I recently deactivated Weglot to use Webflow’s native localization and while it looks promising, it has a lot of issues. I’l, try and explain/enlist what I’m experiencing:
CMS:
Field translation: sometimes the icon to auto translate appears and works, sometimes it doesn’t appear.
List of Locales: sometimes the list of locales appear, sometimes it doesn’t.
Changes not Saved Correctly: I have experiencied this multiple times, sometimes the changes made on whichever locale are not saved at all and fields appear blank, sometimes they appear as saved and when I load the published page, the previous content appears published, when going back to the CMS item, I can see my changes were not saved and previous content is still in the item.
Links: it’s not possible (as far as I’ve seen) to translate the “current page” and switch locales without going to the homepage. Any ideas?
On-page translations: issues with this as well, I have changed content 2 or 3 times and most changes are not being reflected in the pubished site. What’s more worrying is that translations are not directly saved to the CMS templates even when published. When I refresh the Designer, these changes are reverted.
Yes, I had the same issues and decided to go back to Weglot. I wouldn’t recommend using Webflow native translation at the moment. If still feels very bugged and incomplete.
I contacted support and they told me indeed the Localization isn’t 100% ready (no surprise there), but the entire speech felt like they were trying to make me empathise with the fact Webflow was kind enough to provide me with access to a not functional yet full-priced beta. It was kid of weird. They did not provide a solution or something to make up for the errors, the paid subscription, nothing. It’s the first time I felt Webflow was not ready and did not know how to manage the situation.
This is just to say that our we are, for the most part, really happy with our Localization offering and roll-out.
If you’ve experienced one of the rare issues that have come up, we hear you! It’s frustrating when things don’t work as expected and we’re doing all we can to improve the experience for you.
If you’ve had any issues with your site’s Localization, please submit a support request!
We can help solve some of these rare issues that have come up on a case-by-case basis.
Delivering on a great and reliable Localization experience is a top priority for us, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Dear Ida,
thank you for jumping in here. It took me over 10 emails to convince the support team that content was actually deleted and I am not making any user errors. I understand that with a mass product like webflow your team has to filter support cases heavily but with new features it would be highly appreciated if there was more proactive communication on the “known” limitations.
I.e. page links in CMS rich text fields are not translated (secondary points to primary), drop down fields are not translatable. I tell that to the support team. Then I have to do a video of what, I mean. Then after some days pass they tell me its a known limitation. That’s just frustrating.
Making things public in the forum/wishlist may save someone else the time to go through the process again.
I found a nice one, I think. I have styled a localization switch, looks perfect on multiple locals.
As long as you keep your language code in general settings filled in. If you empty that, as recommended when you run localization it removes the styling from the secondary local for the local switcher. What is up with this?
We also see different styling for different locales on the published page while in the designer they are identical. Support writes:
This issue appears to be related to the way that CSS grid is rendering for secondary locales.
We are not able to make any style changes on secondary locales unless we are on an Enterprise site plan so there should be no differences between the two. Our team has received a few reports, but it is very few and we do not yet have root cause.
CMS Items pulled from an API can not get translated.
I can´t even see the field to edit the language manually in the bottom of an CMS Item.
That results in the strange fact that the item isn´t published on the live site within the mentioned language.
Do you know this behaviour @Ida_van_Jaarsveld?
@bds - While I can appreciate that you are disappointed in your current perception of Webflow as a product, please keep your posts on topic and relevant. Ranting is not helpful to the community. Constructive criticism can be. – Thanks
Excuse me? My perception? This is not my “perception”. What I said is an objective fact. My post is also absolutely on topic. Who do you think you are? I am a paying Webflow customer. Nobody at Webflow, whether a volunteer or staff member, will tell me to be quiet when it can’t even ship a single feature that actually works. You want constructive criticism? Here’s one for you. I’ve submitted probably a dozen different bug reports over the past year. Guess how many have been fixed? Just one. Is that good enough? No, it’s not. I strongly suggest that you do not rock the boat with your pointless exercise of authority. This platform is broken with so many bugs and I regret building our site on this platform and becoming dependent on this shocking company. We do not find anything amusing, and your response only highlights the sheer indifference Webflow treats to its customers.
This issue with CMS items posted via API has happened to me as well. There is no additional option to add or edit a locale. Very very frustrating, I feel like this is something that should happen in a rather expensive first-party product
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