementor text blocks. I’ll provide you with an update as soon as I have more information.
I further debugged the issue and found that it also occurs with other languages, such as French, when using Elementor, while links work correctly with the Block Editor.
I have escalated this to our 2nd tier support and will update you once I receive their feedback.
As a workaround, you can try using the “Translatable – use translation if available or fallback to default language” option in WPML >> Settings > Post Types Translation instead of duplicating. I tested it here: hidden link and the links appear to work correctly using this method.
So I've tested out the above workaround and it works for automatically adding the en-us. I've also tested duplicating a couple of pages with the above workaround implemented and it does still work it seems.
The one thing where it falls over is if the client needs to actually navigate to from a US page to an English page, which may well happen. I tried adding a button and pointed it to the default language page, but because there's no locale in the url for the English version it still points back to the en-us.
For example, button on en-us page has link of hidden link you would expect it to go to the English version of testpage, but it doesn't, it actually goes to hidden link
All that said we still need a stable WPML / Elementor workflow, rather than a workaround.
It's probably fine so far it seems for the smaller site we're currently developing, however, we've got a massive site to do in Jan and I really don't feel super confident in this current process.
I completely understand your concern. The issue has already been escalated to our development team. I don’t have an ETA at the moment, but I’ll update you here as soon as I hear back from them.
Also with the workaround above does that also mean they have to have everything that is on English language show on the US language variant? Because I know for a fact the client wants to have some specific pages NOT show up on US variant, but likewise have some new pages only show on US.
