Welcome, 2019! OnTheGoSystems hopes you enjoyed your holiday season.
We started the year with a real-life story from our Founder, Amir Helzer, about what customers expect; we will continue working hard to ensure the best experience for all our customers in the year ahead.
Unfortunately, we had to face a “hacker” challenge, but we sorted things out together as a team. We would like to thank all of our team members who put in extra hours to help us overcome it as well as our loyal customers for all the nice messages supporting us and our products.
Below is our first update of the year – it may only be January but we already have lots of news.
What WPML brings with the new year
After the Christmas holidays, we released a hotfix version of WPML on January 22 (to cover some issues that had been addressed in the last few weeks).
We also finalised development for WPML 4.2.0 and started QA. We want to run all the necessary tests and release it by the end of this month.
WPML 4.2.0 will be compatible up to PHP 7.3, will include an extended/improved compatibility with the Gutenberg editor, will also include the ability to translate i18n JavaScript strings with String Translation, and more:
Translation Management
- Simplification of the Translation Management Wizard (during the first setup).
- A complete redesign of the Translation Management Jobs page with additional features to help in case of issues with translation services.
- Improving the translation workflow by reducing the user actions for retrieving. translated content. This is the first of two phases: the second phase will improve performances for sending a large amount of material, as well as enhance the support experience.
- Improving Advanced Translation Editor: better feedback in case of errors, links to documentation, improved switching from Classic Editor to Advanced Editor.
WooCommerce Multilingual
- Custom currency settings for WooCommerce Product Add-Ons “Custom prices”.
- Custom checkout currency for payment gateways.
We already started planning and working for WPML 4.3.0 as well which will be focused on user’s requests.
Last week, we sent out invitations to customers to a new WPML Research Group. Those who apply will help us test new features before anyone else, and have sessions with us (aa a thank-you they will also get an extension of their WPML plugin subscriptions).
You can follow all the latest news on our WPML Blog.
What’s new about Toolset
In January, we announced compatibility with Hestia, which is one of the top 10 most popular themes, and we invited clients to give feedback about a jobs board for Toolset contractors
Toolset Plugins Revamp
This month, the Toolset team has been working on two main areas.
First, we have some updates coming out soon, including maintenance updates for Types, Maps and Layouts, and some major new features on Views and Forms, like a completely new drag&drop editor for designing forms, and better loop management and WPML compatibility on Views. We are really excited that these small changes will combine into a much better experience when using our plugins.
Also, our developers have been following the small updates on Gutenberg and we are eager to release some goodies for the new WordPress editor. We continue to iterate on our existing compatibility layer, including our custom blocks and the integration with Views and Layouts.
Want to see how Toolset plugins work with Gutenberg?
We have some surprises in the pipeline that will be ready soon. We are entirely committed to this new editing experience, and we have bold plans on using and extending it, starting in the coming weeks.
We are creating a Toolset Research Group, similar to the WPML one above. We will send info to our customers on Monday
You can also follow all the latest news on our Toolset Blog.
Supporting our Customers
During January we have continued improving our support chat and easing up some internal processes in order to reply faster and more accurately to our customers. These moves together with recent hires brought a significant improvement in both reply and resolution times. The time it takes us to reply to the clients’ reports and the time it takes us to resolve those requests has dropped down significantly.
In the Compatibility project, looking back at 2018 we have tested and achieved full compatibility with 147 themes and plugins. This means working closely with those new partners from testing, through debugging ending in full resolution and documentation of compatibility workflows and technical issues. We will continue this work and will focus in 2019 on adding new and more advanced integrations with 3rd party products.
Compatibility, Partnerships, and more
In January, we made progress in several key areas of partnerships and affiliates:
- We got a few interesting authors and bloggers who covered WPML + Gutenberg: WPMayor, ElegantThemes.
- We have a new YouTuber on-board: Nayyar Shaik with 45K YouTube subscribers. He covered WPML in a recent video.
- We officially launched another affiliate status: Prime Affiliate, where we double your commissions. And if you are our WPML affiliate, find out how you can boost your revenue.
We also had some live webinars, tutorials and interviews.
Our Founder Amir Helzer presented a webinar about Toolset on WPElevation. It was a live session about how to build directory sites with Toolset. WP Elevation is an online program designed specifically for WordPress consultants. They teach you how to improve your workflow and business practices.
Also Dario, our Documentation Guru, will be a speaker at WC Prague in February. Read his interview to discover which topic he’ll be talking about.
We have published 2 video tutorials this month:
1 How to Make a Multilingual Business Website | Uncode & WPML
We have already announced this on our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter). The author has also shared the video on his Facebook page.
2 WordPress Image Optimization For Multilingual Websites
Enhancements to ICanLocalize
In January, we improved Software and General document translation projects pages for clients. The new design of the Getting Started page will help clients create projects faster, while our new emails sent at each step of the first project setup will guide them whenever they have doubts.
Our website was also renewed to make it easier for clients all around the world to get in touch with us. Our Homepage, Contact form, Services and Tutorial pages are now available into four common languages: French, German, Russian and Spanish.
As for February, we are going to improve Website project type pages to help clients send the content, pay and start translations easily.
Come Work With Us
Are you interested in working with a globally distributed team that encourages growth and advancement? Are you ready to harness the power of technology for a better future?