WPML – different slugs for venue pages

[Samarpan P.]

Hi,

we started working on a multilingual site using WPML and the Events Calendar Free Plugin.
After a while we decided to go Pro, partly because we wanted to have the venue sites included.

Here’s the problem:
We want the URL for those sites to be different in each language – German: “/veranstaltungsort/” English: “/venue/”.
We tried using the string translation entry

Domain: WordPress
URL slug: tribe_venue

• which worked for the venue pages themselves as well as the links to them from other pages.
  But they did not show any upcoming events, instead saying there were “no results found”.

So here’s the question:
How should one change the URL slug for the venue pages?
Did we overlook something somewhere?

Thanks for looking into this.

Best wishes,

Samarpan

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Samarpan and welcome back!

Thank you for reaching out to us.
I would love to help you with this topic.

Provided you have installed and translated everything according to our guides, it should work normally:

1. https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/setting-up-the-events-calendar-with-wpml/
2. https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/creating-translations-for-events-using-wpml/

With that in mind, there are a couple of things I would try:

1. Head over to WPML > Support > Troubleshooting page.

   Once you are there, you should see several cleanup buttons. I would recommend:

   • Clearing WPML cache
   • Using ALL the cleanup buttons on that page
   • Re-saving your permalinks
2. Try different settings for Language filtering for AJAX operations
   under WPML > Languages
3. Head over to Translation Management > Multilingual setup and scroll all the way to the bottom. Hit the “Translate Link Targets” scan and adjust button (this might take a while)

Finally, could you tell me what your setting is for How to translate strings in themes and plugins? under WPML > Theme and plugins localization ?

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Samarpan P.]

Hi Geoff,

thanks for reaching out!
As far as I can tell, we did set up everything according to the knowledgebase.

Here’s what we did now:

• Clicked on all the buttons at the WPML-Troubleshooting page
• Re-Saved the Permalinks
• Checked the option to use a cookie for AJAX operations at WPML->Languages
• Clicked the “Translate Link Targets” button at Multilingual setup, which does indeed take some time.
• Removed the Selection for “Use different slugs in different languages for Venues.” in the Multilingual Content Setup
  -> Events appear on the venue site in the original language (German), trying to switch over to secondary language results in a 404.
  Guess that could be handled by the “Translate Link Targets” button, but that’s not what I’m here for 🙂
• Checked it again, made sure that the slugs were entered correctly
  -> No results found at venue pages.
• Set up a new venue and a new event using that new venue individually
• Clicked the “Translate Link Targets” button again

Unfortunately, nothing removed the issue so far.
The option how to translate strings in themes and plugins is set to the first option: only use WPML String translation (don’t load .mo files).

Best wishes,

Samarpan

[Geoff B.]

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[Samarpan P.]

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[Geoff B.]

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[Geoff B.]

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[Samarpan P.]

Hi Geoff,

that’s basically good news 🙂
Seems like we messed something up somewhere.
It does work now, though it’s not easy to pinpoint where the problem was exactly.

I changed the WPML translation mode to manual.
Just out of curiosity – do you advise against using WPML’s translation editor for general reasons or only because of issues with The Events Calendar?
Creating a new Venue and Event using manual mode did not fix the issue, at least not right away.

Next I deactivated all plugins except Events Calendar and WPML related Plugins, to no avail. (The site is still in development so no problem doing so :))

That’s when we decided to not use two slugs, but just one that kinda works in both languages – “location”.
So at first I unchecked “Use different slugs in different languages for Venues.” in the Multilingual Content Setup, which made the venue pages work in one language, but produced 404s in the other.
Then I clicked the “Translate Link Targets” button at the bottom, which still didn’t make it work.
Then I re-saved the Permalinks, nothing.

Then I installed this extension:
https://theeventscalendar.com/extensions/change-labels-events-venues-organizers/
as suggested here:
https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/change-venue-translated-slug/
and set the Labels for the venues to “location”.
Then I clicked the “Translate Link Targets” button again and re-saved the permalinks again.
Then I tried using the WPML String translation again and around this time is where it started working.

Now I realised, that the aforementioned Extension had nothing to do with the slugs (or does it?), so I changed the labels back to “Veranstaltungsort”. (still keeping the info in here as it might point to what the problem was in the first place.).

Since it seemed to work now, I tried the “normal” way via Translation Management > Multilingual setup > “Use different slugs in different languages for Venues.” once more, and now it works well with different slugs.

Sorry if that all seems a bit muddled, but that’s all I can recreate at this point 🙂

I still wonder what the problem was in the first place, but as it sems to work now as it is supposed to, we’re happy.

Thank you very much for your help Geoff!

Best wishes,

Samarpan

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Sarmapan,

That is some pretty awesome news!

Thank you for sharing your process. Sometimes deactivating and reactivating plugins goes a long way! The important part is that it worked and that you are now a happy camper!

You are welcome back in our support forums any time 🙂

For now, I am going to close this thread.

Have a great weekend!

Geoff B.

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