I am facing an issue after installing and configuring WPML on my website.
The default language of this website is supposed to be Simplified Chinese, and I intended to add English as the secondary language. However, after installing and setting up WPML, all my existing pages and posts disappeared from the dashboard, which resulted in me being unable to translate any content.
For your easier troubleshooting, I have temporarily changed the default language back to English so that you can configure and investigate the issue more conveniently.
Kindly assist to check what could be causing this problem and advise on how to recover and properly set up the multilingual structure.
When you first configure WPML, it asks: “What is the language of your existing content?” and stores that as the original language for all current posts/pages. If at that moment you picked “English” (or something other than Simplified Chinese), then:
- All existing pages/posts were tagged internally as English. - When you later set Simplified Chinese as the default and look at the dashboard filtered to Chinese, you see no content, because WPML believes all existing items belong to a different language
This could happen because WPML thinks your existing Chinese content belongs to another language (or “no language”) after setup, so it hides it when you’re viewing the dashboard in the new default language. If the site was originally built in Chinese but WPML was configured assuming the original content is English, WPML may assign your posts/pages to English, so they vanish when you filter the dashboard by Chinese.
- "I have temporarily changed the default language back to English" - can you confirm the pages reappear after changing the language?
- If you switch to "All languages" in the language switcher in your WP dashboard, are you able to see the pages?
- Did you try to check the WPML troubleshooting tools https://wpml.org/documentation/support/wpml-troubleshooting-options/ ?
Kindly let me know, thanks.
Please note if you comment on your ticket before we reply, your ticket will be pushed down of the tickets list.
Dear Support Team,
I am facing an issue after installing and configuring WPML on my website.
The default language of this website is supposed to be Simplified Chinese, and I intended to add English as the secondary language. However, after installing and setting up WPML, all my existing pages and posts disappeared from the dashboard, which resulted in me being unable to translate any content.
For your easier troubleshooting, I have temporarily changed the default language back to English so that you can configure and investigate the issue more conveniently.
Kindly assist to check what could be causing this problem and advise on how to recover and properly set up the multilingual structure.
Thank you for your support.
Best regards, Jonathan
Attached files: wmpl error.jpg
Hi, thank you for your request.
Did you check the following documentation https://docs.codex-themes.com/category/576-wpml ? Can you please describe in more details your installation and setup steps?
When you first configure WPML, it asks: “What is the language of your existing content?” and stores that as the original language for all current posts/pages. If at that moment you picked “English” (or something other than Simplified Chinese), then:
- All existing pages/posts were tagged internally as English.
- When you later set Simplified Chinese as the default and look at the dashboard filtered to Chinese, you see no content, because WPML believes all existing items belong to a different language
This could happen because WPML thinks your existing Chinese content belongs to another language (or “no language”) after setup, so it hides it when you’re viewing the dashboard in the new default language. If the site was originally built in Chinese but WPML was configured assuming the original content is English, WPML may assign your posts/pages to English, so they vanish when you filter the dashboard by Chinese.
- "I have temporarily changed the default language back to English" - can you confirm the pages reappear after changing the language?
- If you switch to "All languages" in the language switcher in your WP dashboard, are you able to see the pages?
- Did you try to check the WPML troubleshooting tools https://wpml.org/documentation/support/wpml-troubleshooting-options/ ?
Kindly let me know, thanks.
Please note if you comment on your ticket before we reply, your ticket will be pushed down of the tickets list.
Regards, Oliver