⚠️ The WPML multidomain feature is not yet available on boxes in our new infrastructure.
WPML can be used for multilingualism on these boxes, but only for languages in subdirectories such as /en/ or language parameters such as ?lang=en
This article describes how to set up the WMPL multidomain feature on our existing high-traffic infrastructure (Pro XL to Enterprise XL) and existing boxes of the previous infrastructure.
Before you start setting up WPML multidomain, it's essential that all domains you want to use are already properly connected to your Box. The WPML multidomain functionality will only work once the domains are connected. Follow the instructions in Connect more than one domain with your Box to add these additional domains as forwarding domains to your Box.
✔️ A green checkmark next to a domain in the Domains area of the Box overview indicates that a domain has been fully connected.
When you can see a green tick next to all the domains, please follow the five steps below to convert your Box into a WPML multidomain Box:
Step 1: Change the Box type
First of all, you need to change your Box-Type to WPML multidomain:
Go to the Settings tab from the Box overview
Navigate to the Server sub-menu on the left
Click on Box-Type.
Switch the toggle for WPML-Multidomain to ON.
Step 2: Configure your domains
Now your Box is a WPML multidomain Box, the next step is to configure your Box's domains.
This is done in your Box overview. Here, you will now see two areas listed in the Domains section:
Displayed domain: The displayed (primary) domain is reserved for the domain defined as the standard language in WPML.
Secondary domain: The secondary domains are the domains for all the other languages you want to set up.
A very basic WPML multidomain setup could look like this:
example.com = primary domain (English in WPML; standard)
yoursite.es = secondary domain (Spanish in WPML; spanish language)
Just as with your Box's primary domain, you need to decide which subdomain variant (with or without 'www') you want to use as your Box's secondary domain.
Now set the redirects for the primary and secondary domain. In the simplest form, the variants with "www" must redirect to their respective variants without "www" and vice versa.
Step 3: Set up WPML in the WordPress admin dashboard
Now log in to your WordPress dashboard and set up WPML. Generally speaking, the setup involves the following:
Select the multidomain option in the WPML plugin settings
Assign the domains to their corresponding languages (example: set example.com to English and example.es to Spanish)
Don't forget to save the changes!
Step 4: Check the settings
After saving your settings, check your website's domain setup to ensure each domain variant is displaying the correct language.
For our example above, your .com domain would redirect to the English version of your Box and your .es domain to the Spanish version. Also check whether switching between the languages works, e.g. through your flag menu or other any other language switcher you use.
Important: Please check all the changes in an incognito tab and clear your browser and HSTS-cache before testing. Caches can massively obstruct proper testing otherwise.
Limitations for Staging and cloning
WPML Multidomain Boxes have two important limitations when it comes to Staging and cloning:
Staging doesn't work for WPML Multidomain Boxes (make sure to set changes live before you activate WPML Multidomain)
Cloning isn't possible anymore