Setting up bundles and resolving compatibility problems

"Bundle" is our word for a theme or plugin that contains one or more sets of translations.

Bundles that have been internationalized to WordPress standards will "just work" with Loco Translate, but there are tens of thousands of products out there, and they're set up in all sorts of exotic ways. Furthermore, bundle authors don't always provide the files you need to translate their work.

Being "configured" means that Loco Translate understands the bundle and has all the required files to let you start translating. Anything short of this and you'll see warning messages that configuration is required, or additional (unknown) files have been found.

The Setup tab

The "Setup" tab gives a rough indication of how well the bundle is configured and where the configuration is stored. These are the messages you're likely to see here:

• Automatically detected
  Simple bundles can often be understood because they've followed WordPress standards. This is the ideal situation.

• Official configuration
  When the author has supplied a loco.xml file in the root of the bundle, you'll get a green light.

• Saved in the database
  When you've entered a custom configuration yourself. This data is stored in the WordPress options table.

• Partially configured
  Parts of the bundle might be conventional, but Loco has still encountered problems such as unknown or missing files.

• Unconfigured bundle
  You'll only get a red light if Loco Translate can make no sense of your bundle at all. This usually means the code hasn't been made translatable, but it could just be written badly.

Along side any warning messages you'll be presented with the following routes to try and get the bundle working:

Advanced configuration

This option takes you to the "Advanced" tab which provides full, manual configuration.

This is the recommended option if you know your way around the bundle's files. If you're not familiar with WordPress localization and the Gettext workflow, then skip this option because guesses are unlikely to work.

Import config from XML

If you've asked a developer for help they may provide you with a bundle configuration in XML format. To load an XML configuration, just paste the raw XML code in this text field and click "Load config". If the configuration is valid then Loco Translate will do the rest.

The best person to ask for a XML configuration is the bundle author. We may be able to help you if your bundle is in the WordPress themes directory or the WordPress plugins directory but we cannot offer any help with commercial products.

Getting more help

If you're stuck trying to translate a bundle that Loco says is "incompatible" or that simply doesn't show your translations please take note of the level of support available.