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1. johnhewitt1
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Hi all,
   About a year ago i installed Global translator. I then quickly uninstalled!

   I deleted all language folders, removed coding from header.php, de-indexed all translated pages, and added the directories into my robot.txt.

   I have recently installed hyper cache and it says 'it appears you have global translater installed'! Suddenly as well, google has comeup with 1500 not found posts all translated. I have searched through file after file and i can't find any remnants of this plugin.

   Does any one have any clues?

   Many thanks

2. johnhewitt1
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   I may have found the answer!

   in wp-admin/options.php via hyper cache, there is a reference to gltr_preferred_languages. This lists as serialized data. Going into php my admin I found gltr_preferred_languages in the options table with the list of languages for translation! I deleted this row on the table and I HOPE this is the end of global translator.

   I hope this helps :-)

3. johnhewitt1
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Hi again,

   just an update, I said at the beginning 'via hyper cache', I actually meant 'via Clean Options.'
   Clean options is a great plugin that can track down remnants of uninstalled plugins that leave traces in the database tables. It provides a link to options.php which shows gltr_preferred_languages listed as 'serialized data'. Clean Options doesn't remove this remnant but told me what to look for ;)
   Deleting gltr_preferred_languages from the options table was the key.
   Hyper cache now gives NO reference to global translator - i.e. IT WORKED :)

   here is the link to the Clean Options plugin if anyone would like to try; just be carefull what you delete ;)

   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/clean-options/

4. pepitapop
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Hi,

   I've had so many problems with that global translator puglin !
   I suppressed it and find 404 error pages go on so I'm pretty sure something has not uninstalled.

   I'll try your suggestion, thanks for sharing.

5. pepitapop
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Hi,

   Thank you for posting this thread, I feel less lonely !

   I installed Clean Options, it found several traces of global translator, and offered the option to delete them in the tables.
   So I did that.

   But I don't know what other remnents to look for. You mentioned your header file, I don't know how global translator is referred to in the file.

   Same problem for robots, I don't know what folder to mention in my robot file(especially now that I have deleted them). If someone has a suggestion...

   I am really upset because 404 errors are becoming more numerous each day, and I am afraid my site may be deindexed in the end, which could have a disastrous effect on my work.

   If anyone could help, that would be terrific !
   Thanks.

6. johnhewitt1
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Hi there,

   I had header code (in header.php) to show the list of flags across the top, so I made sure that was gone first. Also check all the language folders are deleted (ja, ro, fi, en, etc.)

   Here is what you can place in the robots file:
   Disallow: /ar/
   Disallow: /be/
   Disallow: /bg/
   Disallow: /ca/
   Disallow: /cs/
   Disallow: /da/
   Disallow: /de/
   Disallow: /el/
   Disallow: /es/
   Disallow: /et/
   Disallow: /fa/
   Disallow: /fi/
   Disallow: /fr/
   Disallow: /ga/
   Disallow: /gl/
   Disallow: /hi/
   Disallow: /hr/
   Disallow: /hu/
   Disallow: /id/
   Disallow: /is/
   Disallow: /it/
   Disallow: /iw/
   Disallow: /ja/
   Disallow: /ko/
   Disallow: /lt/
   Disallow: /lv/
   Disallow: /mk/
   Disallow: /ms/
   Disallow: /mt/
   Disallow: /nl/
   Disallow: /no/
   Disallow: /pl/
   Disallow: /pt/
   Disallow: /ro/
   Disallow: /ru/
   Disallow: /sk/
   Disallow: /sl/
   Disallow: /sq/
   Disallow: /sr/
   Disallow: /stale/
   Disallow: /sv/
   Disallow: /th/
   Disallow: /tl/
   Disallow: /tr/
   Disallow: /uk/
   Disallow: /vi/
   Disallow: /zh-CN/
   Disallow: /zh-TW/

   If you use webmaster tools, then you can request the directories to be removed (e.g. yoursite/ja/ yoursite/fi/ etc.)

   The main thing is the robots file, without it i was still getting a few none founds. Also check google search >> site:www.nameofyourwebsite.com and see what has been indexed regarding translated pages.

   It did take a while for traces to be cleared but hope this helps :-)

7. pepitapop
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Thank you so much for your help !!!!

   I will check in webmaster tools tomorrow. Keep fingers crossed :-) !

8. pepitapop
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Hello,

   So now other weird things are happening :
   I have a list of over 600 pages blocked by robots file, mentioned in my webmasters tools.

   It is only logical since I am blocking the folders (which have been erased anyway) but I wonder how come they are mentioned since I am supposed to have erased the plugin, and the pages they mention are the former translated pages...it means there still are remnents :-/

   And I do not know if it affects my results with google...

   Has it happened to someone else ?

9. johnhewitt1
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Hi again,
   I still get a few mentioned; I also went to the 'remove url' from cache on webmaster tools to get rid of some. with a site:yourdomain search I found some had been indexed and thus had these removed.

   I did have a audit trail plugin which kept all records (over 7000) in the database, even after uninstalling! I dropped that table. I have stopped using a cache plugin and adding my own code to .htaccess, the cache plugin had remnants too!

   I does take google a while for these pages to be taken off; if you have blocked the folders with the robots file then it still may look for them for a while but at least won't index them. In fact I looked at webmaster tools today and it still mentions a few pages blocked by robots.txt! these i am redirectiing so that it stop looking for then all together!

   I am also using a redirection plugin and some of the translated pages are being redirected to the original which as helped.

   The main thing seems to be that the old pages are out of the index. double check the site:search and as long as the translated directories are in the robot texts you should be ok.

10. pepitapop
    Member
    Posted 1 year ago #

    Thank you so much again !

    Indeed many of the global translator plugin generated pages have been indexed ! Never thought it would be so fast !
    So I am going to spend a lot of time making redirects, I will feel safer.

    Now, I had to write a robots file and add it manually (I used to have the wordpress virtual robots file). I do not know if it is related, but suddenly Google can not use my sitemap file anymore :-S !

    Never ever will I install another plugin without triple checking on the web if others have had troubles with it ! So much waste of time because of that plugin...

    Anyway, thank you for your oh so worthy help !

11. johnhewitt1
    Member
    Posted 1 year ago #

    Your sitemap can be added to the robot file if google cant find it. I use the google sitemaps plugin that auto pings google with site changes etc. You dont need to submit your sitemap as google finds it for you and you dont need to add the sitemap to the robots file.

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

12. pepitapop
    Member
    Posted 1 year ago #

    Thanks fot the advice.
    I use it too (or I think it's that one...), but in order to have my own robots file, I unchecked something concerning robots in the admin panel (as suggested in a forum) because it says you can only have wordpress virtual robots file.

    What is weird is I did exactly the same on my blog and my site (both wordpress, both had the global translator problem) and the blog's sitemap is ok whereas the site's isn't...

    I'll inquire later this evening and will let you know if I find...

13. pepitapop
    Member
    Posted 1 year ago #

    The sitemap is ok now, don't know what happened...
    The number of files blocked by robots file is stil increasing, but the 404 and 503 error files do not seem to increase anymore.

    Thank you for being so helpful.

14. johnhewitt1
    Member
    Posted 1 year ago #

    you're welcome.

    :-)

15. Fking
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    I'm so sorry i installed this plug-in (and i did on 30 sites) i'm sure i've been struggling much more to rank them because of it! I've removed it half an year ago and still have those soft 404s and other stuff in webmaster tools.

    What i found is that the pages generated by it even if deleted now, forward to the homepage instead of showing a 404 page. That's why google shows errors for them IMHO. In webmaster tools it shows them under Soft 404s ‎and "404-like content" in the Detail field.

    initially i tought that's some rewrite rule left from auto translate plug-in, and checked the .htaccess file but there is nothing about such rewrites there

    but there is something making all those old urls to redirect to the homepage instead to the 404.php page

    and the urls that never existed go to the 404 page as expected

    but if it's not the htaccess file what else it might be? Do you have an idea? :(

    There should be huge warning somewhere that this plug-in might kill your rankings... :(

16. Fking
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    ah and since i have to fix it for 30 sites i really hope we can figure out easier way based on the redirects thing i found, instead of doing the procedure from above for 30 sites :)

17. johnhewitt1
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Hi, I not sure why that is happening.
    I have the robots text file as above so that google has no access to them. they still to this day(!) show up, but at least they are restricted and not 404s

18. Fking
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Did you have the same issue like me, the previosly existed urls to forward to the homepage?

    You say they still show up? You mean the translated pages? How's that possible?

19. johnhewitt1
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Sorry, I meant Google still looks for them but since they are dissalowed in the robots file it can access them. I presume without the robot file they would come up as a long list of 404s.

    no I never got the redirection problem, just a bunch of 404s until i added the file.

    When you do a site search do any still show as indexed?

20. Fking
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    on site: no, they are not indexed in google at all, just show up as errors in webmaster tools. But i believe that might be a problem for my sites to rank well. Too many errors on a a site shows google that this site is neglected....At least i think that was the spirit Matt Cutts showed in one of his videos. But this is not confirmed information.

    Anyway i found something else! Global Translator was doing caching on it's own.

    You should have wp-content/gt-cache directory full with it's cached files. Exactly the same language abbreviature dirs that show up as problems. I'm deleting those as we speak and will see if it helps.

    So far with the few i deleted it's the same, they still forward to the homepage instead of 404. But i'm not sure if i have to wait a bit for this change to kick in

    Here is the info from global translator settings about caching:

    "Cache management

    Global Translator uses a fast, smart, optimized, self-cleaning and built-in caching system in order to drastically reduce the connections to the translation engines. This feature cannot be optional and is needed in order to prevent from banning by the translation services. For the same reason the translation process will not be immediate and the full translation of the blog could take a while: this is because by default only a translation request every 5 minutes will be allowed (see next section).
    The cache invalidation will be automatically (and smartly) handled when a post is created, deleted or updated.

    Enable cache compression (this will strongly decrease the disk space but could give some problems on certain hosts)

    Schedule a page for a new translation if it has been cached more than days ago ("0" means "never").
    Cache statistics

    Your cache directory currently contains 762 successfully translated and cached pages.
    Cache directory size: 19.3 MB
    Your stale directory currently contains 83 successfully translated and cached pages waiting for a new translation.
    Stale directory size: 1 MB"

21. johnhewitt1
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    I had removed the cache directory previously. However, just looking phpmyadmin I have found a remnant of a total cache plugin that i no longer use. It was a 'transient' entry which has now been deleted. I am wondering if this is possibly why google is still searching for these pages. Luckily the robot file is restricting google from doing anything, but they are still being attempted.

22. Fking
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    i deleted the gltr_preferred_languages row in mysql as well, but the urls still behave the same way

    i'm out of ideas what else might be making them behave like that :(

    Do you have any?

23. Fking
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    ok i just did a search for "gltr" in the DB and deleted all the records of it (all of them were in the options table) and still have the same problem.
    This thing can't be killed, omg! :(

24. johnhewitt1
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    i think the robot file with all the directories will have to always be there. I just did a site: now and there is actually STILL a /nl/ translated page, despite the robots txt. My ranking isnt affected because I always add these remnants to webmaster tools for deletion when I spot them; so do check a site: search regularly to make sure!

    I would love to ask Google, what makes you still look for these pages as my restricted list gets bigger as they hunt for translated pages!

    Summary:
    keep the robot file FOR EVER!!
    regularly do a site: to make sure none show up

    Other than that there is nothing else I can think of.Good luck :-)

25. johnhewitt1
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Hmm...i think I may have given some wrong advice here re:robots txt. It looks like keeping the file in tact until Google has de-indexed the translated pages is ok but the the file must be updated by removing the directory references so that they show as 404 and then disappear.

    I think if the directory references are keep for good, Google will not know they are 404, since they are being blocked, and thus they won't die off.

    I have thus removed the translated directory references from the robots file, am expecting a couple of hundred 404s, but hopefully these will then die off.

    Fingers crossed, and PLEASE, if anyone has better info. I would be most grateful.

26. johnhewitt1
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    As an update I am using 410 for wordpress plugin and generating a 410 response for these directories using site/language/*(as wild card). It seems a 410 response could get the pages sorted out quicker.

    references:
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-410/changelog/
    http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022119.html

27. johnhewitt1
    Member
    Posted 9 months ago #

    As another update to the endless problem with this plugin; as mentioned above, once I was sure all remnants had been removed I then removed all the references to the language directories from the robots text.

    This resulted in Webmaster tools 'restricted by robots' number to go down but my 'not found' to sky-rocket (to over 4000!). I left it all alone and now the 'not found' numbers are FINALLY dropping.

    Goodbye global translator and good riddance!

    Hope this helps :-)

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