ECP v.3.12 + WPML = Functioning Workflow Yet?!?

[B.]

Hi,
Among others, we have been desperately waiting on compatibility between ECP & WPML for many years now. On older sites, we had created a custom Bing Translate integration for just the calendar, but this was never ideal (machines aren’t always that great at translating). And this stopped working with newer versions of everything.

So we were ‘cautiously’ excited to hear that v.3.12 was FINALLY integrating with WPML (at least to a degree). But were weren’t able to locate any posts or documentation on proper setup and workflow, so hoping to find out if anyone has this working or what the ECP ‘official’ recommended workflow might be?!?

We have a test site that has the latest versions of ECP & WPML plugins. And while we thought we were able to get it working in the back-end, we unfortunately are not seeing any results in the front-end of the site.

Here’s what we did:
– At first we didn’t see any difference or options to be able to translate events (they weren’t showing up in Translation Management or Translation Queue). But we opened a sample event in the editor and noticed a ‘Make Events Multilingual’ option. We checked this and it ‘appeared’ to make ECP function similar to posts & pages, with a language pane that allowed us to enter the ‘Translation Editor’ to make the translation.

– We clicked in the Language pane for a couple events to enter the Translation Editor and complete the translation for a couple sample events we had.

– We weren’t seeing any results in the front-end, so we then went into ‘Translation Management > Multilingual Content Setup’ and made sure that in the ‘Custom Posts’ section Events, Venues & Organizers were all set to ‘Translate’ (Events was already set to this). We then saw Events show up in the Translation Management interface, and sent a different sample event to the Translation Queue. We logged-in as our translator user and used the Translation Editor to translate this new event. Again, everything ‘appeared’ to work correctly in the back-end, including all status icons, etc.

Here’s what we see on the front-end:
– When viewing one of the translated events on the site in English, clicking to switch languages takes us to a ‘Sorry, we can’t find the page you’re looking for (404)’ page. It looks like the URL structure it’s trying to use is: ‘/es/event/spanish-event-title/’.

– We have an Upcoming Events list widget on our home page. In Spanish (our alt language), it shows as ‘No upcoming events’ (in Spanish).

– When viewing our main Calendar page, switching to Spanish gives a ‘No results’ message and no events show up on the calendar.

– When viewing as a List, we also get a ‘No Results’ message’.

————————–

Has anyone had luck getting this to actually work? If so, let me know the versions of WPML and a standard workflow (including settings) that seems to work OK.

Thanks for any help or suggestions here!

[unitbit]

Same problem on a dev site and on a fresh installation of Worpress, looks like it is a problem with the permalink on the translated content. I have problem 404 on every of the recurring event except the first one. And when I access this first one I cannot go back to the main language(it) clicking on the switcher beacuse of the wrong link.

[B.]

It might be nice to see a functioning example of ECP + WPML, and know what workflow was followed. I imagine with the feature being touted so strongly in the upgrade notices, they must have seen it working on at least some sort of test site?!?

[Nico]

Hey @B and @unitbit,

Thanks for reaching out on this!

Hopefully there are two new knowledge base articles on this: Setting Up The Events Calendar with WPML and Creating translations for events using WPML. Can you check them out before we jump into this? Hopefully they’ll help you out getting this right.

Please let me know if you can solve your issues by following these articles,
Best,
Nico

[B.]

Hi Nico,
Thanks for the reply. I had already done the steps outlined in the ‘Setting Up..’ article.

But there are discrepancies on the ‘Creating Translations…’ article with what I see in WPML. I do not (and have never) seen the option to Copy/Overwrite from English in the Language pane. I have only the checkboxes to duplicate media items to the translation.

And clicking on the icon (blue +, pencil, etc.) takes me into the Translation Editor where I do the actual translations. In there, I am only presented with the title, description area, and category fields to translate. Those are the only fields that have needed to be translated, though, as it seems like most other field labels have been translated internally by the plugin.

So I’m wondering what method you have setup for translating in Multilingual Content Setup section of WPML? We have only ever used the ‘Translation Editor’ option, as it has many advantages over doing things manually. Do you have it setup to ‘Create Translations Manually’??

Before updating and trying to translate an event, viewing events when in Spanish mode would display with the same URL but just the ‘/es/’ appended before ‘/event/’. The event would display with the Title & Description in English, but most other fields (dates, field titles, etc.) in Spanish, again auto-translated by the plugin. Now, when trying to switch languages on an event page, it tries to use the Spanish title as the slug (producing a 404 error).

Hope this helps narrow down what may be happening. Let me know if you need any additional information. We’ve been using both ECP and WPML on multiple sites for many years now, so fairly familiar with both.

Thanks!

[Nico]

Hey B,

Thanks for following up on this!

Just wanted to give you a quick heads up on this: I’ve run short of time today but I’ll try to recreate this on my end tomorrow and hopefully I can find some answers to your inquires.

Best,
Nico

[unitbit]

Hi, sorry I was out a couple of days, I recreated a test environment following your guide but the 404 problem persist as described in the first email.

[Nico]

Hi B. and unitbit,

Thanks both for following up on this!

unibit: I’ll continue debugging this with B, you are welcome to follow along. If you would like you can also open up a new thread and someone in our support team will be glad to help and follow-up on your situation.

I went through the process of setting this up myself to try to identify what you where missing B.

But there are discrepancies on the ‘Creating Translations…’ article with what I see in WPML. I do not (and have never) seen the option to Copy/Overwrite from English in the Language pane. I have only the checkboxes to duplicate media items to the translation.

After you configured the languages -English and Español in this case- just go to WP-Admin > Events > Add New Event, there you should see the Language panel above the Publish one – https://cloudup.com/iaFQJli68A6. If you don’t see it there, open ‘Screen Options’ menu and make sure the panel is enabled.

Once you see it there, just click the blue + sign next to Spanish in the ‘Language Panel’. This will open another ‘Edit Event Screen’ for the Spanish translation of the event. Now in the ‘Language Panel’ click ‘Override with English content’ – https://cloudup.com/iRXnSd_Nz2H.

After adding a title and description in Spanish save the event. Now go to the front-end of the site and check if both events show in the calendar when you switch languages.

Please let me know if you can create and see the events in the calendar of each languages. If you are able to do so we can continue and investigate the URL configuration.
Best,
Nico

[B.]

Hi Nico,
– Can you go to ‘WPML > Translation Management > Multilingual Content Setup > How to translate posts and pages‘ and let me know if you have it set to ‘Create Translations Manually‘ or ‘Use the Translation Editor‘?

We have always used (and definitely prefer) the ‘Use Translation Editor‘ option. There are a few advantages that make this method easier for our users.

As a test, though, I did try translating an event manually. When clicking the ‘Overwrite with English Content’ button, it did bring in the Title & Description content OK (which the Translation Editor did as well). But it didn’t bring in the proper meta data for the event details. It used today’s date and did not bring in the Venue information. When trying to add the venue information, I get a ‘Venue already exists’ message, as proper titles are not usually translated (in fact, most attributes of a venue would NOT be translated). But there is no drop-down to choose any venues.

It does appear to get the translated event to show, however. It’s just a bit clunky. If any info is changed for the event, the translation has to be updated manually with no default reference in the editor window. So a translator would either need detailed notes from whomever changed the event, or would need to keep a separate screen open with the English event and look for any obvious differences. Not ideal for a lot of users.

I think one of the big differences that I see, though, is that it looks like doing a manual translation does not present a translated slug when you switch languages. So ‘domain.com/event/happy-new-year/’ becomes ‘domain.com/es/event/happy-new-year/’. When using the Translation Editor, it would become ‘domain.com/es/event/feliz-año-nuevo/’. Maybe this can shed some light on why Translation Editor events are not showing up?!? Though showing the Spanish title as slug is standard behavior.

Let me know what you find out here.

Thanks!

[Nico]

Hey B,

Thanks a lot for your feedback on this!

I still need to check this with other support team members – I’m not sure about the ‘Use translation Editor’ option and would like to give you a firm answer on this.

Thanks for the patience on this,
Best,
Nico

[Nico]

Hi B,

Can you go to ‘WPML > Translation Management > Multilingual Content Setup > How to translate posts and pages‘ and let me know if you have it set to ‘Create Translations Manually‘ or ‘Use the Translation Editor‘?

That’s set to ‘Create Translations Manually’ on my end. I pinged the dev team on this but unfortunately ‘Use the Translation Editor’ is not fully supported for now.

Regarding event URLs: I could edit the event slug, just under the title like I would normally do with posts or events. And it’s working as expected on the front-end, the event URL is ‘http://site.com/es/event/evento-espanol/’ for Spanish and ‘http://site.com/event/english-event/’ for English.

Also when using this settings I do not have issues with the additional meta-data – date, time, venue, etc. Please note that the ‘Override with English content’ is the way to go, ‘Copy content from ..’ is not.

Can you try to set this up in a clean install? Just to see if the workflow described in the KB articles is indeed valid as you mentioned in the thread title. I know there are still a bunch of features / settings that are not supported yet and the plan is to continue to work on this and try to get full compatibility at some point. But this will surely take some time! So maybe sticking to the basic working workflow is the way to go for now.

Please let me know if you are ok with testing the ‘suggested workflow’ in a clean install -maybe a quick local install?-,
Have a great weekend,
Nico

[B.]

Hi Nico,
Thanks for the update. It’s very unfortunate that you don’t support the ‘Translation Editor’ method. It’s one of the 2 main ways that users can translate with WPML, the other being manually as you have it setup.

We certainly hope that TEC will continue exploring the Translation Editor method, as everything ‘appears’ to work correctly from the WPML interface standpoint when using this method. So not sure how ‘close’ it is to actually working, I suppose you would need to examine the database to see what is actually being stored. Then it may have more to do with the redirects, not sure.

I did switch my test site to the Manual Translation method temporarily as mentioned. Using this method would just require a bit more of a savvy user who could pay close attention to details to make sure everything was done correctly, especially when making updates to a translation. The Translation Editor method just simplifies the process a bit for the end user.

Let us know if the Translation Editor method was tested at all, and explored as an option in integrating when the development was happening. Would be helpful to know if this is/was being explored, as we’ve been waiting many years for a decent integration.

Thanks!

[Nico]

Hi B,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply! I really appreciate you have taken the time for it. This type of feedback help us shape our product and get a sense of what’s important for our users.

This is our first step into a complicated integration -both WPML and The Events Calendar are rather complex plugins- and we will continue to work on improving and adjusting it. Talked a bit with Gustavo one of our devs who worked on this feature, and he told me this first round was built around ‘Manual Translation’ and haven’t been tested with ‘Translation Editor’ configuration. He told me this is likely to be integrated in the future, and I’ve logged a ticket in our product backlog to specifically address this aspect of the integration.

I totally see the point in your request, but unfortunately for now this all I can do to push this forward.

Please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you on this,
Best,
Nico

[B.]

Ahhh, so close but yet so far…

I’m guessing as it took a few years to get to this point it may be a while before we can successfully integrate. It’s a real bummer, as we have a bunch of sites that we need to update to latest WP/WPML/ECP/etc to be current, and in doing so we will break our ‘temporary’ Bing Translate solution. So the entire site EXCEPT calendar titles & descriptions will show in the alt language…

Thanks for the update.

[Nico]

Hey B,

Thanks for understanding! I really hope this can be addressed in the near future.

Ahhh, so close but yet so far…

I guess it was a long way to this initial integration but the decision is to increase compatibility so hopefully the wait is not so long this time.

I’ll go ahead and close out this thread, but if you need help with anything else please don’t hesitate to create a new one and we will be happy to assist you.

Best of luck with your projects,
Nico

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